Posted on 12/03/2005 6:43:34 AM PST by cloud8
At least 2 companies break rank, express support for options
WASHINGTON -- Conservative groups love the idea of letting television viewers pay for only the channels they want on cable and are happy it's back on the table in Washington, where lawmakers and regulators are fed up with raunchy television.
While the cable industry generally loathes the notion of an à la carte pricing system, at least one cable company and a potentially big cable competitor have embraced it.
À la carte would allow cable subscribers to pick and pay for individual channels rather than being forced to buy packages. A parent, for example, could pick Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network -- and not have to take MTV or other channels they may find objectionable as part of a bundled package.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I am all for it. Goodbye CNN and commie friends.
Locally Comcast offer a "basic cable" where you can get the local channels, shopping channels and a local whether channel plus WGN. It's only $15/month. It's OK in the summer time since I can get the braves baseball game son TBS and the cubs & white sox on WGN. I sometimes downgrade to that in the summer time.
Hear! Hear! Now that's showing some common sense.
I'm sure the cable companies would still offer some package deals that most people would still buy because they would be better deals, even with the garbage they don't watch. But many of us who don't want MTV or Spike in our homes would have an option. I get annoyed to even have the names of some of these sex-filled programs on the pay-per-view channels flashing on the screen while my kids are flipping channels.
The only risk you take is that what you want to watch will be on a channel that exists but that you fail to choose. If, say WE, goes under, its watchable programming will find a home elsewhere.
I feel the same as Dems_R_Losers. We don't want to watch local broadcast, sports, or shopping, although I'm sure that's a great deal if those are the channels you use, especially if you can't pick up local broadcast reception very well.
When we had satellite back in Oklahoma, I think we had to get almost 100 channels in order to get the 10-12 we actually watched.
How does my statement contradict your stance? We would seem to be on the same side of the issue. Cable companies won't be pushed quietly into anything that would keep them from cramming as much content down our throats as possible...unless they can make more money doing it. Yes I know it's capitalism but it stinks of monopolism. If we want cable access, we have but one choice in our communities.
An à la carte system is the way to go but you and I don't get to call the shots.
Sounds great, except that bundling is perfectly legal when you're not a monopoly, and considering that almost everyone in the country who wants MTV has at least three choices of who to provide it, it's kind of hard to argue that cable is a true monopoly.
Theoretically undeniable. But sometimes markets fail.
Would it work that way, or in reverse with smaller, more specialized channels commanding a higher price to cover fixed expenses? I wonder how it works now. I suspect that individual companies do not charge the cable company equally.
Oh, markets never fail.
But they might fail you.
Sometimes markets need to fail.
> I'd like to be able to get Moscow television whenever I want, to see what's happening when things are going on there and to keep my Russian active.
You can hear all the Russian you want on a cheap short wave set. Breaking news as it happens...depending on who controls the media at any given moment.
HA!!
Only speaking for my tastes, my friend.
We've DirecTV in my home, have the "Top Tier" which is everything minus "HBO", "Showtime" etc.
I'm not kidding you one bit when I say that with an increasing & alarming frequency my bride & I will sit down to be entertained in the evening (around 7PM CST) and there's not one thing showing which piques our intrest, not one.
We've discussed the possibility of terminating DTV as it's become almost useless.
Really.
DTV costs us ~$60 (or so) bucks a month & we're asking ourselves "For what?", more & more.
This "ala carte" jazz may be too late for us, as it is.
"Seriously, the television watching public are the people who like jiggle TV. The proportion of TV that has sexual content will go up rather than down with a la cart, in my opinion."
You're probably correct.
However we don't watch anything "jiggle" in this house except me when I go to the fridge, possibly. {g}
Can't speak for what the "television watching public" puts into their brains, just us.
We're well aware of the degenerate crap people are using to fill their empty heads & apparently even emptier lives.
Fine with us.
"Freedom" for more & more these days means watching anything they please & if they're paying for it & personally I couldn't care less, but I'm not.
That's the whole jist of this issue, gB.
...who I pay & for what. ;^)
That's why I run it through a Bose wave radio and turn the TV off. We spend at least as much time listening to 2 or 3 music channels as we do watching useless TV shows. At the moment, I am listening to Bluegrass.
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