Poll: Are you For or Against choosing your cable channel lineup?

[Evan]

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i wish there was an 'it depends' vote, but i voted no.

the way this works is that when directv or comcast or whoever negotiates, they get bundles. "yes you can have hbo, but you must also take the golf channel and oxygen". channels that own other channels bundle them together and use it as a way to financially support the smaller ones. if everything were a la carte, it's quite possible that stuff like techtv (whatever it is called now) and other special interest channels will die, or that other niche ones would never get made.

voting yes here would be analagous to voting yes to a poll that asked whether you want all crappy blockbuster movies to not get made. but companies like sony own companies like focus features, and the financing of the juggernaut is what enables them to take risks with the little stuff. another example would be the record industry, etc.

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Good post. This should really be the end of the thread.

[david050173]

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how could anyone not think it's a good idea?



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Without knowing the cost it is hard to say. I can promise you will not be able to sign up for 5 channels and have a 5 dollar bill. In addition to programming costs, there is some fixed cable costs which they will bill you for. They will make sure they get that money no matter what since they need to make thier debt payments. Imagine the deal is that you have a 10 dollar base and each channel you want costs 5 bucks. Would you want that deal? And why stop at channels. Why not pick individual programs. I might like monday night football but why should i pay for soaps I never watch? At certain level people are happy when they have fewer choices to make and when the cost of the choice is deterministic from month to month.

[tonypaladino]

I voted no. It's already hard enough to get a new cable station running, and this would make it near impossible. Smaller stations would fail and cable would return to its 1970's state with 30 stations.

[w_alloy]

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the way this works is that when directv or comcast or whoever negotiates, they get bundles. "yes you can have hbo, but you must also take the golf channel and oxygen". channels that own other channels bundle them together and use it as a way to financially support the smaller ones. if everything were a la carte, it's quite possible that stuff like techtv (whatever it is called now) and other special interest channels will die, or that other niche ones would never get made.


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This is bad then because channels like the the golf channel and tech TV are increasing the costs of cable to the benfit of those who watch them and to the detriment of everyone else. The market is not allowed to work itself out properly because of networks' coercive marketing/selling tactics.

Individualized channels will certainly mean increased price per channel. If MTV costs networks 1.50/month/subscriber now (no clue what actual numbers are), and only half of subscribers want it, then they will have to charge 3/month/subscriber to get the same revenue. So either consumers pay increased prices equal to oldprice(%old/%new)+service charge or the cable companies or networks lose out.

An externality is that ratings will go down. I wouldnt buy MTV, FX, or E!, but I'll check out part of the VMAs, a good movie from time to time, or an old SNL here and there if I have to have the channel anyways.

In summary, this will be good for people who dont want a lot of channels and bad for those that do. It will be bad for lots of small market channels and could be good or bad for larger ones. But everything should work out better overall because the market will be allowed to work more efficiently.

Edit: Evan, THIS should be the end of the thread.