Then they don’t quite meet the definition of “sports fetish”, do they? There’s a trade off somewhere, obviously.
Yes and no. If everyone kept every channel, rates would pretty much go unchanged.
As people drop channels, those channels go up in price. The niche channels would quickly get dropped by most people, and that would make them too expensive for all but the most diehard fans to pay for them. For example, I like G4 but would drop it like a bad habit in an a la carte system.
Thus, a la carte would kill niche channels dead, leaving only mainstream channels left. In a very real sense, expensive sports channels like ESPN allow niche channels like The Science Channel to exist. Which makes sense when you compare the number of sports fans who don’t give a crap about the brainfood channels (huge number) with the number of brainfood channel fans who don’t give a crap about sports (tiny number). All those sports fans pump a lot of money into cable companies, allowing them to carry brainfood channels.
And yeah, those linked a la carte channel prices are nuts. $17 for one month of digital HBO? >$6 for Discovery HD? In your dreams.
Paying only for ESPN, