What happened to "a la carte" - Page 3

Alternatively, it could mean that some of this programming would just return to broadcast television, where advertising revenue is still significantly higher than any cable network can bring in. In other words, sporting events that used to be available for free via broadcast would once again be free. In turn, absent the bloated fees that professional leagues are able to obtain from basic cable networks, the run up in players' salaries might be moderated.

All of this, of course, is speculative -- absent a true a la carte environment, we really do not know how much money sports fans would be willing to cough up to receive televised coverage of games. If sizeable numbers are willing to spend freely, then the games go to PPV. If they're not, the games return to broadcast television. Either outcome seems fairer than the current situation...

I assume that you meant to say 90 millions households (as you did further along in your post), not 110 million. Because, needless to say, those 20 million of us who don't subscribe to cable or satellite aren't subsidizing CNN or ESPN through subscriber fees.

I'll also note that the current system can't be called socialist in the traditional sense, since socialism redistributes resources downward, to those who have the least. The current system of bundling cable/satellite programming does the exact opposite, redistributing resources upward by taking money from mostly middle-income subscribers and giving that money to the owners of the five or six large media conglomerates and those who feed off of them (wealthy athletes, team owners, producers, actors, etc).

And, yes, the willingness of those subscribers to participate in this system is more or less voluntary. I say more or less because while no one is forced to subscribe to cable or satellite, there does seem to be a certain amount of ignorance involved -- a fair percentage of the American public seems to no longer be aware that they are paying for programming that is available for free in many instances.


Exactly so. And cable/satellite subscribers should figure that this amount (with markup) will eventually show up in their monthly bills. Allowing for markup, this means that 90 million subscribers get to pay an extra $2/month for the dubious privilege of seeing MNF move from Disney-owned ABC to Disney-owned ESPN.

I'm curious. Does this seem like a good deal for viewers to anyone? And yet, this is the inexorable logic of the current system of bundling programming services.

The niche channels would die off, the purveyors of quality programming would fetch higher prices and we're right back at fewer channels for the same price. The customer gets less for his money.

Granted, a la carte will probably be offered alongside bundled. But you can bet that it's only the people who want 2 or 3 channels who will benefit. And that's fine. Most of us regularly watch around ten, I'd guess. And you that's probably the point where the pricing for a la carte will look less and less attractive. The ten most-popular channels for 60 bucks or 100 for 65.

Oh, and so this can be implemented, everything except broadcast is digital and you'll need a box or cablecard receiver for every room. And that's extra. Plus installation. Trust me. They will make a la carte unattractive.

Unless, of course, a la carte brings in enough new 5-and-6 channel subscribers to actually MAKE money!

A la carte won't work unless bundling is disallowed. Allowing the networks to offer both will obviously also allow them to price the a la carte channels at an unreasonably high amount.

I'd love to hear those against a la carte explain how they believe the current system will end up. Right now the big mega corps are continually adding more niche networks and adding fees for those networks.

It's like we are standing in a big barrel and there's 5 or 6 guys with buckets and we're paying them for every bucket they drop on us - but they decide how much and how often to dump. Surely we'll eventually drown, but until the water level crosses our nose they are each dumping like hell to get their piece of the pie. Will they stop at a reasonable level, or just keep dumping and let the shorter people drop off?

The transition to a la carte may be bumpy and a little painful in the beginning, but do nothing and we are certainly screwed.

Also - less channels doesn't necessarily mean fewer viewing options or less quality. It only means that there are fewer channels to choose from.

Major subsidization from Disney -- not gonna' happen. I suspect if there is a major attack on content providers and distributors, as is suggested by some in this thread, that we'll see more vertical integration... think about what you said here:


Or perhaps accepting a stake in ESPN in return for rights on a perpetual basis. That would lock the viewer into the single-source if they want to view professional football, and the reduced competition from that point forward would degrade quality. That probably won't happen, but the point is that the industry is like eletricity -- always looking for the shortest circuit. If pressure is applied then the lost revenue will be made up by something over -- either way, the viewer won't gain any significant advantage -- not in this political and economic environment at least.


