Slashdot Mirror
Suit Seeks 'A La Carte' TV Channel Choices
An anonymous reader writes "A breathtaking lawsuit was filed this week against every major player in the 'for-pay' television industry. Every major broadband and cable company in the US was named in the federal suit, which seeks the right to obtain content piecemeal rather than in the large (and expensive) packages that cable companies offer as the only option right now. This follows closely on the heels of encouraging comments from the FCC chair that he supports this kind of service. 'The complex web of contractual arrangements among service providers and networks amounts to a monopoly or cartel that has "deprived consumers of choice, caused them to pay inflated prices for cable television and forced them to pay for cable channels they do not want and do not watch," [antitrust lawyer Maxwell M. Blecher] wrote in the complaint filed on behalf of cable subscribers in several states. The complaint, which alleges a conspiracy to monopolize as well as violations of federal antitrust laws, names nine plaintiffs, but Blecher wants the U.S. District Court to certify it as a class action.'"
Networks like Discovery DEMAND that the lesser channels of theirs also be carried and forced upon the viewers and subscribers. Lots of Content networks do this to ensure their lesser and crap channels get viewership.
They need to start there making it illegal for networks to demand that if you want to carry or subscribe to XYZ channel you do not have to get DEF and the crappy ZBZ channel as well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My old cable so in Maine offered just this. You bought interrelated channels a la carte. But then the media cartels began forming, and they found their channels forced together when they were irrelevent, aggrivating the customers.
It wound up bought by Time Warner over a decade ago, and one of the first moves TW did, removing a la carte.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
But even so, it's hard to see how anyone could possibly find it justified at this point in time. If it weren't for the DMCA, we could get it by show off of YouTube...Clearly there is no technical limitation.
It comes down to the fact that their business model is more and more dated by technology. No one is obligated to provide them a free ride.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'll have my red channel
A little bit of the green
But none of that blue stuff! Hold the blue channel!
The colors, they're breathtaking!
Wait, that's not what it meant? But i want 73 channels of garbage just so that i can watch my history, discovery, and cartoon network!
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
My inner geek is gonna miss programming my remote. My Harmony and I have had a long love affair skipping useless channels like HVC, Fox News, and Disney. I'm gonna miss her.
This is awesome. I have a 'digital plus' cable package with over 200 channels, which I had to buy because the 4-5 channels I regularly watch were on that list. I would love to get rid of the other 190 channels or so, (200-(5 I watch)-(5 or so others I occasionally use/check)) and if I could get a price cut at the same time, that'd be even better.
If this happens the providers will respond by separating popular shows on to their own channels. The top rated content will be padded with junk you don't want to watch. The only answer is to sell shows individually.
no need to buy 6 TVs times the rent for 6 converters !!!
I only ride 20% of the rides at the local theme park, should I get an 80% discount?
This is retarded. Does anyone really think their cable bill will go down if this suit succeeds? Of course, the first thing they'll do is pass their litigation costs along to us. Then they'll price each individual channel such that the sum of an average person's "ala carte menu" will be as much or more as they paid before.
And if you're into the less "mainstream" channels, be prepared to pay through the nose or have them disappear entirely. (Of course, Slashdot readers are all mainstream, NASCAR-watching type dudes, so that won't be a problem for us.)
Sorry, Americans! Cable TV isn't a RIGHT! It's a service, and a crappy one at that. Cable companies would offer choice if enough people called them up to cancel and told them that they won't sign up again until they offer choice!
Of course I'm rooting for this one -
In my area, I can get basic cable ($50), the local high-def channels ($0), and a DVR ($9). Sounds pretty good, right?
Oh wait, if I want the "Navigator" functionality (the ability to use the digital cable's menus and program recordings), I have to pay $3 AND purchase a $30 "Digital Tier" pack of complete crap channels.
If I built a new MythTV box (no local phone line, so no TiVo... has that changed lately?), it would take several years to recoup my costs. Monetarily, I don't think it would be worth it; however, it's tempting to take a hit just to make sure the money I do spend doesn't end up in Time Warner's pocket.
Just goes to show how far behind these people are. The internet is talking about each individual show and these guys are still stuck on "lets force them to buy stuff nobody wants".
The concept of a TV channel, in my opinion, should disappear in the next 10 years. Content is king today and with the upcoming on demand choices, a TV station will be a bad memory.
Get ready, content creators are going to have full control, no more network sugar coating.
It's going to be awesome!
Should this be the option for everything?
I want an a la carte TV channel as well. I only want to pay for the shows I watch. I also want an a la carte newspaper. I don't care about the sport section so stop charging me for it. The thing is though that a cable company can offer channels for less by packaging them. I might not really be too keen to pay as much as someone with kids for a kid's channel, but there's occasionally something good so I'm willing to pay a small extra in addition to other channels.
The family with kids may not really want one of the other channels but see it as worthwhile if it's in addition to the kid's channel, but there might occasionally be something kid oriented so they'll pay a little extra.
We would love to offer a la carte programming, but there are two huge obstacles.
1) Many times, we are charged per cable subscriber for a network even if we don't offer it the subscriber. ESPN is this way, as well as some of the sports channels. You'll pay for it as a customer even if you don't want it, because we get charged for it. That charge is comming to you one way or another, either through a package price or a base price as a cost of business. If you don't want ESPN, we're still paying for you to have it.
2) Many networks like Discovery and Fine Living give us massive price breaks if we show their second and third tier channels to a certain percent of subscribers. If we ran an a la carte service, this would be a nightmare. It means that if in a given month, if 30% of our subscribers didn't want Fine Living, but wanted Food TV, your price would triple. Do you really want to have a monthly bill that fluctuates that badly from month-to-month based on the whim of a TV network?
This isn't meant to FUD you. God knows, we'd like to be able to offer you a la carte, we have the technology to do it. And honestly, even though cable and sat companies piss customers off, we don't really want to. You are our customers. But to the networks, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. The advertisers are the customers, and they are selling your eyeballs. Until that situation changes, and the networks have less power over us in contact negotiations, you probably won't see a la carte. For all the malfeasance you can lay at the feet of cable companies, this is surprisingly not included.
If the providers dillute thier offerings too much, then they risk the consumers opting for none. What I'm curious about is to what extent consumers will be free to change their lineup. Let's say I want to watch HBO for some series and it runs from Sept-May before it goes into reruns. Can I cancel and not pay for it for the rest of the year? Another concern, and IMO, a rather big one is that the cable cos are now required to carry any OTA broadcasts. Does this mean they can decide to start encryping the OTA feeds and charge the consumers> THat would be bad.
you can go to a park with per ride admissions, or to a park with all day admissions.
and you have a choice.
I am juste olde enough to remember pinning myself at Disneyland CA with the cute pins and my ticket to indicate having an all day pass-- as opposed to paying per ride... but-- I don't have to go to disneyland... I can go to the local carnival....
furthermore, amusement parks don't have governmental granted monopolies over a certain geographical area.
Businesses with Gov granted exclusive privleges by god do need clamping down/regulations.. or they will certainly run rampant... and this goal has no real hurdles, other than the desires for a fat bottom line on the part of the corps.
nothing else... and if the 'people' grant them the exclusive privlege of serving the 'people' then the 'people' should be able to place limits on what they get..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Personally I choose buy no TV at all. Nobody tries to force me to buy any.
My local cable company did just this in the mid 1980s or so. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like $20 for all 30 channels. Or, you could pay $10/month for the first tier of channels, plus $2/ea to add more channels. If you wanted anything more than a small handful of a la carte channels, it was vastly more expensive to purchase them outside of the bundle. We may think we want a la carte, but the devil is in the details. As long as cable companies are monopolies, you can bet on any such "changes" remaining a better deal for the cable companies than anyone else.
This view of entitlement is completly wrongheaded. Cable distributors offer many quality programs that much each be licensed. Offering a-la-Carte choice pricing to consumers would force broadcasters to renegotiate licenses for much of this valuable content.
