There is the voice of reason, everyone argues about what is going to happen, but no real numbers. I for one would like to see how this will affect my cable bill. I can ignore channels I don’t like, and if I could pay for just the channels we watch (half dozen tops) that would be great, except I suspect from experience that those half dozon channels aregoing to cost me more that the whole package now.
Anyone remember when cable started subscriber fees were going to make it commercial free? That worked out well didn’t it. I see no reason to believe we are not about to get it shoved up our poopers again.
Right, and i realized that as soon as i made the post.
What i should have said is: “If you want cable, then you are essentially being forced to subsidize stations that you don’t want in order to get stations that you do want.”
But, as you also note, that caveat doesn’t really change the argument at all.
I’m also interested in how this would work. I mean, I get quite a few channels that I have no interest in, but don’t get a few I am interested in, because I’d have to pay for a bunch of other channels I don’t want as well (about a year ago, I realized that I was spending about $40 a month to watch the Daily Show. Sorry Jon, you ain’t worth that much).
That’s one of the reasons I don’t have cable. I sat down, saw that I wanted cable for about three shows (the Daily Show, South Park, and parts of Adult Swim) as well as maybe the news and ESPN, especially during football season, and said forget it. Adult Swim I can generally see online through www.adultswim.com. South Park sometimes as well with a little work. The Daily Show I pay about $10 a month for through iTunes and get to keep the files. Maybe once I have some bills paid off and football season starts again I’ll look into getting cable (more likely satellite) but I doubt it.
I don’t really understand the argument. You aren’t paying per channel, but for the spectrum of channels, right? Just because you don’t want to watch “The Discovery Channel” today doesn’t mean you won’t want to watch it in six months.
My satellite provider has a scroll option that allows me to skip channels I don’t like. So I don’t have to see any channels I find objectionable (like the Country Music Channel) unless I specifically enter the channel number. The best part is it allows me to change my mind at any time about which channels I want to pass over.
I’m sure I can speak for a fair number of people when I say that it’s not that I don’t want to see Pat Robertson’s fat, ugly mug on my TV. It’s that I don’t want any of my money to go into his already-full pockets.
If you think you want to watch CBN, TBN, or any other Christian channel, be my guest and keep it. But my beef is that the choice is to lose the cable or subsidize Pat. To me, that’s no choice at all.
I would like the option of deciding which channels i would like to have access to, and paying for those channels and those channels alone. This is preferable, in my mind, to being told that if i want to watch ESPN, TNT, and Comedy Central, i also have to pay for CBN, Lifetime, and the Hallmark Channel, whether i watch them or not.
And if i decide, in six months, that i want to watch the Discovery channel, i should be able to call my cable provider and say, “Hey, could you add the Discovery Channel to my lineup, and take an extra couple of bucks a month out of my bankaccount?”
Not only that, but the fight for a la carte cable also involves the premium channels like HBO. I shouldn’t have to fork out for 70+ channels,half of which i don’t watch, in order to have the dubious privilege of then forking out another $12 a month (or whatever) for HBO. If all i want is HBO, TNT, ESPN, and Comedy Central, i should be able to order those four channels alone.
While i’m not an expert on the debate over a la carte cable, it’s my understanding that the cable companies themselves would actually be happy to offer this service, but they are being effectively held hostage by content providers who want their less popular channels subsidized in package deals. But i could be wrong about that, and am happy to be corrected by someone who knows the situation better.
If those channels wen’t out of business, do you think your cable bill would go down?
Seriously, If Pat Robertson’s channel (which is one of those I pass over, BTW) were to dissapear overnight, would the cable company offer you a rebate of some kind? If a new channel goes on the cable, say another Cooking channel, you don’t get charged extra, do ya?
I thnk it’s more like he’d be willing to take the chance of paying extra in exchange for the certainty that Pat Robertson never sees a penny of the money he spent.
And if it results in the invisible hand of the marketplace choking off Robertson’s funding with one finger while metaphorically distending his rectum with a thumb up his ass, so much the better.
Please accept my apologies for any disturbing mental images I may have inspired.
Cable companies (hereinafter called MSOs because it’s shorter and easier) charge you a flat fee for packaged service. That fee includes the carriage fees that MSOs pay for the right to carry a provider’s programming, as well as the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, yadda yadda yadda. So you’re paying for all the channels in your package whether you watch them or not.
What a la carte proponents are saying is that consumers should have the right to pick and choose which channels they want and not have to pay for the ones they don’t. And what some people don’t realize is that most TV habits are actually pretty static. You’re not likely to have radical changes in your viewing tastes. Or maybe you do, but most people don’t.
What the fundies are claiming here is that if people are allowed to do that, they’re going to go away and it’s not fair. They’re not used to competing in a free marketplace, so they’d like the FCC and Congress to force MSOs to carry them. Not everyone’s cool with that.
More pedantry: some people are indeed pretty much forced to pay for it, as it is included as part of their association fees. I don’t have the option of turning off the cable and paying a reduced association fee; I asked. I either pay for the cable, or I have liens placed against my home for owing the association money. I’m as much forced to pay for cable as I am forced to pay my water and electric bills.
Nah, they ran it through their special “instamatic fossil matcher” and then ground some of it up and ran it through a GCMS. Then they did a simple 1-D proton NMR experiment and got the stereochemistry of all the proteins present from that, because, of course, fossilization doesn’t destroy all proteins, just the ones non-essential to the plot. And THEN, to top it all off, David Caruso took off his sunglasses.
