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Canadian Telcos Lobby Against Pick-and-Pay TV
silentbrad writes with an excerpt from the Financial Post: "BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., and Shaw Communications Inc. which together control two-thirds of the $8.3-billion broadcast distribution market, are lobbying against the so-called 'a la carte' model that would allow customers to pick and pay for individual networks, arguing the change would have disastrous consequences for programmers, such as Bell Media and Shaw Media. 'A regulation requiring that all programming services must be made available to consumers on a stand-alone basis would have far-reaching ramifications,' BCE, whose Bell owns 30 specialty networks, said in a submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 'Undoubtedly, a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue.' The three big players, led by BCE, have told the CRTC they support the status quo of 'tied selling,' or the practice of grouping weaker-performing networks in with a popular channels, versus a new approach to sell channels individually. ... In the race for subscription dollars, rates for TV services across providers have risen sharply over the last decade as the number of specialty channels, each commanding its own fee, has soared. Net costs to subscribers climbed another 2.6% in 2011, while average bills now hover around $60 a month."
Existing companies support existing profit structure? I'm shocked. Shocked I say!
I can watch ponies on youtube or netflix... haven't had cable since 2008.
Of course they lobby aginst it..
Nobody actually WANTS to pay for all those shopping, religious nut, cable access bullshit channels.
And yet someone has to pay for them. Because we can't just tell those channel execs 'your channel sucks and nobody wants it, we're dropping it'.
So they stay. And we all get to pay for crap we never wanted.
Why are the popular channels subsidizing poor-performing specialty channels? What's the logic in that? Why is the cable company carrying a channel that's not profitable?
Their argument rings so damn hollow it's ridiculous.
Forget ala-carte channels, much less bundling of channels. The future isn't even in ala-carte series, but rather ala-carte episodes. It is insanely competitive, but with unicast now feasible (and catching on rapidly, e.g. netflix), it cannot be otherwise.
I think the a la carte model is fine. I have been unplugged since 2007 (take that Anonymous Coward), and I have used a mac mini and a boxee box as my entertainment devices. I like the on-demand aspect. However, I do watch less TV because once I have finished the program I set out to watch I turn it off. I do not get sucked into the shiny program that comes on next.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
While it is true, some programming will suffer/die with an a la carte model, this bluster is just misdirection.
The FACT that no one seems to be paying attention to is that a la carte pricing will be hugely expensive for the consumer. Sure a couple of channels or shows will be cheap, but a full months worth of viewing across a dozen or more channels will cost way more than what people are paying today. The telocs and cable companies know this all too well. They are eager to be "forced" to provide a la carte programming.
They are making people beg for the ass reaming that they are about to deliver. You have been warned.
There might be an avenue for continuing income in the future for providers that offer ala carte programming in the future. I've avoided getting cable or satellite, specifically because my needs are handled by OTA programming (news and sports) and Netflix (most of the rest of the shows I watch). I'd love it if I had the option to pay for just a few channels without duplicating the access I already have available to me, and the cable company would get subscription money out of me that they aren't currently pulling in. I don't think I'm even that unusual, among the younger end of the demographic.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
...a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue.
The raisin de etre for cable tv is specialty service. All that non-sense about buying 'packages' is a way for the company to extort more money from customers.The channels have to put advertising in place to support themselves; They do not get that subscription money, and they wouldn't under a 'pick and choose' model anymore than they do now. But what it would do is force cable companies to disclose which assets are valuable and which are not, meaning those channels could then dictate terms to the cable companies, instead of the other way around; It would be an accurate way of figuring out how many people actually watch your channel, rather than relying on 3rd party services to provide that information.
So no. It wouldn't result in a market 'shakeout'.... and if it did, that's capitalism in action. Don't you support capitalism, oh great Cable TV executive with your very fancy hat? What you're really saying is your profits would be lower because you'd have to be honest about the numbers, rather than being able to use (achem) creative accounting.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So complaint is that TV channels that people don't want to watch, can't compete? And I have to pay for them to survive?
Would those be "Home shopping" mainly?