Sure, there is content that may not interest you, but broadcasters have to pay for it anyway. Why not just suck it up, and pay, it's the American way. Ratings will eventually force it off the air anyway.
ESPN is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive channel on your cable system. It costs them a ton of money to carry it, and the costs are passed on to you whether you watch it or not. I'd be more than happy to be given a chance to get rid of it forever.
I was talking with a family friend who works for CBS many years ago, and this very topic came up: cable cost and paying for only what channels you use. His remark was that if the piecemeal system is used instead of the package system, most of the smaller channels would vanish because they would no longer have enough revenue to sustain them. In other words, the Food channel may be beloved by many people, but everyone that would pay (extra) for it may still not be enough to keep it on the air.
I think this should be from the "I DON'T want my MTV" dept.
"The cable TV industry has argued that such an a la carte system would lead to higher prices, less programming diversity and fewer channels in part because advertising revenue would fall." If I don't watch 200 of the channels I have access to now, they can't be counting me among the viewers of those channels and advertisers on those 200 channels surely aren't paying them for my eyeballs. What's changing for the advertisers if I don't pay for those channels - why would advertisers also pay cable less?
It's always aggravated me that I have to pay for ESPN, reputedly one of the most expensive channels on cable, because ESPN has the market power to force their inclusion in the basic tier. To receive the Science Channel and the National Geographic Channel, I have to pay for a tier that includes all sorts of crap that I don't watch.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If this lawsuit results in a change in policy, it will mean nothing for most people. Selling channels on a per-channel basis is more complicated for the cable providers, and will thus be more expensive per-channel. Unless you literally watch only one cable channel, you will probably pay more to pick-and-choose 2-4 channels than you would pay for an entire package, including 90% channels you don't care about.
I used to work for Cox Communications, and in my area, "limited" cable is $11/month (channels 2-22, aka fancy rabbit ears). "Expanded" is an additional ~$30 (23-72). And the digital tiers are something like $2/month (for 5 to 20 channels per tier each). (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc, are priced entirely differently).
The digital channels (which are most popular to complain about--probably because there's the perception that there are "hundreds" of them due to their channel numbers reaching into the 300's and 400's in some cases) are by far the cheapest channels there are, and it doesn't make sense to break up a package that cheap.
Where it might have an impact for some people, is breaking up the "Expanded" tier (most cable companies have something similar), as the bulk of that $30/month price is the subscription fee the cable network pays to ESPN (something like $24/mo, if I recall).
If my memory is accurate, and the ESPN fee is $20+/month, then that means the other channels (23-72 minus ESPN) are $10/mo or less. And then it's suddenly very "reasonable" again.
Of course... if cable channels are sold a la carte, then the price per channel will go up by necessity. The *average* cable bill will still be roughly the same as it is now (assuming the programming also stays the same--and of course it wouldn't). The difference would be that families with 8 members who actually use 2 dozen channels would pay a higher cable bill, and single-member households (like mine) will only subscribe to 2 channels, and pay less.
I guess what it all comes down to me is: It's a lot of fuss about something that isn't a big deal, and it's just as likely (if not more likely) to hurt the consumer as it is to help them, except in fringe cases.
Hopefully the end result is lower package prices. My cable bill is around $150 per month. :(
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The Supreme Court changed the pleading standards with the Twombley ruling very recently. If they can't show that their allegations are "plausible" within the pleading, their complaint will be thrown out of court. If they don't already have evidence of a conspiracy above and beyond a few instances of a pattern, they will never see discovery.
IANAL, but Twombley pisses me off.
> Nobody is "forced" to buy anything they don't want
True, but only if what you want is nothing. If what you want is one or two certain cable channels, you are indeed forced to buy them as part of a package.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
at best you are going to see packages (or more packages) now we have sports, news, shopping (yes you can get a shopping package). In the future you will see Education packages, college sports. With true a La Carte the issue will be cost. ESPN will want to be expensive beucase it can be but Discovery wings will want to be expensive becuase it needs to be. So I'm sure Discovery will be a package with all the learning goodness of Discovery health. We just won't see 5 channels for $20 to many channels will die (I'm looking at you Jazz on BET). Maybe just maybe HSN would pay me to have their channel on my TV or the next step will be pay for what you watch. For 10 you get every channel but owe .$5 for each hour you watch a given channel.
I would never have discovered Mythbusters if my cable package didn't provide me with the Discovery channel, so the idea of packing some channels together has some appeal to me. Since science is lacking in the US, it should be mandatory that cable companies provide the "Educational Package": Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and we might as well throw in The History Channel, too. And make a "Civic Duty" package that contains C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, and perhaps a "Civic Duty +" package that adds The Daily Show and Colbert Report.
The apartment I just moved into REQUIRES all residents to have basic cable. (You can't have just Cable Internet, and because you don't have cable on your own account (it's built into the rent), you can't get a "package discount" by having Internet + Cable. Oh right, they also charge about $10/mo more for basic cable than the cable company directly would sell you, even without any discounts.
/they/ want. (after all, you can always just choose not the have cable, you whiny handout-wanting bastards). This "cable is required" thing was sprung on me after I'd given notice at my previous apartment.
Has anyone ever heard of this? This sounds like more of an abuse than a cable company setting prices however
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
But, how else am I going to enjoy my guilty pleasure of E! without the cover of subscribing to the "extended lineup"?
It's the cable equivalent of walking up to the rental counter with Super Slut Cum Fest #9 sandwiched between Howard the Duck and Sleepless in Seattle.
More Twoson than Cupertino
But we can't do that. They wouldn't let us show Fine Living but NOT Food Network. We could potentially do a la carte for packages, but we kinda do that already. The only improvement would be to break the bigger packages along networks. But you'll still see lots of crap channels bundled with the likes of Viacom.
Remember, our relationship with networks isn't friendly. Comcast got sued, and we're under current litigation over the remote DVR "Start Over" service. It's copyright infringement to start the show over if you switch the channel, because we're the ones recording it, not you. Heck, we get threats all the time during negotiations over offering the DVR service. Networks are convinced that home recording is illegal and think we may be liable because we aren't forcing you to watch your show in 3 days without skipping commercials or delete it. They think shifting the commercial time as much as 30 minutes ruins the value of the commercial.
Sure, we may be incompetent from no weak competition. But we don't get get our jollies by screwing customers. Remember, if a network can keep your eyeballs, they'll run roughshod over you. Viacom knows there's no substitute for MTV, but God knows if we piss off enough customers, sat TV would destroy us.
Personally, I'm not interested so much in a savings cost. The one part that *really* appeals to me is that no longer will TV networks be able to tout viewership as "XXX Million households carry ESPN47!"
At least, I can hope so.
I personally think, they could get more subscribers doing this. I don't have cable, and where I live now I only get one channel, but given the opportunity to choose only a few stations I would go for it. They definitely could win over some people who are not current cable customers. I would imagine parents would love this too, a way to truly block the bad stuff.
I canceled my cable because I could not stomach giving money to the Comedy Central network. Not to mention MTV, BET and such. These are the most racist, hateful, immoral and ignorant networks on television and they all just happen to "come with my package".
When I can pick my channels I will gladly get digital cable again.
No, we don't treat our customers like mindless drones. Our division has pretty good customer satisfaction. It would be higher if we had serious telecom or sat competition. That's the nature of our market, it's simple economics.
You have two options, study our market, find the inefficiency (lack of cable competition, IP monopolies from the networks), and solve the problem in innovative ways like pollution credits worked for the power industry. Or you can pass stupid laws that create giant externalities and could easily put the customer in a worse position (consolidate content companies, promote more exclusive channel deals, and remove competition from the market which drive up prices).
TV providers spend more on legal defense, prices go up more...
Given the easy availability of single episodes (and entire seasons) with no DRM and the adverts cut out on Torrent sites, I figure it's only a matter of time before you can legally download single shows - the adverts will still be there of course, with the lack of illegality as the selling point to stop people downloading (or even bothering to make) the advert-free versions.