Think about the most profitable restaurants out there right now. What are they doing? They're responding to customers' purchasing behaviors. They're cutting costs by reducing the number of unique ingredients in their menu items, and they're boosting perceived value not by improving food quality or service, but rather by super-sizing the portions. The current system motivates restaurants to focus on quantity over quality, and to focus on keeping prices low rather than competing for superior service staff.


That's assuming a corporate parent. Any single-channel, independent, niche channels wouldn't have a chance of competing against a single-channel made up of the programming from a half-dozen current cable channels. The little guy would get squashed even more effectively than is already the case -- the barrier for entry into the market for channel distribution would become that-much-higher. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, objectively, but I know a lot of people who would decry anything that makes it harder for independent channels to compete.


So with a la carte, more of the network's resources would have to go into advertising, since advertising to the mass-market is more expensive than marketing to the realm of middle-tier distributors.


Which will never happen.

No problem with that. Resources would need to be spent on the product and marketing that product to the consumer. Sounds pretty basic to me - just like any other business. Why is it a bad thing to market and be accountable to the end user? I doubt most people like having all their programming choices decided upon by D*, E* and their local cableco - just because it is cheaper to advertise to a middle-man.

If you're still on Comcast expanded basic (i.e., SD only) I can tell you for a fact that all you get each year is a 5-6% increase. No new channels, and one or more might be taken away. And there's a TON of current subs in the same boat, analog with no boxes. They are steadily pricing themselves out of the market and they know it, but rising rights fees for sports are killing them (so they say).

I bet many consumers would be upset about the cable companies diverting available resources from capital investments to advertising, especially those consumers who prefer buying tiers of service.

There are plenty of people for which a la carte would suck (sounds like you would be one of them). Anybody who sees tremendous value in the channel selection they have now and for whom the idea of a growing selection of channels each year is a good thing because the per channel price continues to fall......those people won't like a la carte because the variety of channels would surely decrease and the cost of a comprehensive lineup would almost surely increase.

But the reason they will get the shaft is because they will no longer be able to rely on the majority to subsidize the high cost of their viewing habits. Let viewers subsidize the channels that appeal to them at a rate that corresponds to the amount of value they get from those channels.

Great when you live in a BIG City, but even for me, I live an hour outside of Los Angeles, yet, there are NO HD OTA channels.

The best thing the FCC could do is, require an itemized monthly bill, showing the cost for each channel. Then, people could make up their own minds about what is too expensive.

You'd see a huge backlash against channels that charge huge fees and constantly raise rates.

They are spending huge amounts of money on advertising now in order to attempt to entice non-subscribers to subscribe. This is true of both cable and satellite companies. This advertising takes the form of the incessant TV ads (like the annoying "Comcastic" ads that ran every ten minutes on Seattle TV stations when I was visiting family up there last summer), direct mailings (of which I discard several each month just from Time Warner), and the subsidies and kickbacks offered to retailers to push their services.

All that would change is the nature and content of what is created with those massive advertising and marketing budgets.

That could be something that would be implemented as an interim measure, even. In other words, don't mandate a la carte, but do require service providers to send an itemized monthly bill showing cost (including the provider's markup) for each channel. The resultant uproar might be quite entertaining, as viewers discover how much they are actually paying for different channels that they don't care about.

Which of course means that it will never happen. No business wants you to know their cost of providing service, or their markup, at least not without a fight.

But as has been mentioned throughout this thread, the individual cost of each channel cannot be separated from the forced bundling today, so it's kind of pointless (and deceptive?) to have them show you the per-channel costs with these agreements in place. The FCC would have to force every channel to be unbundled before you could get accurate figures, IMO.

And so you figure that that means that customers won't be dissatisfied with even more money being diverted away from improvements to advertising?

An hour outside LA? That's like what, five miles out?

Seriously though, OTA stations have ranges of 60-100 miles easily. With the right antenna set up, you shouldn't have a problem receiveing most if not all of the LA HD stations.

Keep in mind that there are also places that can't receive cable (too far out in the country for laying cable lines to be profitable) and also places that can't receive DBS (apartment with no south facing window, for example).