You can either pick and choose channels, which are expensive but allow you to get a lower bill if you are watching a limited number of channels, or you can choose from pre designed genre based bundles which come with a mix of good and bad channels but are generally cheaper than individual channels
You can also add individual channels to the bundles at the individual rates
Popular networks propping up to the weaker ones? This sounds suspiciously like communism.
media cartel if customers get to pick their own programming?
But telcos, what happened to free market competition?
Oh, you only use that line when it benefits you, got it.
It's been around 10 or 11 years now since I stopped watching TV. The ridiculous monthly costs combined with the facts that 2/3 of the channels are uninteresting and those that are are filled with up to 40% commercial time, I just thought to myself one day "Why am I paying for this?"
Since canceling my cable, I chose to watch shows that I was interested in by on-line streaming or by just getting the DVDs, and that's worked out great so far. The added perk is that I'm not exposed to ANY commercials at all. The big Telco's have got to come to the realization sooner or later that embracing the more modern ways of media distribution is a lot more profitable and beneficial than constantly opposing them. They seem to forget that it is the consumer than "wants" the shows, and their job to deliver what the consumer wants, not what they think the consumer wants.
If they don't step into the 21st century soon, more and more folks are just going to do what I did and stop giving them any money at all. Personally... I think it was one of the best things I've ever done; I haven't a clue where I'd find time to sit in front of a TV nowadays.
...and someone with a monopoly shouldn't be allowed to force those wanting to buy the monopoly product to also buy other, lesser products. Obviously the law for pay TV doesn't work that way right now, but morally I think it should.
This should of course be within reason, assuming legislators can craft laws with reason. For cable-style channels, allowing a-la-carte selection by channel makes sense. Letting consumers choose by the television show on a given channel may not even by technically feasible. On the other hand, for internet subscriptions, selling by the channel or even by the episode might by possible.
In my opinion, a reasonable consumer-friendly compromise position would be:
1. Owners of a channel or set of channels with similar theme and content can market them as a bundle or as a la carte (e.g. ESPN with EPSN2 and ESPNU since content is often moved from one to the others).
2. The cable providers - or the consumers directly - can negotiate with the providers (with their wallets, if they must) to break up such similar-content channel bundles.
3. Owners are forbidden from bundling unrelated (by theme) channels. Disney can't force ABC Family on people who just want to buy ESPN. This applies equally to cable and internet subscriptions - there's not even a need to make special laws for the internet here.
4. Owners and cable providers are forbidden from forcing certain channels or channel bundles into certain tiers. Consumers have the ultimate right to select the theme-based channel bundles they prefer without having to buy any other "lower tier" bundles to get there.
5. Charging an exorbitant rate for a popular channel bundle is legal, of course. But throwing non-theme-related channels into the same bundle "for free" is illegal, unless those other channels are also free to anyone who wants them without the costly channel. In other words, Disney can't make ESPN $20 a month then provide all their other channels for free, unless consumers are allowed to drop ESPN and receive all the other channels for free.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
BCE, whose Bell owns 30 specialty networks
Who wants to bed all 30 of those networks are struggling because no one with a sane mind wants to watch them?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I'd feel more inclined to agree with Cable companies if it were not for their extremely aggressive rent seeking behavior. They only carefully crafted service plans that are designed to offer you either:
1. Complete garbage for the low tier price they're required to have
or
2. The same garbage, plus more garbage you don't want along with the handful of channels you might actually do want.
So, either you pay reasonable 25-30 a month for useless crap or 100. No middle ground. It's this type of shit that gets regulators involved. All premium TV providers do this, not just cable companies. Cable companies also enjoy a monopoly status (for cable access), granted by the local municipalities that regulate the land and facilities their transmission lines lay on. Thus, there is justification to regulate them in turn.
I say fuck 'em. They're not entitled to their abusive business model.
A la carte sounds great in theory. You only pay for those channels that you want to watch.
But in reality, most people are idiots and would pay for shit channels such as sport, soap operas and reality shows.
With so few people paying for Discovery Channel, History Channel, science & tech channels, maybe they would cancel these channels?
