A la carte content will be the death of some cable channels. I can’t wait. If MSNBC weren’t a part of a “package” it wouldn’t be on my TV, ever. Same with CNN, Headline News, Bravo and TLC. Oh, and MTV and BET (I must be racist). Bundled programming is like the Eurozone, where some companies work hard and make money to support other companies who do little or nothing for the actual bottom line.
Really, a lot of cable programming is crap. The best channels are rerun channels. Hallmark has Little House on the Prairie and the Waltons, and is mosly wholesome, family-oriented and not outwardly anti-Christian. Comedy Central has a bunch of idiots who make a living by making fun of Republicans, Conservatives, TEA Party followers and people from the South. Cartoon Network has original cartoons, but they are all horribly drawn and show nothing of the quality that Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera cartoons had. We are cheating our children with the cartoon crap of today.
The Sci-Fi channel is half commercials. And they changed the name to SyFy. I have always been a fan of the science fiction genre, abbreviated to sci-fi. I must be a fuddy-duddy because I don’t think that the new name is all that creatve. It reads like see fee to me. If they have any good programs, I will wait until the next year and get them on Netflix.
In fact, most cable channels are nearly half commercials. They take a one-and-a-half-hour theater movie and pad it with enough commercials to fill a three-hour time slot. I watched Jurassic Park on the DVR and I was frikkin po’d at how many commercials I had to skip past to see the movie. In one part, 11 thirty-second spots.
I got suckered into signing a year contract with my cable company for the new channel lineup of HD channels and a free DVR, but I tell you what, when that contract ends, I am canceling cable and giving my money to Hulu and Netflix.
That’s why a la carte will never happen. The cable networks sell bundles to the cable companies which force them to sell bundles to us. The networks will NEVER sell channels a la carte, so the companies can’t.
I use an EyeTV to record and edit programs that I like, and I can tell you that the standard 1 hour show is only 41 minutes and 30 seconds +-15 seconds.
There are usually some pretty good shows come on and then they get bold after they have an audience and begin to insert the porn both gay and straight, I can edit those scenes out and make them watchable, because they rarely add anything to the storyline.