If you really are in a location that can't receive the OTA signals you want, then yes you would have to look at other options, which will cost some money.

Cable Co's hate alacarte because they know consumers want it and are willing to have a lot fewer channels and spend a lot less money. CHOICE would allow many people to say, screw all those channels and just subscribe to a few. Many channels would go dark quickly and I say GOOD!

I watch exactly three channels. HBO and Showtime (for the boxing) and HDNet Movies. I don't watch anything else and for those three channels I have to shell out over $100 a month because I am not allowed to have those channels unless I subscribe to EVERYTHING ELSE. So don't anyone tell me I should just take it in the @ss and not demand alacarte because I will save a substantial amount of money.

Since the Biography channel was specifically discussed - just an observation looking at today's schedule. What does Murder She Wrote (at least 2 episodes), The District (at least 4 episodes), Psychic Investigations, The Unexplained, etc have to do with Biographies?

There's "Screen Goddesses" at 3pm and the Jimi Hendrix "Biography" on at 8pm, which could easily be given spots on A&E like it used to be. People claim this is diverse programming for a niche that would be at risk under a la carte - when in reality, it is a whole channel with two hours (today anyway) serving that niche with 22 hours of syndicated filler.

Opinion
A La Carte
Sports Tears
By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld at multichannel.com Tuesday, January 2, 2007

If there was ever an argument to be made for a la carte pricing, it's sports programming that makes it.

Specifically, the NFL Network.

It's not taking the ball and going home to headquarters quietly in the night. You can be sure Steve Bornstein and compadres will be back before next football season trying to jawbone Time Warner, Cablevision and any other resistant cable operators into taking its full lineup of programming at 70 cents a month -- or more -- even if it only includes eight live games, all year.

If you're looking at this fee from the standpoint of an average cable subscriber, here's what the bill starts to look like now and in the near future.

ESPN, $3 a month. ESPN spinoff channels, 35 cents a month. Regional sports network (a la YES Network), $2 a month. NFL Network, 70 cents a month. In the near future, the MLB Network, $1 a month. Regional college network, 50 cents a month. Grand total: $7.55.

All other basic programming networks: Roughly the same total.

Which means it's clearly time to turn basic cable back into a really basic tier of 70 or 75 channels of news, weather, entertainment and local channels. No sports channels. At all.

Let each sports channel charge whatever they want to charge for their live and recorded events. Let them try to be HBO, if they want. No hidden charges. No hiding their higher ticket prices. Put them out in the open.

Of course, this would take a lot of willpower to enforce on the part of cable operators. Once they buckle on ESPN and include it again on the basic tier, it's hard to keep the door barred on other sports networks.

But the operator likely would win the popularity contest. Making every sports network an a la carte choice or bundling them all into a separate sports-only tier, as has seemed logical for a good while, would let operators be heroes, dollar-wise, with the customer.

Pricing on basic tiers could be rolled back, as much as by half. True basic for $15 or $20 a month, not $40.

No one ever said live sports was an inalienable right of the TV viewer.

And, similarly, no one ever said sports programmers ever had inalienable access to the TV viewer.

Time for cable operators to make a bottom line stand. And not keep hiding the increasingly high cost of buying tickets to sports events in the cost of basic subscription television.

Sure, some fans will cry rivers of tears for having to pay "extra" for sports. But the costs of capitalistic sports are readily available at open-air stadia: $100 seats, $7 drafts, $10 parking.

Time to start making prices just as explicit for seats at home.

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/182...400006140.html

I believe systems are REQUIRED to offer HBO and Showtime a-la-carte. If you are willing to forgo HDNet movies you could save some serious cash ($30-40 a month) if not more.

Actually, they hate a la carte because they know consumers will complain vociforously about having to pay the same amount of money to get a lot fewer channels. They're rather avoid the customer dissatisfaction if they can manage it.

"Give me more channels! MORE CHANNELS! I want MORE CHANNELS! To hell with content, I want MORE CHANNELS!"


That's pretty much what you've been saying throughout this thread. Now, please tell me why the hell we need all these channels. Can't you see what's happening? The big corporations are seeing the opportunity to make more money, and they're jumping at the chance.

