Daily cable subscriptions

Cafe Society
1

Everywhere I turn, I’m reading a new story about how cable is on the downhill path toward Titsupville. People just aren’t willing to pay $100, $150 or $200 a month for access to 500 channels that, for the most part, go unwatched. I’m one of those people.

Netflix, Hulu, Amazon all give you access to amazing catalogs of television shows and movies to stream in bulk. And with Hulu, you even get some programming served up the next day after it’s aired.

And now on Roku, I see there’s an app for Sling, which let’s you subscribe to a handful of cable channels and watch them in real time. For $20 a month, you get a couple ESPNs, AMC, Food Network, TNT, Disney, TBS and more. And, to me, this is a step in the right direction. It knocks out the bullshit that nobody watches, all at a nice price.

But I’d like to see this go a step further, and I think it would actually help a lot of cable channels survive in this era of people dropping cable TV: Daily cable subscriptions.

You want the Big Ten Network for a day to watch Michigan-Northwestern? Push a button and pay a few bucks. Fox Sports to catch your local boys of summer play a game? Here’s a couple bucks. AMC to watch The Walking Dead in real time? A buck or two. Want to tune in to see a local restaurant featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives? Pony up a buck and get the Food Network for a day.

For the networks, if this was an option, you’re raking in some subscription dough, PLUS getting some additional eyes on your ads. Right now I don’t see any commercials on the Big Ten Network or TBS. But given an affordable one-day option, I definitely would…

And I live rural. It’s hard for me to get local channels via antenna. I’d even be willing to pay a buck or two for nice clean locals once in a while.

So basically what I’m wishing for is pay-per-view for basic cable. Anyone else on board? Is this feasible? Maybe even inevitable, now that Sling has shown a demand for a more-focused cable option? Who wants to invest some money to fund a start-up that makes this happen? I’ll even let you name it after me: HappyTV.

2

I find it more likely that sports alone will be treated differently and will go to such a model. Network programming OTOH will continue to be a race to the bottom, free viewing with ad support, as they need the greatest audience to get the greatest ad revenue. I expect that the network broadcasts will ever increasingly have streaming options.

3

Google Play, iTunes, and Amazon have a pay-per-view for many TV shows. You can also order entire seasons.

My wife and I have subscribed to Hulu for over a year and are fine with it. The UVerse bill dropped by about $100. Neither of us are big sports watchers, although I do miss watching Falcons games live. Also, Hulu does not offer AMC. So I have to resort to other means to see The Walking Dead. This week we upgraded to their no commercials plan and it is awesome.

I’ll probably pick up HBO Go when Game of Thrones returns, then drop it after the season. I’m not sure if Starz has a digital plan, but we’ll do the same for Outlander.

4

What would be nice would be the unbundling of cable subscriptions, so that, for example, those who don’t watch sports aren’t spending five buck a month on a subscription to ESPN (which is one of the most expensive channels). Or I can drop Disney Channel, the Family Channel and Nickelodeon from my channel lineup.

5

I’m not talking about pay-per-view shows or seasons. I mean paying a set amount to have access to a cable network for a limited amount of time (like 24 hours). Pay to have access to MTV for a day to watch the VMAs, pay for 24 hours of the Big Ten Network to watch a specific game, etc.

Sometimes I want to watch real-time cable TV, but don’t want it enough to shell out $100+ a month, or go over to someone else’s house to watch. In my scenario, you only pay for the channels you want to watch, only when you watch them.

This is all I ask!

6

Well the only issue with that is it’d be fairly unprofitable for the cable networks. I mean unless they charged something like $5 for the day, which people would think was too much anyways. The thing is that if it was profitable, they would have done it already. I have read that ESPN is a bit skittish about even being on SlingTV (the only way they allowed it to be included is if there was no DVR capabilities attached to the channel, and they mandated that it had to be on the $20 a month base tier and not an add on tier, etc).

7

That’s the first problem. Cable companies expect a nice, steady revenue stream before they invest in laying the lines, supplying the boxes and having their friendly service agents available.

The second problem is that cable companies pay the networks to carry their programming. If I’m TBS, I expect the cable company to pay me a fixed amount, instead of trying to negotiate a fee based on more people watching me on Monday than on Tuesday.

8

In such a landscape, I would suspect most of the smaller cable channels would go under from not being able to get enough pay-as-you-go viewers to sustain them in profitability.

9

Absolutely! I’ve wished the cable companies would do this for a while now. Just like you said, there are times where I wish I had cable for a day or two. Maybe there’s a show I want to watch or guests are staying with me and it would be nice to have the full cable lineup during that time.

Most cable companies already have an app or whatever which lets you watch some content on the web provided you’re a subscriber. It seems like they could have the ability to let you subscribe to that internet content without having a physical cable connection–whether on a monthly or daily basis. Currently I think most cable providers only offer a subset of on demand choices on the web, but there’s no reason they couldn’t stream the live channels as well.

I even called TW asking about this and they said I had to have cable installed in my house in order to access the internet content. Oh well, that’s not going to happen. So they’re losing out on 100% of my revenue. I think they’re just a little behind the times trying to hold onto what they have and not adapting to the new world. I can get content from many sources now and I don’t see myself ever going back to cable. So either the cable companies can adapt or they’ll continue to lose customers.