I know you can do this here in Ontario Canada with Cogeco Cable (owned by Rogers Communications).
It is actually called a la Carte. You have to get basic digital. Then you can pick 1, 5, or 10 or something like that channels. The crappy part is for the privilege of doing this it seems to cost you more, and also some channels don't seem available in these packages.
digital cable boxes can do alacarte Tv channels right now.
Not true. Cable companies offer packages of channels. They carefully separate their "money maker" channels (sports, movies, documentaries) into different packages. If you want the local stations, they're on the basic package. If you also want the sports channels, you have to buy the bronze package. If you also want, say, the Discovery channel... no you can't just add one channel. You have to upgrade to the silver package. No, you can't trade off the golf channel and the knitting channel to get the Discovery channel. If you want the Turner Classic Movies channel, you need to get the gold package.
Actually, it's even worse than that. The cable companies will put stuff like the Discovery channel and the History channel into separate packages. They've got it set up so that if you want all the "hot" sports channels, or all the "hot" entertainment channels, or all the "hot" documentary channels, you have to get the premium package.
There was a company here in Toronto called Look. They used to offer a la carte channel selection about four or five years ago. They abandoned it "for technical reasons", and have gone to the combo platter style of channel lineup. (Look also used a microwave broadcast system rather than cable. You had to be within line of sight of one of their repeater antennae.)
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No guy should ever admit he prefers the NGC to ESPN.
Might as well put on a dress and get your nails done.
Not that there's anything wrong with that... well, yes there is.
I used to work at a cable company, so I'm getting a huge kick out of these replies...
No, wait. Let me start over.
I used to work at a cable company, about... crikey, ten years ago. This is in southern Ontario, where average cable penetration is rather higher than it is in the States. I remember hearing from people back then that the hot new thing was going to be the offering of individual channels rather than bloated packages.
Of course, about a year after I left, the company was bought out by a larger one. I waited and waited, but there was no per-channel pricing to be seen.
I'm glad things are finally moving in this direction. I only watched maybe a half-dozen channels, and my wife and I decided that it really wasn't worth it to us.
Although honestly, with Youtube and such, we haven't really missed it all that much.
Soylens viridis homines es
While this sounds like a good idea, it would ultimately mean the death of a lot of good programming and channels. Yes, you may only watch 10 channels, but are those the most popular 10 channels? If they aren't, they may not make enough money to survive in an ala carte setup. Something like G4 (which yes, is nowhere near as good as it was but still has some good shows like X-Play) probably would never make it if it was subscriber only, as it is a niche channel. There just wouldn't be enough people willing to pay $3 a month (or however much) to get the channel. Same thing with VH1Classic, Discovery Science, and many other niche channels that have some good programming. Ala carte means every channel must cater to the lowest common denominator, as they survive on getting as many people to order their channel as possible. That means lots of things like MTV and less things like SciFi.
Ala carte sounds great for my pocketbook, but I'm not willing to give up the good, niche programming that would die off to save a couple extra bucks a month.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Well, tied selling is generally frowned upon or outright illegal in some states. The cable companies' systems always struck me as borderline illegal. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Doesn't C-Band satelite offer this, that you pay only for the channels you want? I was looking into this about a year ago, it seems that it is roughly $2 a channel. Of course, who wants a big C-Band dish in their yard this day and age?
I have actually been complaining about this for years. I never watch OLN, BET, ESPN, the Golf Channel, the NFL channel, Fox Sports Network, orh the Soap Opera network, so why am I paying for them? I let myself be talked into a more expensive package simply for the reason of getting BBC America. They tried to talk me into a more expensive package still just to get The Science Channel added. I gave up on that, and went with HBO, it was CHEAPER than buying another programing teir for the one channel I wanted, and I get something like 7 HBO Channels. If I pay the extra to go to the next teir, I will not get 7 Science Channels.
Plus, maybe this way, broadcasters can actually see what people like. I used to say that if it was this way. G4TV would never have changed their format for ZDTV, they would have saw how many viewers they lost. SciFi would not decide to start showing wrestling. When your revenue is directly affected by customers deciding whether or not they want to pay for your channel..... Maybe this will lead to less crap on cable TV. Anyone ever wake up early on a Saturday and try to find something on? Thank goodness for DVRs.
A lot of people are saying that this will mean that Food Network will go away. I doubt this, for two reasons. One, while it may not be the first channel on most people's list, it seems to have enough fans that it will keep the network afloat. The second reason it will not fail is that I doubt seriouosly that most of the shows on Food Network are high budget shows. They tend to only have a couple of hours of new shows a day, at best, the rest is reruns (at least, on Food Network HD). Nah, the network will make plenty to stay afloat. If Baby Network can make enough to stay afloat, Food Network can. Probably the only networks I would be worried about is maybe OLN, who watches that, really? Of course, their shows are low budget too. The networks with the higher production value shows (Nickelodeon, SciFi, Disney, Discovery) will probably deffinately have enough subscribers that it will not affect their profits. In fact, I bet it will probably actually see an increase in revenues for Nick, Disney and Discovery (not sure about SciFi, lots of people like it, but stuff such as Stargate seems to have a really high production value for a cable network, but I am sure they will make out well enough that Atlantis will not get canceled).
Not really sure how this would affect like Boomarang. I would pick this up in a heartbeat, this is currently only offered on the top teir with my provider, but not really sure about others. However, as all they are showing is reruns (last I checked) of OLD cartoons, I am sure that Boomarang will also make enough to stay afloat.
All I ever watch are a handful of middle-tier stuff - Discovery, History, etc. I pay for the rest of it (the first tier and half of the second) the way I pay for Windows - it's a tax that comes with the system. They could be airing a blue screen all day for all I know - I have to pay for it anyway.
Wouldn't the educational channels be better off if they were receiving 100% of my revenue? They produce 100% of the content I consume, but everyone else gets paid for it.
Maybe what's actually needed is an accurate way to gauge what people are watching. Throw everything out there and bill for the channels that are actually watched. It might be a little more per channel, but it would definitely drive competition for better shows.
I swear I heard horses twice when I read the blurb. Something about that lawyer's name... Hmmm.
I've been missing out on the military channel just because I don't want to pay for all the digital tiers, and I can only take so much fox news and espn. As far as pricing and everyone that says this wouldn't work because of the demands ESPN puts on the cable companies, I'm thinking espn would change thier tune when the people that pay them for advertising bailed due to dropped subscribers. It would be a long painfull process, but any type of major change is. I think more good than bad would happen, just might need a government subsidy (i know i can't spell) for the small channels.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
My take is forcing people to pay for channels they don't nor ever will watch is the same as mandating everyone pay for a meal at the new restaurant in town even if you don't eat it.
Face it: 80% of the networks will fail if ala carte is adopted. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. Let the crap networks sink or swim. Once they die, take that bandwidth and GET ME MORE HD CHANNELS, dammit!
10 MD
This should get dismissed as a frivolous lawsuit because the guy is asking for something that is:
a) not available with broadcasting (it being BROADcasting an all,)
b) already available with podcasting (or should be.)
The complaint about selection and choice of programs is entirely immaterial.
The material was not available over the broadcast channels either until is was MADE available at some point in time by the content provider and the broadcaster.
The material was not available over the podcast channels either until is was MADE available at some point in time by the content provider (Transmitter? We don't need no stinking transmitter.)
----
The economics of the situation is that if you can produce and put it out there you can either:
a) be in intense competition for access to a very scarce resource (the transmitters,)
b) be in NO competition for access to an asynchronous, persistent medium.
----
Now there ARE problems with amateur production. Budgets are non-existent unless and until you can attract an audience. You are in competition for the attention span of the average person "in the the particular group that you are aiming to reach." (If you put out [podcast] a show aimed at string theorists, or if you download [podcatch] a show about string theory, you'd better know string theory.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
No, you're buying the one or two channels you want for the price of the full package. The extra channels are irrelevant.