The NFL Network takes 8 games all year that used to be free OTA broadcasts and now puts them on a new channel they want us to pay for. Other than that, their channel has no value.

ESPN-U took one of the biggest college basketball games of the year in my market (Cincinnati vs Xavier crosstown shootout) and put it on their channel. Previous to now, the game had always either been on free OTA TV or on ESPN. The cable company in our market (Time Warner) does not carry ESPN-U. ESPN purposefully did this so that TW subscribers would call and complain and ask for ESPN-U.

Another example already brought up, A&E Biography channel. Great, another channel with one offering and a bunch of filler.


Can you really not see what's going on? All of the good/worthwhile programming could be consolidated to a lot less channels. In fact, last July I decided to drop cable and since then I've been enjoying beautiful HD from the broadcast networks in two markets, watching 3-5 NFL games each Sunday including my home team (and getting the free HD simulcast from a local affilliate when they played on ESPN or NFL Net). I have my HD DVR set to record the shows I enjoy and I watch them with no loss of quality and no commercials when I want.

I do somewhat wish I had ESPN and FSN (to catch the Reds games) but to pay $40-50 a month for those two channels is not going to happen.

So, you say, a la carte will mean paying the same amount of money for less channels. Well, first, I don't think it would be the same amount of money. I think most subscribers would see a nice decrease in their bill. And, if the rates went up, they could pick and choose which channels were important enough for them to keep without paying more. This would drive channels to compete for viewers by adding more VALUE (content). If viewers think that there is enough GOOD content to warrant paying the price being asked, they'll pay for it. If not, they won't.

Ask my step-father. He's a pretty typical customer.


Can't you? J6P is dictating what is being offered, instead of us videophiles.

Whether your step-father is pretty typical or not, the average household watches fewer than 20 channels. That has been shown in numerous studies.

It is the cable companies which keep trumpeting the "value" we get with all those channels.

I kept a log in December and we watched a total of 19 channels -- including OTA. Personally, I'd be delighted with a la carte. But far more importantly, I think people should be allowed to pay for what they want to watch.

And since roughly 70% of the nation doesn't watch sports, why should they pay?

The fact is that the sports channels cost providers about half of all the money they spend on programming. A very simple solution (and a compromise alternative to full a la carte) would be to simply unbundle the sports channels from everyone's "basic".

I totally agree Fredfa, and even with the sports packages, in some markets, you're not assured of getting the play offs. Last time I had a la cart control was during cband.

And you actually believe this? I guess that J6P has somehow found his voice in the form of the complex deals of interlocking media conglomerates to expand the size of their empires. Um, yeah...I'm sure that J6P has just been crying out for ever more channels of Discovery, a million variations of VH1, etc. Oh, and of course, J6P is just delighted at the prospect of his cable/satellite bill rising so that he can see Monday Night Football on ESPN instead of ABC.

Or maybe "Style" which DirecTV announced it was adding today. A channel which averages 64,000 viewers...(or one out of each 656 people who are able to view it).

Yeah, J6P has been crying for this added channel.

But makes their purchasing decisions based on the variety of channels offered, and the value perceived, regardless of how many channels they actually end up watching.


Gosh, it is really sad how little respect you have for the general public. They determine for themselves what they value, and THAT drives what companies offer. Have some intellectual integrity and blame the general public, if you must, but this misdirected blame directed at the cable company is pitiful.

Rest assured that I only believe it because it is true. It's pretty self-centered to think, just because you don't like the ramifications of it, that millions of people are paying more for cable television than they value it. Idiocy.

Sing another tune. This one is getting old.

If THIS is true, then in the a la carte system, J6P would buy all the channels. If so, let him, it won't hurt me a bit. But I have to say I don't agree at all with you on this one.


Also, I don't know if anyone is blaming the cable companies for anything (at least I'm not). They are in a business world and will do whatever it takes to make more money. That's their goal, and I don't know why we would blame them for that. The argument here is that a la carte is better for the consumer, and, actually, in the end it might be better for the provider as well.