Canadians To Get Unbundled Cable TV Channels

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Canadians To Get Unbundled Cable TV Channels

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 20, 2012 @09:50AM from the shut-up-and-take-my-money dept.

Jerry Rivers writes "The CRTC, Canada's communications regulator, has approved changes to the way cable companies bundle programming to allow the purchase of selected channels while dropping others they do not want. However, the customers won't necessarily be paying any less. 'The flipside is that the fewer channels that are subscribed to, the more expensive each will become, people familiar with the matter said, asking for anonymity because details of the decision are confidential. The decision is a small step toward an "à la carte" model long talked about by regulators — and longed for by consumers — but resisted by TV channel owners and distributors for fear of undermining the economics of cable television, which have come to rely on subscriber fees from those channels.'"

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What I'll pay by rtaylor · 2012-07-20 09:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm willing to pay $15/month for HBO, SyFy, and the Food Network.
If it comes with extra, that's fine, but I'm not going over that amount (adjust for inflation).

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1. Re:What I'll pay by Obfuscant · 2012-07-20 10:06 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I'm willing to pay $15/month for HBO, SyFy, and the Food Network.
  Will that price cover the costs of fixed plant and personell? You know, those fixed costs that are irrespective of the number of channels you get? Will it cover the rental of converters and such?
  Considering that HBO is a premium channel that is on the order of $10/month to start with, that leaves $5 to cover SyFy and FN and all the fixed costs. I doubt that you'll be paying such a small amount for any cable connection anytime soon.
2. Re:What I'll pay by mark-t · 2012-07-20 10:09 · Score: 2
  
  Realistically, it's unlikely that the monthly bill will be any less than at least the most rudimentary cable subscription, which tends to start at about $45 per month. *ANYTHING* that you get over and above the basic channels is going to cost you extra, whether you go a-la-carte or get additional ones in package deals.
  
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3. Re:What I'll pay by masternerdguy · 2012-07-20 10:14 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Sssh, this is slashdot where there's no such thing as "brick and mortar". The only thing that matters is the cost of sending the data down the wire, and there are no other costs that really exist (it's all regulator BS and fat CEOs trying to siphon your hard earned money). Who cares if it takes actual people to run an operation?
  
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4. Re:What I'll pay by Macrat · 2012-07-20 10:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm willing to pay $15/month for HBO, SyFy, and the Food Network.
  Remember when the SyFy channel actually showed SciFi programming?
5. Re:What I'll pay by Marc+Desrochers · 2012-07-20 10:23 · Score: 2
  
  With my provider, the 'movie' package which includes HBO and 8 other movie channels, as well as all the on demand stuff, is $16. The problem is that I have to take the 'basic' service which is 30 some odd channels of garbage just to have the option to choose the 'movie' package, and that is $40. If I can finally drop the crap and pick only what I want I'd be thrilled. I don't want 15 French channels, but I have no choice. This is amazing news and I can't wait, if it's true.
6. Re:What I'll pay by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-07-20 10:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Sssh, this is slashdot where there's no such thing as "brick and mortar". The only thing that matters is the cost of sending the data down the wire, and there are no other costs that really exist (it's all regulator BS and fat CEOs trying to siphon your hard earned money). Who cares if it takes actual people to run an operation?
  While a strawman is always fun, I think that people(at least the slashdot crowd) would much prefer to see a 'this is the per-location cost of keeping the system up' base charge, with the option to purchase various sorts of services(channels, data, etc.) over the wire, rather than giant opaque bundles or 'a la carte' pricing that obfuscates the fixed costs by having some byzantine sliding price for each item based on how many items you are buying, that's just intended to be confusing.
7. Re:What I'll pay by Firehed · 2012-07-20 10:55 · Score: 2
  
  Then he doesn't buy. Free market at work here. Good/service X is worth $y to me. Company offering said good/service is asking $z. If $z = $y, I buy it. If their costs are such that they can't offer the thing to me at a price at or below what I'm willing to pay, then I go without. If going without really bothers me, then $y is actually higher than I stated earlier (unless it's artificially capped by what I actually _can_ pay, i.e. I simply can't afford it, but would buy if I could)
  
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8. Re:What I'll pay by Hatta · 2012-07-20 10:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What's good on the Food Network anymore? It used to have good cooking shows with advice you could actually use (esp, Good Eats). Now any time I turn to it it's just that bleached spiky haired jackass or some really stressed out chefs bitching at each other.
  
