I would love a la carte TV, but make no mistake: it will destroy the profitability of cable companies.<p>Bundling allows cable operators to segment the market: to sell the same product to different audiences at different prices depending on their willingness to pay.<p>A $100 package of bundled sports + movies can be sold to the person who is willing to pay $90 for sports and $10 for movies and also to the person who is willing to pay $10 for sports and $90 for movies.<p>But sports and movies are unbundled, they must be sold at the same price to everyone. Should they be priced at $10 each? $90? Somewhere in between? Pick any price and the cable companies lose money: the person who values it more will pay less for it than they would have, and the person who values it less won't buy it at all.<p>EDIT: I don't want to sound pro-cable; indeed, I am not; I am just pointing out the effects of this legislation. In some ways, bundling is a natural way to package content. MOG, Spotify, and other subscription music services bundle their content (you don't get to pick and choose what you subscribe to), and the big daddy of disruption, Netflix streaming, doesn't let you unbundle either. It's one flat fee for everything. In these cases, of course, it's easier to swallow because prices are so low to begin with. Perhaps it's not bundling that's the problem with cable, but the pricing.
This will be lobbied into oblivion.
Content providers won't go for it, because they currently use their popular programming to force their new ventures onto cable providers. You can't force a cable provider to put your crappy home and garden channel on their line-up, if nobody orders it. You can't argue with real sales metrics.<p>Further, cable providers can't make a living when all of their customers downgrade to the three basic-cable channels they actually watch, plus HBO. Because the idea of a la cart cable is to lower the bills by not paying for what you don't want.<p>Huge amounts of money will, from both sides of the cable programming negotiating table will align against this pro-consumer measure, because it will force a radical rethinking of an industry that has never really had to be pro consumer.
Perhaps we need a bill that covers 2 things.<p>1. If a channel is free (NBC, TBS, etc), cable/sat providers are required to include it as part of the base connection fee.<p>2. If a channel is paid, subscribers need to pay for it directly, it can't be subsidized through the basic connection fee.<p>Now individual networks have the power to determine if a channel is part of the basic service or not. Cable companies still have the option of bundling channels together or go ala carte if subscribers really want to access premium channels.
The interesting thing is that the foundation of the TV system is built on the increasingly obsolete concept of broadcast TV. If you could get rid of that, and force all content providers to compete evenly via the internet, we'd have much more interesting environment. You'd free up the airwaves for more valuable use, you wouldn't need the FCC regulating content, and you'd break up the abc/cbs/nbc/fox semi-monopoly must carry position.<p>Think how wasteful it is to use all that television frequency bandwidth largely to transmit tv signals from networks to cable companies. According to NAB, only 17.8% of US homes rely only on OTA.<p><a href="https://www.nab.org/documents/newsroom/pressRelease.asp?id=2761" rel="nofollow">https://www.nab.org/documents/newsroom/pressRelease.asp?id=2...</a>
First off, read the link early in the story to his comments. Its more informative.<p>I wonder how he is going to address must carry channels that local governments impose upon the cable companies? I am all for choosing channels, but I wonder if this would permit currently premium channels to be chosen without excessive charges? As in, will they still permit bundle requirements to have HBO?<p>Considering it imposes similar rules on those companies selling channels to cable companies the host of groups who will line up to fight this will be impressive.<p>My favorite part is eliminating the black out rules on sports events for public funded stadiums.
Not that this bill is necessarily a bad thing, but Republicans know no end to their hypocrisy. They'll introduce all sorts of unnecessary micro-regulation to create a "free" market. This is the same guy who supported the bills deregulating the financial industry, which lead to the derivatives crisis.<p>I guess Senators suffer from the same problems as software engineers - they only see the problems in their living room.
This sounds really awesome, but I cannot see this being really effective.<p>For individual channels, they can just make it extremely cost-prohibitive to purchase single channels. Want ESPN? $20/month or you can get 20 channels for $25/month. There are some people that will take that, but I wouldn't count on it.<p>Same goes for cable bundling. You don't have to take ESPN with ABC, but you can either have either one of them for $15m each (making up numbers), or $15,000,001 for both.<p>Maybe I'm a pessimist, but these companies are experts in ignoring what people want. Without very careful checks, they'll find a way to keep their margins (which, given that they own the content, they absolutely have the right to do, as much as it upsets me.)
This will be awesome and it is long overdue in the United States in my opinion. The monopoluy of the cable companies is outrageous to say the least. Also, enough with the bullshit "bundles" and "packages". I don't want to pay $100 to comcast (Northeast US region where I live) and get a "bundle" of channels but if i want to watch HBO, pay extra. If I want to watch Showtime, pay extra. Basically, any channel worth watching, pay extra. I would rather pay $100 to pick 10 channels that I really watch even if that includes CNN.
I gave up cable TV three years ago and honestly don't miss it. I still have Internet (Netflix, Amazon Prime, NoWhere TV) and the options for providers in my area are limited... but it worth it just to pay less to Comcast. This bill, if it even passes, will not sway me to change.
The bill won't have any significant impact on most customers because cable channels won't charge the cable companies any less. If a cable companies has to pay, say, $1 Mio to distribute a channel, it needs the subscriptions to pay for that. It can either sell channels a la carte for a high fee, or sell bundles for a lower fee per channel. But the revenue will always need to be on the same level.
The only difference will be that people who want <i>very</i> <i>few</i> extra channels may get them cheaper than people who want all available channels. But as soon as you want 3-4 channels (or whatever the amount of channels is that the average consumer is actually interested in), a la carte won't be cheaper than the bundle.
As much as it kills me to support McCain (I'm not a fan of him at all), all I can say is "Holy cow, well done!!!"<p>This thought came across my mind first when I was 15, wishing for Cartoon Network without paying extra for cable that we couldn't afford.
I would love to be able to buy individual channels, however, I don't think that this is something the government should get involved in.<p>I would suggest working on a bill that would try to increase the prevalence of affordable high speed internet throughout the country. This would give access to all parts of the country but it would also give citizens more options when it comes to TV because Netflix, Hulu, etc would be accesible to everybody and could cause the cable companies to re-evaluate their strategy.
I always thought that the physical plant / last mile should always be another company and not any way attached/owned by the content provider(s). In most areas there are at least 2 content providers who can split the physical plant costs (+ minor profit).
I would totally love to order the sci-fi channel, fx, history channel and a couple others and not have to scroll through 30+ channels to get to them... i haven't had cable in years because it's never been worth it to me for just a few channels...
I have not had cable TV for nearly 3 years and it has worked out very well since I am outdoors more often. However, the day al a carte is in town is the day I buy cable again. Comcast et. al. are just like banks, they could care less about the consumer.<p>I am not holding my breath as McCain is simply spinning his wheels.
Beware of conservatives bearing "gifts".<p>Check which lobbyists have been visiting/donating to him recently.<p>(and with all the problems we have right now, all the unfilled positions for five years, this is what he is working on?)