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Unbundling Cable TV: Be Careful What You Wish For
schnell writes Consumers have long complained about the practice of "bundling" cable services and forcing customers to pay for channels they don't want — and an increasing number of "cord cutters" are voting with their wallets. But an article in the New York Times suggests that if cable companies are finally forced to unbundle their services it may actually result in higher prices and worse service. From the article: "there's another, more subjective dimension in which the rise of unbundled cable service may make us worse off. It's possible for a market to become more economically efficient while becoming less pleasant for consumers. For a prime example, head to your nearest airport."
And it's just getting worse. There's been articles here on Slashdot about how carriers "tune" channels for quality on the shared data pipe. SciFi, Discovery, the nature type channels that all benefit the most from good quality get the low tuned down shit, but never mind, the Home Shopping Network is always 1080P and max bps.
I haven't had cable of my own or satellite in years and I frankly don't miss it. Every time I'm at a friends or relatives and I see definitive examples of said channel tuning and all the Spanish networks being on the lowest paid for tier while even channels that are free streaming over the web and on terrestrial satellite being on upper tiers it doesn't soften my feelings towards cable companies.
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Food, drinks, legroom, checked baggage.
The thing about cable is that large majority of people don't want all the crap they force down our throat.
For example there are romance centered channels, sports centered channels, reality show channels, cartoon centered channels, science centered channels and fake science centered channels (which USED to be real science centered channels).
If you are a family with a wide array of interests than you might probably want all of that.
But I have zero interest at all on the sports channels (total geek), fake science channel (TLC, I'm looking at you), reality show channels, etc.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Cable (and IPTV/satellite) is unbundled where I live. Guess what happened? People ended up getting less channels, paying more per-channel, and at the end their monthly bill ended up about the same. Now the CRTC is likely going to force unbundled cable to be required nationwide, and I expect to see the same thing happen in all other provinces.
Cable companies will set their prices so that their ARPU remains unaffected. The vast majority of people will save no money. A small number of people who pick an extremely limited number of channels might save some money.
TFA bascially makes the point that you now have to pay for a lot of things individually on airlines that you used to get for "free", and that not everybody enjoys paying for these things. True enough, but the article brushes off the very real benefits of paying less when you get (and need) less. For example:
As fliers have learned all too well in the last decade, air flight has become unbundled. Want a bit of leg room? That will be a $50 upgrade for a seat in your airline’s “premium economy” cabin. Sandwiches are on sale for $9, a glass of wine for $7. Checking that bag costs $25, and there is a $200 change fee for your ticket, or buy a much more expensive one upfront.
However, what's wrong with bringing fewer bags, if you want to, or else paying the going price for the bags you really need?
In the cable world, I certainly can imagine someone whining about "Why do I now have to pay X for channel Y - that's a ripoff!", but I don't see how it can be a bad thing to pay less for only what you really want. It really boils down to economics: if it now is efficient to allow people to select and pay for cable channels individually, that's bound to happen. It's only a matter of time.
But this is a weak analogy at best. I now pay for a bunch of sports channels and kids TV that I don't care about. Your example of internet access; if I'm not going to use it on the plane I don't have to pay for it. Same thing for the light snack or entertainment. I don't have to pay for it. Or I can bring my own candy bar. But with cable, if I want Channels X & Y, I have no choice but to get the package that offers Channels M through Z whether I want them or not. The idea that now you have to pay for a lot of things individually on airlines that you used to get for "free" assumes that I cared about any of those "free" things in the first place.
The problem is, getting rid of the things that you don't want and only getting the things you want, doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices.
People want unbundling of cable channels because they have done the following math:
200 channels for $100 a month = 50 cents per channel.
Therefore, if I pick only the 50 channels I might ever possibly care about, my bill will be 50 x 0.50 = $25, a substantial savings.