You don't get how it works. The HSN pays the cable companies to be distributed! They are profitable, they have money! They are perhaps the poster child for how it should be done.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I don't think so about that kind of stuff they can do that. I think that some people can pay for that all shopping things.yes this is crap and nobody wants to spend money on that channel.
If you want me as a customer, you will implement à la carte service.
If you don't, I will continue to use streaming video and iTunes.
This is non-negotiable.
...laura
I want a package with I can get things like Discovery, Syfy, and Cartoon Network, without subsidizing ESPN or any sports channel or religion channel..
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
If we don't rectally shaft them with barbed implements rather than provide that for which they ask?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
", arguing the change would have disastrous consequences for programmers,"
So?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm afraid that I own the rights to the following business plan: Produce a crap product and convince some politicians that it must be bundled with more popular wares.
If the Canadian media companies insist on pursuing this line of business, they'll have to meet my licensing terms.
Have gnu, will travel.
Paying for a channel is still too coarse. I would like to be able to purchase packages of specific shows.
Then it must be bad for the consumer.
Specialty channels in Canada fall into two groups:
1. The ones that draw subscribers. Think TSN and ones like that, which have content people actually go looking for.
2. The ones that are run on the cheap and show reruns of a small group of shows over and over again.
Group #1 would thrive under this model because they could charge more for those channels. If people can subscribe to TSN on its own, TSN can double or triple the price it charges the cable companies. They'll pass it along, and people will pay it because it's still no more then people were paying to get it before. The only difference is that a bunch of channel type #2 are no longer along for the ride.
Group #2 will suffer and many of them will die off, because they simply aren't worth paying for and won't draw subscription money if you need to pick them up seperately. What people don't commonly realize is that these channels make far more money from being in bundles then they do from advertising. It simply doesn't matter if you're watching them or not, so long as you're buying some other channel and they can be in that bundle you're still giving them money. That lets them save on content, because if nobody's watching they can pretty easily get away with constant reruns of bargain basement shows.
It would hardly be a tragedy to lose a bunch of thse channels. We have far too many as it is and they're starting to blend together and all show similar reality crap because it's cheap.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
So you're a content distributor/producer, and you have 3 "name" channels everybody wants and a bunch of low-rated specialty channels that show a ton of re-runs, "marathons" and a small handful of low-rated original niche programs ("Low Carb Househunter Pawn Star Bachelorette Bounty Hunters").
Of course you bundle everything, requiring cable/satellite providers to take the crap to get the in-demand channels.
In many cases, the crap channels seem *so* crappy you wonder how they even cover the overhead of technical production -- in many cases these kind of channels run 3 unique commercials for mail order products per hour and the rest of the time are promotionals for other programs on this and other channels.
I sometimes wonder if the bundling isn't about trying to make the niche channels profitable by getting them a wider audience, but a kind of land-rush, channel squatting to make sure they have a slots on every cable channel. This allows them to re-invent a channel (remember when Bravo was meant to be a 'serious' culture channel) anytime they want and automatically have a slot for it. And more importantly, especially for older cable systems, limit competition from new channels or other content packagers.
It makes less sense in a digital cable world where there's nearly endless spectrum, but it often seems to be the only rational reason for subsidizing a lot of crummy channels when that money might buy better leather for the executive jet.
I work for a major cable network- here's a hopefully better explanation of why we've stuck with the bundling model.
A cable channel gets its revenue from two main sources- cable subscription fees from the cable provider (~70%) and ad revenue (~30%).
Let's assume we have a cable channel that is currently bundled, and in 100% of households with TVs, with revenue of $100 million a year. We're getting $70 million from cable subscriptions, and $30 million from ad revenue.
Now let's say we switch to a-la carte, but 100% of households still want to subscribe at a price that leaves us revenue-neutral. The cable channel says "great! we're still getting $70 million from subscriptions and $30 million from ad revenue. Everybody wins."
But, let's say only 50% of households would be willing to subscribe, but they're willing to pay double the price because they love the channel. We're still making $70 million from subscription fees. However, we're now only in 50% of households, which means we're much less attractive to advertisers. We're not going to keep making $30 million from ad revenue, because advertisers often need a "critical mass" of households reached in order to make a deal. This isn't a linear relationship- 50% of households doesn't mean 50% of ad revenue, it could mean 0% because we don't have the scale to make an ad deal worthwhile for the advertiser.