(total amount you pay) / (channels you want) = (your price per channel)
For the most part the extra channels are there because they subsidize the channels you want. If you eliminate those channels your overall cost will most likely increase, not decrease.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Crappy lesser channels devalue the whole package, and makes the package less marketable. Instead of a lawsuit or asking for more regulation, why not let market forces work for consumers. I would watch more TV if I could watch every show on demand. And it appears that there are a lot of people who would do the same. iTunes and YouTube are services exploiting that market. If networks don't like that then they'd be the eventual losers, with or without a lawsuit.
When I used to smoke, I thought it'd be easier to quit if I did not have a pack full of 20 cigarettes everytime I had a craving. I wanted the option of buying one cigarette at a time. There are tons of other products and services which are only available packaged with something, and it's fair to let the producers decide on their own how much marketable those packages are.
A la carte will define the true value of channels. With these insane packages (that essentially force you to get far more channels than you want), the big name providers can use their larger markets as leverage. What cable company would say "no" to ESPN? So, the cable company gets shafted. Now, if the cable company can say "Hey, a la carte just proved to us that 40% of your market came from female-headed households that only got your channel to watch Lifetime and Oxygen in the same bundle," ESPN (and Discover and MTV and CNN) can't demand the same rates.
In the same vein, I think we'll find that many of the smaller market channels have more value. With bundles, the big channels had the leverage to claim that they were the reason viewers were upgrading from Basic to Extended. With a la carte, we'll see many of the innocuous channels getting their fair share.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I produce television programming for cable. If you don't think advertisers are savvy enough to know the difference between the number of homes a network is available in and the number of people actually watching a particular program, you're an idiot. The FIRST thing they ask is 'How Many Viewers?'
paintball
If restrictions on bundling are enforced on the providers, less popular channels from 1 provider will be at an economic disadvantage and will tend to disappear. Diversity will decline; offbeat programming will become rarer. The unusual channels that remain will be more expensive. A French-only channel and an Italian-only channel are available from DirecTV; IIRC these are $5 to $10 per channel per month.
Popular channels attract advertising and pay for themselves. Compare Cartoon Network to Boomerang. Cartoon Network has ads, Boomerang doesn't. My guess is that Boomerang doesn't reach enough households to attract advertisers, and it might go away if a la carte becomes standard.
We aren't going to see prices come down meaningfully until the overall system, from actors and gaffers to cable companies, becomes more efficient. And that isn't going to happen until economic pressure is applied. That pressure is coming in the form of internet TV, but how it's going to turn out is anybody's guess.
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The cluefull will adapt, the rest will die. Why is this a bad thing? Are channels that you and I like somehow more deserving?
Right now I can't feel justified to pay the $30+ for five channels that I might watch for a few hours every day. I would have cared about TechTV being on one of the highest tiers before it was ruined by G4. The lower tier is pretty much just the local channels that I could get for free with an antenna anyway. Of course, the local city made some archaic deal with Adelphia a decade ago, then the FCC allowed Time Warner to buy them out last year. Time Warner was supposed to be connecting their network into the old Adelphia one so as to provide broadband, digital cable, and telephone to everyone between but that has yet to happen. They keep saying "next month!" though. Yeah right. The many incompetent faces of the cable industry...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
If you have cable internet and cable tv, just cancel your cable tv and you will likely still get 6 or 7 of your main network chanels. I'm fine with the 3 (or 4 if you count fox) networks... I dont need the food channel or CNN... the 6, and 11 oclock news is good enough. Any other crazy specialty shows you might like can be found on the internet, through your fancy high speed cable internet.
The problem is, a lot of people are dumb. They can't look at more than one step of a problem.
Dumb person:
I am paying $100/month for 200 channels, but I only watch 5. If I could pay ala-carte, I could get the 5 channels I want for only $2.50!
Smart Person:
If I and everyone else only pay for 5 channels instead of 200 channels, each channel gets 97.5% less revenue, and either raise their rates by 4000% to compensate, or they go out of business. (Even that isn't quite right as it ignores the components of costs for the cable company per subscriber vs. per-channel costs paid to the content providers.)
Whether content is bundles or ala-carte, you're going to pay an average of $100 a month, or lose channels. Popular channels will charge more because people will pay for them, and unpopular channels will charge more because they need to to stay in business on a smaller subscriber base or they'll cease to exist.
Remember, if you stop paying for all the other channels you don't want, the other people who don't like YOUR channels stop paying for your channels to. Nobody comes out ahead.
paintball
If ala carte pricing ever happens, the only affordable channels will be the popular ones, and all the niche channels will cease to exist, or be prohibitively expensive.
...
Excuse me sir, but what the hell are you talking about? All niche channels wouldn't cease to exist. Many of them are really cheap (since they don't include multi-million-dollar CG effects or famous "movie stars" etc). If you have a channel about home decoration that is actually decent, people _will_ pay for it. If not, to hell with it!
This is how the internet works. What if the internet was free? All the "niche" sites would cease to exist!! No, not really.
There are two major flaws in your statement. The small guys will cease to exist part, and the reason to why we don't have a la carte today.
The small guys will cease to exist
And there are proofs today. There are two types of "niche" channels:
* Those that are "free" in a sense that the commercial pays for all of them. Would they cease to exist? Nope. They already have their income.
* Those that cost money (but May include commercial as well). One example is HBO. Will they cease to exist? Well, sir, if you take the time to look outside the window, and perhaps even outside the country of yours (terrifying thought), _I_ would pay for HBO if it could be broadcasted to me (over the internet or any other simple fashion), to the country I live in (not the US, believe it or not).
What you're saying is baloney, and it works against all kinds of examples we have today. You're just guessing these channels would cease to exist, when the truth is, before the major corps came to the arena, everything worked fine, a la carte.
So your statement is obviously not even remotely true.
The reason to why we don't have a la carte
The reason we don't have a la carte, is not because it's "the only way small niche channels could ever exist", but rather; It's a very delicate way for the major corps to make you pay more, and for things you cannot even use, without you thinking about it.
Becase: you don't pay for the channels you see, you pay for the channels you could have been seeing right now
Think about it this way, how many hours a day could you ever spend watching TV a day (living a normal life)? 5?
Ok, so let's say you want to see 5 shows a night, most of them on the same small group of channels. Maybe 3 channels (A, B and C).
Now, every once in a while you want to see shows about nature, and in particular one show, on one channel, D.
Can you pay for A, B, C and D? No, you have to pay for X, Y and Z. And even worse, you have to pay for a dozen others.
When the fact is, you couldn't even spend that much time watching these channels.
So, they force you to pay for channels you CANNOT see, since you either:
1. Watch another channel
2. Don't watch TV at all
Just the fact that you in theory could watch the channel, is enough for them to force you to pay for the channel. And the only way for them to force you to pay for channel X, Y and Z (which you don't even watch) is to bundle them into a package, where you pay for All channels, minus a few cents, thank you very much.
Can't believe some people don't realize this.
If the content providers could start realize that there's something called the internet, they could easily make me pay for some of their content. But the principle of forcing me to buy a whole bunch of them, makes me resist the whole deal.
What if you had to buy a chiwawa and a pudel, when you buy a terrier? What the hell are you supposed to to with these mops, when what you want is a terrier?
One car + 5 bikes (try using 5 bikes simultaneously, since yes, you pay for being able to use them All the time).
One internet connection, and 8 dial-ups.
And so on.
And no, it's not like "well if some stupid store only sells you cars if you also buy 5 bikes, screw them", no. In th
Interestingly, channels like HBO and Cinemax (Time-Warner companies) are cheap compared to ad network channels like ESPN (around $6 a head). Our basic access, which is dirt cheap at under $10 a month, you get the local channels, and the shop-at-home channels. It's pretty much free to send it to you, because the shop-at-home channels pay us per subscriber, subsidizing the line.
But places like NFL network and ESPN charge us for them, even though we don't send them the signal for their channel. NFL costs $10-$20 a head and, as I said, ESPN about $6. So, since most people around here want ESPN, and if enough people want NFL network, you'll likely have to pay, in one way or another, for those channels.