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9. Re:What I'll pay by nametaken · 2012-07-20 11:13 · Score: 2
  
  Consider yourself lucky. Providers can charge that much for HBO. Comcast quotes $10-$23/mo.
10. Re:What I'll pay by pepty · 2012-07-20 15:10 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I'd be up for metered cable: $1 per hour for all of the shows and movies I watch; the catch is that I'll need to be paid back $1 per hour for all of the commercials that come with that programming. These days that means a net of 40-80 cents per hour to them. But I'm willing to throw in product placement for free!
11. Re:What I'll pay by camperdave · 2012-07-20 16:47 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The obvious model is to follow POTS: you pay a base fee for the physical line & equipment, then pay "per. use" and pay extra for additional features.
  POTS doesn't work like that, unless you have a payphone installed. For a base fee POTS gives you a physical line and basic services. You have to buy the equipment, and if you want long distance, you either pay their fees, or contract with another long distance provider.
  
  I'd rather have things work like this: One company runs the cable and maintains the infrastructure. Another company puts a signal on the wire. Separation of content provider and infrastructure provider.
  
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12. Re:What I'll pay by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-07-20 18:41 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, it will probably cost more because it won't be being subsidized by all the "basic" crap they force you to buy to get it.
13. Re:What I'll pay by studog-slashdot · 2012-07-21 01:46 · Score: 2
  
  Wait a minute. You can't do that. You need the internet service and the cable/DSL modem and a computer and all the other things before you can get HBOGo, so you're going to pay the other $50 (if that's what that stuff costs you) too. Just like the guy who wants HBO plus 2 for $15 ... it really costs a lot more, and $15 isn't going to cover the fixed costs of the system, much less the programming he wants.
  The parent poster wants to get HBO somehow.
  On one hand, they could pay a fee to get cable, which they don't already have and don't want and once subscribed can't use for any other purpose but to get HBO, then pay a fee to get HBO over cable.
  On the other hand, they could pay a fee to get HBO over internet, which they already have and pay for and use to do many other fruitful activities.
  So yes, comparing the full cost of cable+HBO vs the incremental cost of HBO over internet is in fact valid and the actual economic question that exists in real life for many people, myself included. Saying "You can't do that" is laughable at best, at worst makes you a cable company shill/troll.
~5 years late by bigjarom · 2012-07-20 09:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is great, but it has become a moot point for myself and others who have long since abandoned cable television.
1. Re:~5 years late by RapmasterT · 2012-07-20 10:02 · Score: 2
  
  This is great, but it has become a moot point for myself and others who have long since abandoned cable television.
  I think I read an article about you: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/
2. Re:~5 years late by geekoid · 2012-07-20 11:26 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  look at me, I don't use cable. This topic has nothing to do with me and won't impact me but I just wanted to tell you how hip I am that I already cut the cable.
  See how you sound?
  
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Unbundle this.. by SuperCharlie · 2012-07-20 10:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

Unbundle the endless parade of commercials and then maybe I would be interested. We only do Netflix at home. Im vacationing/visiting for the month and wow.. the commercial to program ratio on cable is pretty abusive once you break loose from cable for a while.
1. Re:Unbundle this.. by Fjandr · 2012-07-20 13:14 · Score: 2
  
  You must've tried it in its infancy. While it's not necessarily predictable exactly which movies will take a long time to hit NetFlix, it routinely gets movies within 6 months to a year of their theatrical release, and the only incomplete series are those which are actually still in production. This is because the content producers won't deviate from their release schedule. If it hasn't hit DVD, they won't license it to anyone else either. So yes, there is a lag of a couple years in the release of any current series, but that's the content producer's fault.
ala carte by Darinbob · 2012-07-20 10:07 · Score: 2