So now we've only got $70-85 million a year, which means we have less money to spend on programming. Program quality suffers as a result, and so the next year maybe only 25% of households are willing to subscribe. We're now in a downward spiral.
TL;DR - unbundling has the unfortunate side effect of reducing program quality for specialty channels. Only the cheapest shows (ie, crappy reality shows) or the ones appealing to the lowest common denominator (ie, CBS's entire lineup) might survive in the long-term.
arguing the change would have disastrous consequences for their ability to scalp you
FTFThem.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With my antenna and digital TV, I get about 10 channels for free. 90% of the programming is crap.
But I can pay $60/month and get 100 channels of crap? Oh boy!!!! Sign me up!!!
Started out at $85/mo for net and cable 5 years ago. Now up to $145 and that is only with threatening them every 6 months with leaving so they give me the new subscriber deal of the month. 2 HD, 1 DVR, 2 tubes with reduced channels. 1 cable modem I own.
They tried to hide the quality of the channel by simply saying its your personal opinion of the channel, not the value of the channel itself.
So even if you don't like it, imaginary people do. Hence we're giving 28 channels for X amount is a GREAT bargin.
Even if you only watch two of them, other people watches the OTHER channels...so we're giving you VALUE.
No. No you're not. You're bundling cheap crap that people don't want in to justify your prices.
If you tried to charge 30$ for two channels, you'd suddenly seem 'expensive' for what you get.
So you try to hide that and just don't want to be exposed.
Tough shit.
I'd love if I could sell people things and force them to buy other crud, but when it comes to physical objects, can't get away with it as much.
"Ah, I see you wish to purchase this TV, well, the TV is decent, medium level TV, and I realize the price is for a higher quality TV, but look, you get this cheap
living room set that no one wants to buy, so you're getting a great deal really."
No, no I'm not, because I don't need another living room set, and it's worthless, I couldn't sell it if I tried.
lot's of carp channels that no one watches drives up cost just as much as people who don't want ESPN but may want HBO or other non sports channels.
Also there are people who want sports but not all the other crap like disney channels.
I'm all for a la carte, but it will mean that niche markets get either very expensive or will dissapear from the commercial channels. The only channels that will remain, will broadcast "reality" "talent" shows 24/7 (not a big change from the current commercial tv offerings anyway). But at least I'm not paying for stuff I don't want. Already by far not all available channels for basic satellite (262 according to broadcaster) are in my favorites and even then there are some retarded channels in the favorites (like Discovery).
The only saviour to niche markets might be public access channels where commercials surrounding populare programming will support the special interest groups (and in some places taxes).
I wonder how many of the channels that do make money kickback part of the profit to the cable providers? Above board or otherwise.
ESPN is nearing $5+ a sub it should go premium as well disney channel that used to be premium as well.
Though Canadians will easily recognize the conflict of interest, the service providers (cable/satellite) are also more or less the media providers (TV channels). For example, Bell Media owns many of the TV channels in the country, while Bell TV is one of two satellite providers; both are owned by BCE (aka Bell Canada).
"Undoubtedly, a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue." Great quote; sounds like the satellite company is trying to help save those struggling TV channels. Except that the satellite company('s parent company) owns those TV channels!
This is just a huge money-printing machine:
1. Secure rights to TV programs already produced, conditional on CRTC approval
2. Ask the CRTC for approval to start a new channel with your "new" programming
3. Once you get approval, put the channel on your cable/satellite service
4. Heavily advertise new channel on all your other channels (at cost)
5. Bundle your channel with a whole bunch of other crappy channels and one good channel, making sure you can't get the one good channel without the other crap (often good to bundle another company's channels so they'll bundle yours)
6. Profit!
There's no ... step here.