God knows I wish it wasn't the case. I wish sat TV offered decent competition, and I'm sure they think the same about us. But we're fundamentally a cartel of 2-3 providers for a given area selling overpiced goods from monopoly suppliers. And since there's no niche provider for geeky TV, customer demand and monopoly pressure would mean that we'd probably just serve ESPN, NFL, shop-at-home, and populist reality shows, and not negotiate the rest of the channels, whatever is most profitable to serve to most people.
And hey, it is our problem to work out pricing with the networks. But what the the lawsuit should be over is why there is no competition in the cable and content distribution markets, and why Verizon and Sprint are so slow in rolling out their TV options. You've been paying for non-existent fiber for a decade or more, why can't you reap the benefits of their cabling and content negotiating power?
Exactly. I see several posts that say something like "I get 70 channels for $50 a month now, which is a ripoff, but I'd gladly pay $10 to get 10 channels." Uh, no. I would be shocked if individual channels aren't priced in the range of $3-$5 a month, and in this day in age when a single _show_ purchased a la carte on iTunes costs $2, I wouldn't be surprised if it's even more. You're not gonna get 10 channels for $10, you're gonna get 10 channels for $40-$50 a month, which suddenly seems like a lot less of a bargain.
I wish I had some moderator points right now, because this is the best effing post on the topic I've read. In fact, it makes so much sense its hard to believe its on Slashdot :-)
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Sorry to disappoint you.
The end result of this will be to raise rates significantly, using some complicated scheme that will legally meet the government's requirements while forcing the consumer to pay more. We'll end up paying more for the channels we really watch than we do now for those channels plus all the crap.
Remember, the government rarely sets new regulations to benefit the little guy. It's all about how corporations with lots and lots of lobbying money can make lots more from you and me. It's not *our* government, you see, it's *theirs*!
If this goes through, in a couple of years you'll see cable prices high enough to drive a significant amount of TV show piracy, which will become a lot bigger deal than movie piracy. Almost as big as music piracy is today.
It's not about you and me. Never was. We're just a revenue stream.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
First, we'll drop smaller networks that try and play rough. We can afford to.
But what happens when Fox wants a better deal? They run commercials saying how the local cable company is trying to take your channels away. Most of our customers think they have a God-given right to TV and we're just getting in our way. It can be surprising what people will do without before going without TV. The pecking order is something along the lines of Rent, power, TV, food, phone, etc on down the line. We'll take lots of blame for dropping Fox Sports, but a $3 increase will be tolerated by the customer.
There is a nugget of truth to this, as I explained above. They will only fight as hard as they need to keep us the most profitable. And while this is intentional, it's merely economics. Why SHOULD our negotiators and buyers negotiate bad deals? We have no motivation from competitive or customer pressure to change the deal. You can blame us, you can blame Fox, Universal, or Viacom, or you can blame the market, it won't matter except to make lawyers richer and the plaintiffs feel smug. Blame won't change the fundamental economics of the matter, and that's what needs to change if you want to see a la carte pricing. A lawsuit won't fix the underlying issues
One of the things that really annoys me is that themed channels don't stick to the damn theme. All of this is irrelevant, even with a la carte you'll still be paying for stuff you don't want to watch.
I see non-history stuff on History (like CSI or the 135424th showing of Red October), anything but science fiction on Space (bloody Tarzan, wtf? Samantha Fox? wtf), religious mysticism and superstition on Discovery (haunted houses? ghosts? wtf), etc. That the only channels that seem to stick to a theme are sports, weather and news (although that last is probably debatable).
ESPN. Few on slashdot watch it. Why should we pay right? Horribly expensive to have for the cable companies to provide it ... so they force everyone to pay a little so that it can be there. This lawsuit will fail because all the cable companies will point at ESPN and say... "well, you wanted it, and they're expensive. So unless you all want to pay 40$ a month and only get ESPN and MTV and THAT'S IT .. then we have to do it." Of course, the cable companies don't want that to happen. Way too much over head costs for a-la-carte set up PER PERSON (technology might be there, but new training and software would have to be built/upgraded to allow for it), as well as rising costs overall because of the previously mentioned issue. The finger will be pointed at the content providers (the tv networks like mtv and espn) saying that THEY are charging way too much money.
Flip the table now. Look at it from the point of view of the network. They WANT all the crappy little channels out there, because that's how they advertise. I'm not talking about commercials. Example, i love discovery. Why the heck would i ever have signed up for travel channels or animal planet. I don't own a pet. I live in an apartment... and while i care about traveling, why would i ever get the travel channel? If i wanted to see europe, i'd save up and go there! ... the channels WERE there in the bundle, and i DID watch them and now... i might pay for them because they are a lot better than i thought they would be. As a result, Discovery has now gotten me to watch another one of their networks / shows. ESPN is the same with their shows. That's how they make more money... by giving you the option to watch something else (hopefully their stuff) when something you don't like is on. IF we go a-la-carte .... these networks will now sue cable companies because they are making it too difficult for the networks to expand and make money... and they'll claim that cable companies are the problem now.
Yet
The question i have comes here: .. but now, everyone is online, and can get to these networks themselves (i'm also thinking 10 years in the future)... but is it possible?
Lots of online "networks" and "broadcast" websites are currently out there and more and more are being made. I guess the best hope is for people to start investing time into looking for online alternatives? But most of those are amateur and don't have the financial backing to making insane shows like myth busters... Honestly, If it costs 1$ (pulling this number out of my butt) for the cable companies to have discovery in the bundle, i'd gladly pay like 2 or 3$ a month to DISCOVERY themselves... be able to stream the discovery channel to my computer.. or be able to get it in HD stream (as it normally would look on tv) and just completely bypass the cable TV companies themselves. Keep the cable company, and get rid of the cable TV portion of the cable companies... make them just provide data transmission over a cable wire only... be it a tv channel or just internet? I'd invest in this if it was possible... but is it possible? Cut out the middle man. They were there before the internet was popular (useful then)
Where the local government requires it to be carried?
I don't want them, in fact I have never seen content on them to interest me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Rather than buying a show or a channel, why not just subscribe to content? Say, I want Season 1 of Torchwood - I buy it from the Beeb and then download it to my TIVO-esque box and watch it when I want.
Um... kinda like I'm doing now with my Apple TV. Wow, shows on demand.
Nope, won't happen - too much $$$ tied up in "limited use, crap-filled shows". Once you give folks the power to watch the shows they want, you can't force "popular shows" on folks.
jmt
J. M. Tisdel jmt@jmichaelt.org
Just get out. If you want to really change the economics of the TV industry.... BAIL!!! I actually stopped watching TV ~10 years ago for simple lack of interest. Yes, this was before broadband internet. No, I actually don't download TV. I really, honestly, don't watch it. I do have some exposure to TV of course... my parents often have the food network or hgtv on when I'm visiting. A close friend is a complete South Park addict, so I've seen most of those. Another friend actually listened to me when I told him not to keep up with the Joneses just yet, for two years, and is now the very happy owner of a 42" Sharp 1080p LCD; through him I've seen most of Discovery's Planet Earth. While it's certainly breathtaking video, the genuine information content is not that great.
My point is this... if you're only watching three channels, and especially if they're the edutainment channels like Discovery, History, etc, just get out. Write those channels a letter and explain to them that you can no longer justify the cost of cable for their shows, but that you'd be happy to pay for some form of online availability. Go surf wikipedia for a few hours, you'll learn as much or more in the same time frame, especially if you follow the external links. Remember that an hour long history channel show amounts to an outline on paper.
There are hilarious side effects as well. It genuinely amazes me how much trouble some people have comprehending the fact that I don't watch TV. It tends to go something like this:
Co-worker: "Hey, did you see X last night?"
Me: "No, I don't watch TV"
(next day)
Co-worker: "Wasn't that episode of Y last night awesome?"