Pure ala-carte would indeed seem to raise cost. People won't want to subscribe to just one more channel that they watch only rarely. However what I think they need is a finer grained model. Instead of a typical "only the bare necessities" vs "basic" vs "premium" that they have now there need to be small bundles. Ie, 5 kids channels in one bundle, or discovery+science+history+natgeo in a second bundle, things like that.
Content bundling by goombah99 · 2012-07-20 10:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm willing to pay $15/month for HBO, SyFy, and the Food Network.
If it comes with extra, that's fine, but I'm not going over that amount (adjust for inflation).
But suppose Viacom won't sell dishnetwork Nickelodian but wants to bundle Nick their AMC channel. The cable and dish networks are not the only bundlers. If the cable folks stop bundling shows, the content producers may start bundling their channels, leading us right back to where we started.
The difference is that it's been proven that the content producers are much more powerful than the cable and sattelite providers in dictating terms.

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1. Re:Content bundling by realityimpaired · 2012-07-20 10:26 · Score: 2
  
  The difference is that it's been proven that the content producers are much more powerful than the cable and sattelite providers in dictating terms.
  Except that this is Canada we're talking about, where with the exception of a couple of independent stations, the content providers are all part of the Shaw, Bell, Videotron, or Rogers media empires, and where the cable/satellite providers are Shaw Direct, Bell TV, Videotron, or Rogers.
2. Re:Content bundling by Guspaz · 2012-07-20 11:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Amusingly, most of the channels mentioned (HBO, SyFy, Food Network, Nickelodeon) are not available directly in Canada. AMC is, assuming it's not a watered down Canadian version, but most Viacom channels (like Comedy Central) are not available.
  The CRTC has "cancon" (Canadian Content) regulations that require:
  1) Canadian channels to show Canadian productions for a certain percentage of their airtime
  2) Cable providers to have Canadian channels as a certain percentage of channels offered
  3) Consumers to subscribe to a certain percentage of Canadian channels
  For cable companies in Canada that already have a-la-carte offerings (my provider, Videotron, will sell you basic cable and you can a-la-carte the rest) require that your a-la-carte selections adhere to the cancon restrictions.
3. Re:Content bundling by Stormthirst · 2012-07-20 11:21 · Score: 2
  
  Actually loads of shows are still produced in Canada.
  LMGTFY
4. Re:Content bundling by Sandman1971 · 2012-07-20 13:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  HBO, Nick and Food Network are Canadian versions of those channels. They're not the US feeds. HBO is broadcasted by TMN with some canadian content. I believe Food Network Canada is owned by Rogers. I'm not sure who owns Nick. There's also no Canadian provider that carry SyFy. There is Space (Canadian channel, owned by Bell) which has a lot of the same programming, but again, it's not the US feed you're seeing.
  
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5. Re:Content bundling by swalve · 2012-07-20 14:57 · Score: 2
  
  That IS how it works. If DishNetwork wants FX and FoxTV, they have to take Fox News, Speed TV and whatever other tripe they put out, for $6 a month per subscriber. They won't just sell FX alone. (Well, they might, but then it's $8 a month.) Viacom and ABC and the rest are the same way. That's why you hear about this set of channels or that one not being available for a time on Dish or Comcast- they are negotiating the price for all those channels as a bundle.
Just wait by goombah99 · 2012-07-20 10:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Unbundle the endless parade of commercials and then maybe I would be interested. We only do Netflix at home. Im vacationing/visiting for the month and wow.. the commercial to program ratio on cable is pretty abusive once you break loose from cable for a while.
When Cable TV started the big selling point was no commericals cause you were paying to the shows. Now it's pay for the shows and get commercials too. Do you think this won't happen with streaming? Go watch Hulu. It will happen just like it did with Cable.

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1. Re:Just wait by geekoid · 2012-07-20 11:23 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  "When Cable TV started the big selling point was no commericals cause you were paying to the shows"
  No, it was not. The only cable that ever said that was ON TV, and that wasn't for 'shows', that was for shows on their channel. Like if HBO has it's own box on your TV.
  No other cable company every promised that because it makes no damn sense.
  People who sold satellite, the big ones, would say things like that because the feeds weren't scrambles, so you could get shows before commercials were inserted.
  
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2. Re:Just wait by Obfuscant · 2012-07-20 13:45 · Score: 2
  
  People who sold satellite, the big ones, would say things like that because the feeds weren't scrambles, so you could get shows before commercials were inserted.
  They were saying that about the pay channels like HBO because there are no ads (were, I don't know if you shouldn't count the ads for HBO programs) in the programming already.
  Every advertising-supported satellite service came from the uplink with the ads already there. They had to. There was no easy or cheap way for the cable companies to break the programming up so they could insert ads themselves, they could only replace ads in the program stream with their own -- called "local avails".
  Or, they would have been talking about the satellite-to-tape feeds that came out of network operations, but even those had holes where the local broadcast stations were expected to insert ads. You got to sit through a few minutes of black or "Insert Ad Here" instead of an ad, but big difference. The only feeds that weren't like that were sports feeds and you got to see the behind the scenes action where the ads were supposed to be put.
  I'd like to know how we can put the nail in this utopian view of cable that it was created to provide ad-free content or that the cable fees the subscriber pay are supposed to replace the ad revenues for the program providers. That's so patently absurd that I cannot believe that anyone would say it. The local channels on cable always had ads because it was just broadcast TV on a wire, and the earliest satellite services were the SuperStations -- Ted Turner's WTBS in Atlanta being one. WGN another. WTBS carried every "local" ad for the Atlanta market, unless the cable company switched in a local, and it may have been the fact that all the Atlanta local ads were being seen in Padukah and Boise that pushed the local avail technology in the first place. You can STILL see Empire carpet ads on WGN because it is STILL a SuperStation. "1 8 hundred 5 8 8 2 3 hundred, empire"!
3. Re:Just wait by R3d+M3rcury · 2012-07-20 14:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Well, if you want to be technical about it...
  My Grandmother had Cable TV because she lived in a valley with big ol' hills on all sides of her. Cable TV was once "Community Antenna" TV and the idea was that you put a big ol' antenna at the top of the hill and then distribute the programming to the people in the valley.
  So what it meant was that she could get all the broadcast channels--ABC (Channel 8), NBC (Channel 4), CBS (Channel 3), and PBS (Channel 11) stations--and the picture looked great whereas if she stuck an antenna on her roof, she'd be lucky to pick up anything. But she still saw all the advertisements.
  Later on, as I understand it, the companies that did this also mixed a satellite dish in there and gave people HBO for an extra amount. You could also get WTBS out of Atlanta and other "super stations"--but you still saw the advertising.
  Now if you had your own satellite dish, you could skip the local advertising. Years ago, the company I worked for had a satellite dish and I remember watching Monday Night Football directly from the ABC satellite. You saw the network ads and then you were treated to several minutes of broadcasters chatting, shots of attractive women in the stands, and anything else that caught some producer's eye.
Re:The Downside .... by MightyMartian · 2012-07-20 10:28 · Score: 4, Informative

I look forward to the day when there are no channels at all, and you simply watch whatever the fuck you want to watch whenever the fuck you want to, regardless if it's made by some BIG STUDIO or by a couple of kids in their garage. Who the fuck should care about what "channel" anything is on. The future is channel-less.

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Re:Too Little Too Late by HarrySquatter · 2012-07-20 10:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because you won't actually save money going a la carte? It will only mean that pretty much all channels will be more expensive since there will be smaller group of people purchasing them and the fees for carrying the channel for the cable operator won't go down.
Re:The Downside .... by keytoe · 2012-07-20 10:47 · Score: 2

I look forward to the day when there are no channels at all, and you simply watch whatever the fuck you want to watch whenever the fuck you want to, regardless if it's made by some BIG STUDIO or by a couple of kids in their garage. Who the fuck should care about what "channel" anything is on. The future is channel-less.
I completely agree that it's time to drop antiquated notions like channels, time slots, prime time and other nonsense. People are moving away from that model. My DVR sits idle most of the week but for some reason on Thursday and Sunday night I have to micro manage the tuners to make sure I can record everything. Because apparently everything is on between 8PM and 10PM on those two nights.
This is nothing but inertia from The Way Things Were and no longer makes any sense.

