I just a saw a commercial from dish network in which the spokesman mentioned “While *No one is allowed *to provide per channel TV…”
Paraphrasing here.
Not allowed? Really?.. Can someone with better google foo then me shed some light on this?
Not true. Big dish owners have been doing it for years. It just is not as economical as people think it would be. Here is one example.
Your link is only showing a few a la carte channels. I’m guessing (perhaps incorrectly) that the OP is referring to being able to choose all your channels a la carte.
It’s not a law requirement, but a contract requirement.
Many of the cable channels are owned by the same parent companies, and they want maximum exposure for their channels so that they can get top advertising dollars. So if a cable company wants one of the channels, they generally must contract for and offer all of them. If people could opt out of channels they don’t want, the cable channels would want more money in subscription costs to make up for lost advertising.
For an example, see the list of channels owned by Viacom through MTV: Paramount Media Networks - Wikipedia
I don’t think it is against the law, as much as it is against the licensing agreements that the dish and satellite companies have with the content providers.
In order to get rights to the popular channels they also have to bundle less popular channels from the same provider. There are a lot of channels out there that people may tune into on occasion, but wouldn’t order as a separate channel if they had to pay for it. These channels would disappear if everyone were allowed to pick and choose the channels they wanted.
As it is, these less popular channels are subsidized by their more popular siblings.
I was going to start a thread asking this question, but since it is related, maybe I’ll ask here.
C Band, or BUD (Big Ugly Dish) owners have been getting À la carte programming for decades. How come it seems to work fine for them, but would be a problem for cable, Dish Network, and Direct TV?
Over at dbstalk.com a la carte is discussed frequently. The problem seems to be cost considerations. One time the FCC was pushing Dish to do a la carte and dish was pushing back. One yarn was that a single Disney channel would be almost $250 a year in an a la carte plan.
If TV networks want their more-popular channels to subsidize their less-popular ones, that can still be accomplished in an “à la carte” system by adjusting the price of each.