One idea (that would never fly) would be that only networks that air a high percentage of original programs (not talking about "Canadian content", though I'm sure it'd get mixed in there) can be bundled together; if you're rebroadcasting another network's shows either on first airing or as repeats, you have to let your channel sink or swim in the free market. If you're actually benefiting society by producing a lot of new content I'd be willing to pay a small amount for that even if I have no interest in watching it, but if you're just a rebroadcasting money machine you can get off my lawn.
While I just love the concept of paying only for content that I want to watch, based on my well developed prejudices, I get more Joy out of seeing something absolutely new to me, something that I just never imagined before.
Three quick anecdotes:
Pasolini's "Gospel According to Matthew", a delightfully subversive film, shown on the religious TBN at three in the morning, around last Christmas. What were they thinking? Wait, Thumpers don't think...
The "Arts Network", shown sporadically on the local New Tang Dynasty station. They also show "DWTV" and "RT". The aim of New Tang is to eliminate the current oligarchy in China, and replace it with one that ruled a millennium ago. The "Arts Network" may be Classic Music oriented, but they actually carry a wide range of quality performing arts. Unfortunately, "The Voice Of Firestone" videos are truly dreadful...
"Free Speech TV". The local public access station just started showing this network within the last couple of weeks. Normally an outlet for PSA's and Lyndon LaRouche-type wingnuts, I have now seen some great talking head programs, documentaries, and the fascinating "Unauthorized: The Story of Rock 'N' Roll Comics".
If you check out the rates that cable stations pay for programming, the biggest chunk by far is for professional sports, which I don't watch, except for Formula 1, and the occasional America's Cup, which aren't on my Basic Cable package anyway. (I mooch off of friends, especially those with projectors.) So I surf the free channels, and occasionally, I find a gem.
Don'y be fooled by the men behind the "A La Carte" curtains. You _will_ end up paying more, for less. The cable _distribution_ system is corrupt from top to bottom. Worldwide.
Meanwhile, "I Spy" will be on in a couple of hours on RetroTv. It's far funnier, witty, and polished than I remembered it from my childhood viewings.
Today it is easy and cheap to get interesting shows from streaming providers/dvd. It is easy and cheap (for most people) to get news from Air (free) or from Internet (almost free). It is easy, cheap and fast(!) to get any information you want from Internet without spending hours in front of TV. So it sounds like that only people that really would subscribe to cable are people that like to watch crap and advertisements. Why should anybody deprive them from this? Let them do it. Let them have their own club. Everybody else can just pull the plug, save money and live better. I do understand that this is a habit that might be difficult to drop. But it's worth it! I've dropped my TV subscription when I realised that I do not watch it and my kid watches treehouse to much. And I've never had a second thought.
U-verse is real bad as you need to buy starz and showtime to get MLB network, NBA tv, NASA TV, Investigation Discovery, Planet Green, Discovery Fit & Health, Centric, and others.
SyFy (I pronounce it like 'sippy', but with f in place of p, as it's not SciFi): wrestling, ghost hunters, paranormal witness, fact or faked, etc.
Discovery: man vs. wild, pitchmen, dual survival, man/woman/wild, ghost lab, etc.
They're not already catering to the lowest common denominator? I admit, I like Survivorman ... but the other survival shows grate on me. And I might watch more of The Colony if they have two groups, both thinking they're the 'good guys' and the other group is a bunch of actors in there to harass them, but I'd rather watch Rough Science.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
who did not understand that?
It isn't evil; it's just bundling, and there is a reason for it.
Simple example (from the newspaper days)
Alice values the fashion section at $0.20 and the sports section at $0.10.
Bob values the sports section at $0.20 and the fashion section at $0.10.
If the publisher prices both sections at $0.10, he sells 4 sections and makes $0.40.
If the publisher prices both sections at $0.20, he sells 2 sections and makes $0.40.
But if the publisher bundles the two sections together and prices the bundle at $0.30, he sells 2 bundles and makes $0.60.
If the cable companies can prevent a la carte, then I want a law that makes them pay me for the time I spend after watching a show that looked good, but turned to crap before the end.