Me: "Dunno, I don't watch TV"
(next day)
Co-worker: "Isn't that ad for Z hilarious?"
Me: "Really? I haven't seen it, since I don't watch TV"
You get the idea. Some people simply refuse to believe it. It's even more fun when dealing with cable salespeople encountered at Best Buy or wherever...
Salesperson: "Hi sir, could I interest you in Time Warner's new _____ service?"
Me: "No thanks, I don't watch TV"
Salesperson: "It's only an additional $5/month on your cable bill, and you get these great new channels/services/features"
Me: "Actually, I don't have a cable bill, since I don't watch TV"
Salesperson (smells a bigger sales opportunity): "Oh, well have you considered how many more channels you could have than you do with broadcast TV?"
Me (becoming mildly annoyed): "No, because I don't watch broadcast channels either. I -don't- -watch- -television-. At all. Ever. And I can quite happily state that I've never given a single thin dime to Time-Warner at any point in my life. Have a nice day."
The mild annoyance is worth it to see the salesperson's mouth start moving like a fish out of water.
So, apologies for the long-winded ramble, but I have to say, if you can bear the thought of leaving, do it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?
If the all the grocery stores and egg farmers were colluding to limit your choice to 12 eggs at a time, you most certainly could sue them. This is an anti-trust lawsuit.
Boom Shanka
So, as you point out, it doesn't really matter which mess we get in the short term.
Either way we'll all wind up paying more, for less, the way we always do when there's a local monopoly on service.
The only thing that will ever truly bring change is more bandwidth to the home.
Even then we'll still be overpaying for our data lines - but at least the content end will have competition.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Let's see -- anaqlog cable is taking up bandwidth that could be extra revenue for the company. People are not switching to digital cable and its extra fees quickly enough. HDTV is proving to be a major failure and TV is a commodity that everybody resentfully buys but wishes they didn't.
Enter a court decision for ala carte. Suddenly, analog cable has to go away so that digital cable and its one box per TV can start up. Analog is difficult/impossible for ala carte. Cable ready TVs will be more or less useless without the cable box so revenues will rise for less bandwidth used. The dirty evil cause will be the government regulation, not the cable companies and media conglomerates.
Faux News and Rupert's other channels will magically be free because cable as a conduit for right wing propaganda cannot be abandoned. Channels of interest to people with three or more brain cells to rub together will either be expensive or die out, much to the joy of the right wing. Further, it won't require two way cable to find out your interests, the channels you watch will be the ones you pay for so segmenting the population further and keeping an eye on centrists or, Gawd Forbid, the left leaning portion of our society, will be much easier. One more victory for those who brought you the Patriot Act. Viewing habits will soon be available to anybody for a price from the first crackers who break into cable computer systems, download the data, and offer it for sale.
Hooray!
If the scenario you described would be the result, then why hasn't this happened already? After all, under your scenario, Cable Co. would be able to charge me more in exchange for less. Shouldn't they be doing this now?
The reason I don't think this will happen is because cable channels sell advertising. If they provided fewer channels for the same price, they would lose viewers and thus lose advertising reach. Channels like G4 and Animal Planet are surely subsidized, but they also sell ad space. Their cost will go up accordingly, but deservedly. For those channels that can't survive anyway, why should we subsidize them?
Boom Shanka
For years, I have wondered why I have to pay for #*&*#$@ like FX, Hallmark, Biography, Lifetime, Court-TV, CNN, Fox News, TCM, ... the list goes on and on.
I only watch the major networks, PBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Comedy Central and NFL Network (yes, I realize that those are the most expensive channels anyway). My girlfriend watches HGTV and Style. Why are we paying for anything else?
Even if it's only a $10 decrease in my monthly bill, I would gladly get rid of that extra garbage.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
But TV?!? Come on, my fellow Americans -- get your asses off the couch and turn off fucking television set. You think there's too much crap, and the few quality shows you do get aren't worth your money? Ditch the TV. It's not like you can't live without it.
Sometimes our populace is so pathetic is saddens me. "Boo-hoo. I can't pay $2/month for each of the 3 channels that I actually like so I'm *forced* to pay $50 for the minimum package required to get them. I'm gonna sue the cable companies and content producers for collusion. Waaaa!"
Look, the cable/sat companies will do anything to keep subscribers. When I cut off my cable subscription for the final time (ever) over 5 years ago, they all but begged and pleaded to keep me on. I told them something like, "Any package you have doesn't offer enough value for the money I spend. It's not worth it." They seemed to think I couldn't afford it. They first tried to rope me into the cheapest package they advertise. When that didn't work, they suddenly had these 2 other cheaper plans that really don't exist, unless you threaten to leave. Finally, they tried to get me to accept the cheapest of those plans with *vouchers* to cover then entire cost sans the taxes. They were essentially willing to provide me free cable so long as I stayed on. (Given the ads so rampant on cable, they'd have to essentiall *pay* me for me to watch, as I consider ads negative value.) So don't tell me that they don't get some money from *somewhere* per head of viewership.
Fuck 'em. Swear off broadcast programming of any kind. If people weren't such dumb-asses and thought about it for a minute, they'd know that they have the power over these companies, but they chose to accept their fate of the industry's door mat. Cable TV isn't like food or gasoline, where collusion can actually, you know, *hurt* your ability to live. Sound off your opinion of the situation as loudly as you can. Tell your friends and family, your neighbors, etc.
Look, I'm not one of those anti-TV snobs. There are a handful of shows that I like, and everyone deserves a little down-time in the form of entertainment. I get mine on DVD, sometimes via rental, sometimes with a purchase. I like LOST and Good Eats, so it's not like I'm so high-brow as to snub popular shows. But I recognize that I was getting screwed by the broadcasters, and would continue to do so until the system changed, so I opted out. The systems still sucks, so I remain out.
Over the years, I've seen several folks here recount how they've dicted TV. Cool. What puzzles me is that there are *far* more here that bitch about the price/quality of TV options, yet don't give it up. Tell me what's up with that?
Method of processing duck feet
free to air. Nuff said.
We've all heard that if you buy A La Carte, that prices will go up. Everyone agrees that they only watch certain channels. The channels most effected will be the "Buy this" channels. What everyone continues to forget is the fact that the power remains with the consumer.
If you think it's too expensive you wouldn't buy it. Look at the movie industry. Look at the music industry. Everything is now a la carte and people won't pay for it unless it's the right price.
This is a basic lesson in supply and demand. People are willing to pay for 200 channels to get the 5 they want right now. I'm not, and in fact I won't buy cable at all right now. Even at $5 each, that's still $25 for TV. I cannot justify spending $100+ dollars a month for TV and Internet when I can get every single episode, or show I want online for just paying for Internet.
Sure, while in some situations it may be illegal in how I obtain it, most of the stuff I WANT to watch is grossly edited to the degree of not actually being what it claims to be. For you anime fans... one word. Naruto. I bet thousands of you have twitched at that comment.
We live in a time where information is easily obtainable. If the owners aren't willing to distribute it in the methods we the consumers want... then we get it in that format. Look at music. Suddenly people were able to just download the songs they want (See: Nabster) so the industry changed (See: Itunes).
The same is beginning to apply to everything. People are screaming "We want it in this format" "We want it without DRM" "We want it for this price". It's happening. It's slow, it's painful, but the companies and people making lots of money now are the ones listening to us. I hate Apple, I hate their computers, their locked in systems... but they listened. Look at the IPod, IPhone, ITunes...all immensely successful because they filled a consumer demand.
Now while the implementations of those services are all flawed (DRM, etc)... every single flaw was bypassed in days by users.
This is all part of a huge movement of control BACK to the consumer. You CHOOSE to buy a movie for $19.99 when it's first released. I CHOOSE to wait until it's $9.99 or less. I notice more and more that movies go down in price in under a month. I firmly stand behind my rights as a consumer and while it does require patience... I'm much happier with my purchases.
they would give me an option to NOT receive Lifetime and Oxygen channels.