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Truth in a name by Roger+W+Moore · 2012-07-20 11:03 · Score: 3, Informative

Remember when the SyFy channel actually showed SciFi programming?
Yes - that was when it was called the SciFi channel. Now it's called SyFy and shows iffy programming...so they only got a couple of letters wrong.
Re:Scrambled broadcast by Guspaz · 2012-07-20 11:08 · Score: 2

In my apartment, in the heart of downtown of the second largest city in Canada, or the sixth largest city in the US/Canada, I get a grand total of zero digital channels. Before the digital switchover, I got three or four analog, all but one with very poor quality (double/triple images, lots of snow, etc), and that one that came in well was only viewable if I stood in a certain place in the room, less the image degrade.
At the same time, satellite dishes are forbidden, and IPTV from the phone company requires you to have an internet connection with them (which would have me paying twice as much for a third the monthly cap).
So, yeah, cable television is kind of a must. It's the only viable option for me. My only other hope is that the phone company loosens their mandatory bundling requirement for IPTV. Such bundling is illegal anyhow, although nobody seems to care.
Re:Scrambled broadcast by Ichijo · 2012-07-20 11:12 · Score: 2

Here's a very good antenna. Before I got it, my old Terk indoor antenna only received one digital channel. Now I get about 10, even with the antenna mounted indoors next to the TV.

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Re:Too Little Too Late by Guspaz · 2012-07-20 11:12 · Score: 3, Informative

The only real upside is that, while you may get the same number of channels for the same price, you might be able to get more channels that you want by replacing the ones you don't want.
It's called satellite by tepples · 2012-07-20 11:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

Is there some reason why there isn't scrambled broadcast TV?
In the United States, there is. It's called satellite. The problem in Canada, I'm guessing, is that it's so far north that one is less likely to have a good enough view of the southern sky.
Re:Too Little Too Late by brusk · 2012-07-20 11:46 · Score: 3, Informative

This. You are likely not too save much money if you like sports in general, and get all the sports channels, or movies in general, and get all the movie channels. But if you are croquet (and no other sports) and documentaries (and no other movies), and get the Croquet Network and the Documentary Channel, and nothing else, you might come out ahead.

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Don't care by Sean · 2012-07-20 11:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Torrents are already unbundled.
Activate the Reality Beam! by Tailhook · 2012-07-20 12:11 · Score: 4, Informative

Sure for a couple percent of people.
See the National Cable Television Association, top 25 [Cable/Satellite companies] by subscribers.
The one at the top there, Comcast, has 22.2E6 paying cable TV subscribers. Netflix passed that number over a year ago. As of the end of Q2 2012 Netflix subscribers amount to more than 25% of the sum (97.5E6) of all US cable TV and satellite subscribers.
We're waaay past a couple percent. Never mind Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.
Cable TV is losing customers across the board. Comcast has been losing cable TV subscribers for over 40 consecutive months. Netflix predicts a total of 7 million new subscribers in 2012, and they're on track to hit that. Do the math. Inside about 48 months Netflix will have a subscriber base equal to half of the all cable TV subscriptions. That is assuming no acceleration in Netflix subscriber growth and no acceleration in cable decline, both of which may be bad assumptions.

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1. Re:Activate the Reality Beam! by gQuigs · 2012-07-20 13:20 · Score: 2
  
  And that's counting me, as a comcast cable subscriber, because it was cheaper to get cable & internet then internet alone.
  I don't own a tv.
Re:Scrambled broadcast by cdrguru · 2012-07-20 12:19 · Score: 2

Is there some reason why there isn't scrambled broadcast TV?
We've tried that already and it didn't work all that well. Now, with the far smaller range of television stations, it would be even less practical.
Back in the 1980s in Chicago we had Channel 44 which was scrambled movies and adult content in the evenings. You needed a really good UHF antenna to get their signal clearly outside of the city limits, which is maybe 25% of the population or less. Because the signal was broadcast there was a proliferation of "Channel 44 Decoder" boxes that were available and at that time it was not illegal to decode the signal because it was broadcast. This predated the Al Gore-led Satellite Home Viewers act which transformed the landscape of signal reception in the US and for the first time made receiving and decoding a signal illegal if you were not "authorized". The introduction of this act led to the immediate demise of C-band satellite dishes and carved out a niche that allowed DirecTV to operate.
Without this act, neither DirecTV nor Dish Network could operate. However, we would also not have fairly silly laws on the books making it illegal to decode signals that are broadcast and can be received by everyone.