A LA Cart. Period
And the down side is?
Maybe someday we will be able to subscribe to conservative channels, if there were any. Without having to subsdize all the leftist crap
The less popular channels would simply have to raise their price :p
Let the devil take the hindmost. If there is a market, it will be subscription or ppv.
It’s not just cable, we have bundled satellite also and then there is Verizon and Uverse.
Meh. I dumped TV in ‘97. Cable TV is SOOOOOO 20th century.
I love the idea of ala carte channels but it would seriously shut down 70 channels. I can’t imagine there is the viewership for Oprah, the dedicated chick channels, the spanish language channels, the black channels and the four gay channels, and the lefty news outlets enough to keep them in business.
Oh, if it kills the leftist propaganda channels, it’ll never happen. Being carried by conservatives is the only life they understand. Though, I’m sure they don’t think of it in those terms. This deal for example; if they realize it would disproportionately hurt the leftist lie mills, they’d be against it because it would be “censorship” or “discriminatory against minority views” or “disenfranchising”, you know, some excuse where the problem isn’t that they’re afraid to have their idea compete on their merits but somehow, everyone else must be forced to subsidize their crap or it just wouldn’t be fair. Somehow.
Which 20? What channel would YOU pay for and how much?
I have Roku and while not perfect it is bit by bit adding new channels that I find interesting and will watch.
Ala Carte is the way of the future on cable and the internet.
I suspect that I will get all of the channels I wish to watch over Roku and pay either next to nothing for them or they will be free.
Comcast has announced that they’ll be adding Al Jazeera and raising my rates to pay for it.
There are several misnomers about bundled pricing. Sure, it won’t make everyone happy but what cable watchers think is a fair price for the cable channels their family *does* watch, added together comes out more than most people pay for standard cable.
I like mostly news and sports but sports channels a la carte would be very expensive because of all the rights fees they charge to be carried and because I want to see my teams play in the NFL, I would be forced to have CBS, FOX and NBC along with ESPN and NFLN just to catch every game my team plays (there’s Sunday Ticket but the local broadcasts over the air are blacked out on that).
Most people who hate bundling love to complain about the shopping channels and the religious channels. Well, here’s a secret. They not only cost you nothing they subsidize the rates you do pay. Shopping channels and religious channels PAY the cable operator to carry them. Scratch those off and your cost per channel actually goes up, not down.
Sure, some people would love to only pay for the channels they watch but it would not be nearly the bargain you think it might be if you went on the faulty premise that all channels cost the same.
50 percent have basic cable the other’s watch regular TV.Basic and Premiums are losing payers because of jobs.I don’t care who wins.
I would love to ditch time Warner cable. $145 per month. All I really need is local, Fox News , some financial channels and local channels. How do you cut the cable.
Bundles and packages are sold all the time and are generally less expensive than buying a la carte. I never order a la carte at restaurants. So the premise is absurd. However the lead-in is correct. Internet based programming has killed cable. It is less expensive without commercials. Internet based programming is not a la carte. Netflix and Amazon each contain a bundle of all sorts of content wrapped together as a package and included in the monthly fee.
It is not a matter of bundles vs a la carte. The entire content model has changed from cable broadcast + DVR/time shifted to internet packaged content by different service providers, e.g. netflix, amazon, etc.
Too many commercials on basic cable packages and expensive movie channel bundles of low quality trash content, e.g., HBO. People are just finding other ways to get their entertainment besides the old cable broadcast model.
In some ways, cable bundling is worse that British-style fees. We already pay for PBS and, via cable bundles, we are also paying for the extremist leftoids who dominate the media.
Same with our horrible left wing subsidized 'art'... The ONE thing leftest are great at - the ONLY thing they're great at - is lining their pockets with 'public' money.
Then again I'm sure elite liberals wouldn't mind paying for 200 conservative channels so they could watch the 8 channels they like... /s