The increasing cost of sports programming is the reason my cable bill is increasing, not the increasing cost of the Discovery Channel, History Channel, or SciFi Channel. I've heard that the cost of bundling ESPN has doubled in the past three years. In fact, my cable provider tried to launch a grass-roots campaign to force ESPN to lower its prices several years ago which failed miserably.
So I'm subsidizing the increasing cost of ESPN, which I don't watch.
I suspect the reality of the situation is far more complicated, but I'd prefer to rely on the market to adjust my cable provider's offerings, than my provider's benevolence and sense of "fair play".
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
For example, even though I block all the Sports channels and Buy Online channels (HSN) and Religious channels (why they don't have Flying Spaghetti Monster religious channels is another question), previous behavior of cable companies worldwide leads me to believe that a la carte cable would end up costing me more.
It's not that I don't trust them, it's that I've invested in them before (as stocks) and the annual reports lead me to believe they would find some way to rip off most of the customers with any a la carte option, especially if it was NOT regulated.
For example, maybe the SciFi channel would cost $20 a month to "add". Right now it's part of expanded channels. They know we geeks need our fix of hot sexy aliens and they're quite willing to make money off of us.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Look, I'm not one of those anti-TV snobs. There are a handful of shows that I like ...
Yes you are.
See also: Look, I'm not racist. Some of my best friends are black.
There is this little thing that some people like to refer to as "diversity". In some ways, it means catering to minorities and in others is means broader cultural vision.
Today, there is a cable/satellite channel dedicated to running old movies. How many people actually watch that enough to justify paying for such a channel? Damn few. How about a cable channel dedicated to television shows with Black actors? Today, there are more than one of these and considering both the number of people interested in such channels and their disposable income, it is doubtful that such channels would survive.
Sure, there would be plenty of people supporting the mainstream pablum that is on USA and FX. Movies with every questionable word silenced or redubbed. SciFi channel might survive, but it has a rather narrow appeal.
Unfortunately, the money required to operate an enterprise as a cable/satellite channel is pretty high. Today, if your offering gets picked up by cable systems you can operate and if not, every goes home to find something else to do. It isn't cheap to do this and it isn't going to be cheap in the future. This means that anything marginal or not clearly focused on the mainstream entertainment experience is going to go by the wayside.
I would miss the SciFi channel. I would miss TVLand and AMC (old movies). But my purchasing these channels on an ala carte basis would not be anywhere near enough to keep them operating.
Ala Carte is a method by which the larger media organizations get to push their message at everyone even more consistently than they can today. Anyone without a dedicated majority of the viewers loses. This has already happened with radio - there are few formats today and they all have mass appeal. Anything for smaller audiences is gone. Ala Carte cable will have exactly the same effect.
So this way, you have full control over what shows you want to watch when you want to watch them. And the cable companies and content providers will also have a very efficient and easy way of tracking what programs are popular and which ones no one is paying for. Unfortunately, Nielsen probably won't like this plan much, but those ratings are pretty much history anyways,...
On the downside, there will probably still be a bunch of people that pay for way more "credits" or programs than they actually watch each month, much in the same way that most people pay for way too many minutes on their cell phones. But if there's enough individual levels of program packages, it would allow those that care to select packages of value to them.
> For the most part the extra channels are there because they subsidize the channels you want. If you eliminate those channels your overall cost will most likely increase, not decrease.
Well that certainly depends on what each and every person define as "extra" channels doesn't it ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
It's awfully similar situation to not wanting to buy an entire CD, only selected songs.
The more tv channels appear, the more you want to handpick what you really watch.
The industry will have to come up with new marketing and billing approaches.
For example, based on what you were watching in the past month(s), they could come up with a household-tailored bundle, which could become your "basic" package. They could leave accessable all the other available channels and you'd pay "micro-payment" fees if you watched maybe 5 hours of an "esoteric channel" you don't normally watch.
This way people could actually watch whatever they want - since it's available - without paying full monthly fee.
Broadcasters and cable, statellite providers would have a new stream of revenue from occasional views.
I am sure that the technology allows to track exactly which subscriber is whatching what, deploying a "basic" + "microview" billing would not be that difficult.
Or would you like to have to pay for a construction crew to come out and bury new cables whenever you want to switch to a upstart new provider? That's kind of an insurmountable barrier to entry there, if you ask me. Might as well make USP and FedEx build their own roads...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"If anyone thinks they can take their current bill and divide by the fraction of channels they watch to get a new a la carte bill, they're deluding themselves."
If the regulations say this is how it must be, then those providers who do not comply will find themselves on the wrong side of enforcement action...
But yes, there can be much lobbying and legal arguing before any new regs come into effect.
I sent the following to the FCC. Thought you might dig it or have ideas how it could fail.
Cheers,
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
And every time some blonde white girl on vacation disappears, there's probably a network executive lurking in the weeds.
or are they exempt because they don't use any FCC controlled airwaves? I would love to get a cheaper sat. bill and lose a majority of the channels I never watch. It angers me that in order to get SpeedTV I need to get 20 other channels I hate.
Yeah for DirecTV...
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
since it's not about the customer, it all about John Malone - http://www.businessweek.com/1998/39/b3597046.htm FToA - As for the TV viewer, says Davis, Malone couldn't care less: Better service and more channels meant higher costs, and if he spent more on existing subscribers, he would have to slow his march to build America's largest cable empire. ''The trick,'' Davis writes, ''was to never give the public what it wanted.'' ----------- Luke, I am your father, and these are not the channels you're looking for.
0x7279727972797279
It's the Media companies, Again.
Price fixing music CDs; Bundling cable packages.
Don't blame the music store/cable co; blame Time Warner, Universal, etc.
This is going to come off, possibly, as a little elitist, but I am a bit worried about this and I think I have good reason to be. I don't watch Dancing with the Stars, or Deal or No Deal or Survivor, or anything like those shows. My concern is that the channels I do watch - channels like Discovery, FLIX, Sundance, IFC, Encore, etc - the kinds of movies that don't show *the latest blockbusters* - almost none of which I want to see - will not make enough revenue to survive. I'm not some kind of artiste who only likes stuff no one else does, but I also cannot handle insipid, and if there is one thing the United States has proven in recent years, it's that it loves to get its Stupid on. Big time.
Maybe this is fair and I can understand people making a free market argument here. But as much as I enjoy the prospect of not giving my money to the bottom-of-the-barrel networks like, say, E!, I am afraid that in the long run this may reduce the amount of quality channels available to me.
I'm not at a point yet where I have the energy to hunt down everything I want to see on the internet and put myself at risk by downloading stuff.
All I'm saying is, be careful what you wish for - you might not like what you get. As much as I can enthusiastically envision my cable box de-crufted of idiocy like the Golf channel (you have got to be kidding me, and this is not a slag on the sport itself), I also see a lot of the stuff I like dying away because the amount of subscribers cannot sustain it.
A better model for TV watching might be direct-to-DVD series that you could rent or buy from a Netflix-like operation. Even on the channels I like, I actually watch a very small percentage of the programming they make available. I don't object to the idea of foregoing cable altogether and instead getting DVDs of shows like Mythbusters or Survivorman, as well as the novel independent and foreign films I have come to rely on for sanity. Ditto bigger shows like Lost (maybe the most high-profile show I've ever liked) and The 4400. This might also provide the opportunity to be able to watch a show with all sorts of random crap popping up on the screen, which drives me batshit insane.