(Actually, I canned cable for OTA and Hulu years ago, but hell, I'd pay $100 or even $200 a month if there was a time refund guarantee)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
They won't allow a la carte because it'll save consumers too much, since they're realizing that all these new "channels" these companies offer nowadays are just showing the exact same shows as another one but in a different order.
So in other words, these guys want people to pay for crap they don't want. I'd LOVE to get cable channels, but only the ones I want. I'd nix most channels and have locals and only 8-10 others. Reality-show channels? 50 news channels? ESPN 1 to 249? Christ. It's like if Wal-Fart decided to tell their customers, "if you come to our store, you have to buy EVERYTHING WE TELL YOU TO, even if you don't want it."
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Cannot order HBO Canada without getting the entire movie package.So $22/month, just for HBO canada.
sort all the channels into "bands" beginning with "Stuff we have to cover or the FCC/FTC would vivisect us" and then layers of stuff ,expensive stuff, niche stuff ,expensive but niche stuff, stuff thats just Odd but we need channel count and then PPV stuff in each layer.
as a subscriber you get to pay for channels either by paying X% of a channels "bundle" (to be set at no more than Cost of that pack divided by number of channels in pack times 1.3) or just getting that bundle
or
trade channels from other bundles in that "layer" or more "expensive" layers
all the math of course should be make the cable bill the same or lower
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Look at HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Ect... These are pay only channels and they have argueably the best programming.
Sure, if they execute this improperly, it will end up that there are never any new channels because people won't order channels they aren't familiar with whether it would have programming they like or not. It would require an immense advertising budget to get a new channels the subscriber base to establish themselves. The real problem is that is too much of a difference between tiers of channels. It is usually like 30 channels at tier 1 to 150 at the second to 300 at the third tier. Cable companies have too much power to control the channels. If there is a popular channel, just include it in higher tier and justify having the consumer paying for the other 149 channels you don't want in addition. Ofcourse ordering by single channel means the prices should be higher say an increase of $2 per month for 1 channel increase, but continue to offer bulk discounts that currently seem to exist for these bundles of 150 channels. So 1 new channel may cost you $2 extra, which I would gladly pay for for 5 channels or so, and the 150 channels extra can still cost an extra $20/month like now, which averages to something like 13 cents/month per channel. This way the cable companies essentially make a profit margin that is 1400% more each month off of you ordering that lone channel. Most people will probably still bundle, but when you want that one channel in the higher tier, the consumer has the chocie to save a ton.
Rogers has been offering an alacarte option here in London for a while now as a test project. They have not been publicizing it much but everyone I have talked to and told about it has looked at it. The funny thing is that all the people I know that have signed up have ended up with a higher monthly bill. The difference is that they are getting more channels that they care about and none of the fluffy stuff they don't like. Unfortunately Rogers does not seem to get the importance of customer retention.
In the race for subscription dollars, rates for TV services across providers have risen sharply over the last decade as the number of specialty channels, each commanding its own fee, has soared.
There's the real problem right there. The cost keeps going up. So, reduce the overall cost to the consumer, and we won't care if you "bundle" other channels. Get the specialty channels to reduce their fees, or to be included in "bundles" and so long as the overall monthly cost is kept low, the other channels can ride along.
What I fear is everything becoming "specialty" - or charging like it - can you imagine paying $10/mon PER CHANNEL? e.g for SyFy - $10, Discovery - $10. Food network - $5. But that's basically what a la carte will do - eventually each channel will cost $5-$10/month, with "bigger" ones (HBO, Showtime) being $12-$15.
So, for just a FEW channels, the cost is MORE than it would be now:
SyFy $10
Discovery $10
HBO $15
Food $5
ABC $5
NBC $5
CBS $5
FOX $5
CNN $5
COMEDY $5
TBS $5
USA $5
-----
$80/month!
So, PLEASE, let's just go back to one flat rate per month for EVERYTHING - and let's keep it to say, $75/month. Any more for 'tv' makes me just want to kick the thing out on the curb and go back to playing card games, reading, etc.