But there's nothing forcing the cable company to charge the same price for every channel. If you have odd tastes and most of the 50 channels you like are very unpopular, you might actually get your 50 channels for around $25.. But there's nothing stopping the cable company from charging much higher prices for the channels they know are the most popular, so, you could end up choosing your 50 channels and still end up paying about the same amount of money that you pay now for 200 channels.
But then I hear other complaints which is that the news is becoming wildly biased while the quality of most programming is in freefall. I hear that it is becoming clear that many of the new programs are being made on silly low budgets. For instance I was over at a cable using friend's house and the weather reporter was talking to a camera on a tripod. They had eliminated the cameraman. Plus some of the travel shows are basically all selfie shots with a selfie stick or a tripod.
The fact that some news or weather channel is low quality doesn't mean that TV in general is all going downhill. Actually, this is quite possibly another Golden Age for TV. Quality hasn't been higher for years. You now have more high quality shows than you can possibly watch. Among recent shows with very high quality are: Breaking Bad, Sons Of Anarchy, Game Of Thrones, House Of Cards (from Netflix, but let's count it as TV), Downton Abbey, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and others. There are actually too many good one hour shows right now. There are a lot of shows I'd love to watch but I can't find the time, so I don't even start to watch them. Besides that list I've got quite a few shows that I really like a lot that are on network TV, but while I like them a lot, I think few would consider them to be truly great. If the folks you know only like the news and not much else, then sure, dump TV. But the quality is there. That doesn't mean that everything is great, but there are plenty of really good shows out there that deserve the accolades they get. Keep in mind though some networks like TLC live off reality TV and yeah, everything they have is pretty much low quality garbage for sure, but there are plenty of serious TV channels out there. Even SyFy is planning a multi-episode sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 and 2010 stories and it sounds promising, with Ridley Scott attached as producer.
It's called an Antenna....
Neil Irwin is a talking head on CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, etc...
http://neilirwin.com/about-nei...
So he's not exactly unbiased. lol
For a decent counter to his stupid argument:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...
Worstall has part of an argument against the Times opinion piece, but he makes an even bigger whopper with his "proof" that no one wants taxes raised, because people aren't voluntarily gifting their wealth to the Federal Government by the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
But he's right. No one wants their taxes raised. Everyone wants everyone else's taxes raised. His point is people will say lots of things because of their ideology when being polled. But when the tax man comes around, the tax hike aint fair! And when they need to get on a plane, they're getting on bundle or not.
Will al-a-cart be more expensive? That depends entirely how you look at it. You currently pay about $100 for around 350 channels. But, you absolutely cannot be watching all of those. In fact, you likely only watch less than a dozen. But they know what those dozen are and they organize those in such a way that you have to pay for all 350 to get the 12 you want. When it's Al-a-cart you'll likely pay around $5/channel on average. So now you'll be paying $60 for 12 channels instead of $100 for 350. Is that more or less expensive? It's more "per channel" but its less "per month" and you're not losing anything you were using.
But that's if prices remain the same. Which they absolutely will not. There is virtually no competition on the content side, they set a price and demand it. A company like Comcast can't just turn off "Comedy central" so they're stuck paying it. For evidence of this just check out Viacoms profit margin: http://ycharts.com/companies/V...
They're running at 22% profit... that's insane Most of the people out there paying for Viacom aren't even watching it! It's just part of a package they had to get to get some other channel. With a 22% profit margin and viewers that actually have a choice in the channels they pay for suddenly Viacom might decide the $7 they're charging might be a tad high.
Interesting point. Certainly, there is a tradeoff here. I think in specific case of cable, though, the burden of selecting channels at first and perhaps once a year wouldn't be too onerous. In fact, most people make choices about channels - specifically, which ones to watch - on a daily basis.
TV channels are simply becoming obsolete, and most if not all will have to go away eventually. Some will move to a Netflix type model, some will simple become production companies that sell to Netflix et. al. and some will probably make more money posting content on YouTube.
The idea that they will all continue to be viable while using such an inefficient and expensive delivery medium, coupled with a linear time broadcast format, is outdated I think.
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