Also, completely offtopic, I'd love to see some kind of NIGHT FLIGHT themed channel which shows random weird crap all day. Wouldn't you? I know I'm not the only one who is sometimes too tired and bored to do anything but watch TV. Wouldn't it be great to have a channel that showed random animation clips, obscure music videos, 50s school scare films, acid-drenched biker films from the 60s, and so on, specifically for people who, like me, can easily flip through 200 channels and find not one thing I want to watch? And it should be a channel with an absurdly lax standards and practices department. Lots of titties, guns, Satanism, and kaleidoscopic psychedelic interludes. John Lydon's mug all up in the camera at least once a day. Boyd Rice racing Ivan Stang on a unicycle. Documentaries on anarchists, neofascists, Moonies, Scientologists, and Extropian VR gurus with no hair. Retro commercials, at random. I am talking Preparation H commercials from 1967. Ads proclaiming the lung-cleansing, expectorant effects of Lucky Strikes. Commodore and Atari 8 bit computer commercials from the 1980s. Drug hysteria films from the 1930s that aren't Reefer Madness. And also Reefer Madness. Nick Zedd films shown without comment or context between Terrytoons shorts. Random outbursts of Sonic Youth. Maybe show the Death Valley '69 video every night at 3:00 AM as some kind of tradition. Dog Police. Racist cartoons. Anti-Nazi WW2 propaganda cartoons. Random weird crap from Japanese television. Movies like Fantastic Planet. Documentaries on Raymond Scott, Laurie Spiegel, Esquivel, Can, Magma...insert your artist or band here. Propaganda films. Obscure blaxploitation flicks. Satanic panic documentaries and films which exploited the phenomenon (there are few things more satisfying to me at 3 AM than a movie like The Devil's Rain).
Sorry, but the radio is here to stay. People have been saying that X is the death of radio for years and years. I believe they said TV was the death of the radio.
I have not say, I agree with this. I'm always amazed when this issue comes up, how many people say "Yeah, I'm so sick of paying twice as much as I want to for a few channels!" Soooo... stop paying it? I don't have cable, and I won't til I can get it for the price I want to pay. I use Netflix for anything I can't get with my rabbit ears, and I've got enough shows to catch up on that I'll be kept plenty busy til this season comes out on DVD next year. Plus, plenty of shows are now offered free via streaming on networks' websites, or for download over iTunes, and there's always tv.co.uk - there are options, people! Stop paying if you don't want to pay, and maybe they'll lower their damn prices to get you back! Yes, their business model is outdated - so why are you propping it up?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
After re-reading the post, I agree. Most digital boxes probably have the tech to do a-la-carte now. When I first read the post, I took (mistook) it to mean that all you need to do to get a-la-carte programming is get a digital box. This is, of course, not true. If the head end isn't offering the service, it doesn't matter how much tech you drop on the tail end.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
so, they should put it all online and let us stream the shows we actually want to watch when we want to watch them. They could charge some sort of subscription service for this. I have cable I never watch it, I get stuff from itunes and other sites.
You pay to watch commercials, how stupid is that?
Excellent! Now I can sue Swanson for not letting me buy the frozen Salisbury steak without having to pay for that plasticky corn and the weird brownie thing! I want just the macaroni and cheese!
Me: I payed for "the Violence Channel" and "Crappy Network Jingles from the 80s." I'm not getting those, but I am getting "E! Entertainment News."
Minimum Wage Time Warner Employee: "Hold on a second while I check that, sir."
Me (to himself): CURSE YOU SLASHDOT!!!
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but there's a simple reason to cheer for success in this lawsuit: it allows people to reject junk channels by opting not to pay for them. The ultimate power of consumers is totally denied to us under the cable providers' current bundling arrangements. As others have said, cable companies are regional monopolies, so it's not like we can go to a different provider in order to express our preferences. Consumers are left with not much of a voice.
Every month I mourn that a big fraction of my bill goes toward perpetuating schlock TV channels that I despise--channels where the content ranges from inane to downright offensive. Why not let me spurn the drivel properly? I want to reward the channels who are sending me the good stuff, as I already do for PBS. It would be nice to be able to support other, non-local cable channels that I admire... and as a bonus, not only would I personally erode the profits of the schlock purveyors, I wouldn't have to worry about my kids rotting their brains on it, because I could keep it out of my house entirely.
But I'm not sure it's such a good idea to take the a la carte idea one step further and do away with channels entirely. Probably we've all had the experience of watching a good show serendipitously, just because it happened to be on. Programming is a service, too. Must we add this to the ever-growing list of things we have to do for ourselves? Sometimes I don't want to program the evening's entertainment; I'd rather let someone else choose it for me (with an option to time-shift it if I like).
Ok, for the sake of simplicity we're using simple numbers...
Let's say in fantasy land we currently get cable with a premium movie channel for $50 a month.
Once this plays out, I expect we will see (based on % of original fee rate):
$10-$15 ala cart premium channels (HBO, etc...)
$7 ala cart mid-tier channels (Discovery Channel, MTV, Nick, etc...)
$5 ala cart niche channels (Food Channel, Travel Channel, etc...)
And the price for standard cable service like you used to get at $50 a month will go up to $60 a month due to some lame story about scarcity. Or, better yet, they'll say that because of infrastructure changes made to accommodate this, it's more costly for them to also deliver cable the classic way.
We'll see alot of subsidized and bottom feeder channels drop off. Noodle knows where all the home shopping and religious zealot programming will end up... oh wait I know...
Special God Channel bundle of channels for the ignorant, intolerants among us who want to make sure their home schooled kids don't get exposed to any messaging about the world being round. Only $29.99 with the slogan "If you see a nipple, it's on us!" [sic]
I dropped cable in the late 90's and never looked back. I've found if something is that good to watch, a friend will dub it for me, it will eventually be on DVD, or I will find it someplace on-line.
Yawn... no story here, move along.
Obviously some people posting on this subject have yet to pick up a dictionary or Google the definition of monopoly. For those of you here I'll just cut and paste from Webster's:
Main Entry: monopoly
Pronunciation: m&-'nä-p(&-)lE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -lies
Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopOlion, from mon- + pOlein to sell
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party
4 : one that has a monopoly
Let us break this down some with the exception of option 4.
Option 1: Well cable companies aren't the "exclusive" owners of the right to rebroadcast signals like HBO or local stations. Most stations are rebroadcasted by both cable and satellite providers. Oops kills that notion as "exclusive" would not apply if more than one company can do it. Obviously cable companies do not have command of supply as dish network and the such would not be able to offer HBO etc etc. "Concerted Action", well this can be the tricky one. We can equate this to meaning actions taken to be in control of supply or to gain legal privilege. I can't see this one working for ya either since you'd be hard pressed to convince most of the major broadcasters not to get extra revenue from other entertainment providing companies. Not to mention that with franchising laws in place you just need to contact broadcasters, make an agreement for yourself, and get your franchise and boom you can provide service to people. How exclusive does that sound? NEXT!
Option 2: aaaahhhh, there is that annoying word "exclusive" again. too bad
Option 3: well here it states controlled by one party. One party, exclusive, not too far a leap here.
Now that we have argued away the possibility of monopoly being used, let us go with the most often used version of this "government sanctioned" monopoly. Wow, ignorance at its best. People would not be saying this if they know how many times the government actually comes up with ways to interrupt business. For instance; the FCC, they have laws about how much certain packages can cost, where service should be provided, minimum speed to be called broadband, but did you know they have rules on hiring? Now I thought we had other government agencies that covered labor? Wonder why the FCC would have any word on labor? Think about it.
For those who lack brain power I'll work this out for you right now. A La Carte pricing is never cheaper than bundling. People are already complaining about current prices, "it is too much for just TV", "I barely watch those other channels" etc etc. Not including whatever it would cost to switch all systems over to where a la carte viewing is available, the price increase that would occur due to the broadcasters wanting to regain their loss revenue from lack of ad sales would cause most TV viewers to faint. That being said, it wouldn't take much of a lawyer to kill this suit.
If you want a la carte pricing, contact the broadcasters yourself, sign a contract to be able to receive the signal from them [shouldn't cost you too much since you aren't supplying the signal to others], purchase some kind of system that will get the signal to your home or include this cost in your contract with the broadcaster, and there you go. A la carte. Why try to use the government to force a company to give you something you want if you can go get it yourself. Hmmmmmmm, I'll leave out further comment on that question.
The popular channels will NOT charge less - they'll charge more, because people will pay more, and their goal is to get as much money as possible.
paintball