Part of the problem is that the government mandates that cable companies carry certain channels. Generally local access and other so called "Canadian Content". This is considered a cultural issue although since Canada is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world it is kind of a big bulls eye. You could even say its the Canadian content creator lobby getting the Government to force the cable companies and hence the paying public to subsidize the content creators. This in turn allows the cable companies to justify bundling. You can pick and choose what channels you get but the cost tends to rapidly approach the cost of a bundle the includes the couple of channels you really want.
I also have a problem with people saying how much Netflix et al cost since they rarely include the cost of the internet connection. I.E. how many hours of DVD or HD quality shows can I get via Netflix, ISP charges included as compared to my local cable provider, including the cost of a PVR?
s/Elsevier/Canadian telcos/g
In some cases bundling things can be illegal.
Tying is when you have enough clout in one market that you can use it to muscle another market by requiring people to buy your crapware to get the good stuff.
Suppose you had a monopoly on bread sales and you want to expand in the vegetable market by pushing your tomatoes. You just bundle your tomatoes by piggy backing it on your bread by saying that customers don't get bread unless they buy your tomatoes.
In this case, cable networks have a lot of crappy stuff they want to shovel down our throats, and they know the only way they can get away with it is by forcing you to take it with the good stuff that you DO want. Also the reason why you have to buy whole CDs with 9 crappy songs to get the good one.
The real answer is that you're not the customer. You're the product
If I'm being billed, I'm a customer.
Maybe I'm not a priority, but I'm still a customer, and if I don't like what I'm getting for the price, then they lose me as a customer.
And if I'm also a product, they lose that too.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
It's cheaper to go buy the DVD!
Or at least, it's dying, thanks to the internet.
Cable companies are losing customers in *droves*, and AFAIK newspaper readership has also dropped dramatically. It's called adapt-or-die... and consumer choice means new balance to the equation.
Alice wants fashion. Bob wants sports. Guess what, now they *both* go online instead of paying $0.60 and the newspaper gets NOTHING. Similarly the cable-co's
Or... they can adjust the packages to make it attractive to the millions of people that otherwise won't bother. $2/channel * 10 channels * 1,000,000 people is still more than $40/overall * 100,000 people... a lot more.
Rather than going for the set-price, go for volume in happy customers.
Every subscription to our overpriced package comes with a free mercury enema, a $5 coupon for a bikini wax at Dan's house'o'duct-tape, and a bonus DVD "the sex life of the Royal family (1950)"
It's added value! Can't you see it!
I hope this comes through - it's **PLOINK** time for our dear leader's SunTV.
Instead of having "tiers", have "packages" that you buy by type.
So all the sports channels (including the expensive ones like ESPN) would go in a "sports pack".
All the documentary channels (Discovery, History, National Geographic etc) would go in a "documentary pack"
All the kids channels (Cartoon Network, Disney, Nickelodeon etc) would go in a "kids pack"
All the music channels (MTV, Country Music Channel etc) would go in a "music pack"
A few years ago a Rogers representative called me. She informed me that a special promotion was under way. I could get a discount on digital service (half off?) for a year. She said that Rogers was going to go all digital soon anyway so I shouldn't miss this promotion.
I signed up. As part of the offer, I received a digital convertor (my TV, although HD, was analog). The convertor was rented.
Rogers didn't go all digital.
A bit over a year later my nephew was visiting. He asked if he could watch a "Pay per View" event. I agreed. He then asked where the digital box was. Someone had disconected it, sometime (it was broken). No one in our (immediate) family had even noticed.
I then cancelled our cable TV service.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I think they're going to mega QQ all over this.
I'm tired of companies demanding that their old profitable business model remain so throughout all time.
Times are changing, they need to change too or go out of business, like any other business with a business model that doesn't work.
I'm kind of late to the party here, but in Manitoba this certainly seems to work.
MTS provides both specific theme bundles as well as individual channels (though, admittedly, not all channels are available individually) and it doesn't seem to have killed Shaw (Rogers isn't available here and I don't think I've seen Bell providing cable).
Then again, we're out west, not part of the central area that actually gets cared about.
Forget 'a la carte' channels. I want to only purchase the individual shows I want. Once I can pick my shows and have them on demand when I want plus past airings... I will then consider handing the cable company more money. For now, they get enough money from me for Internet service.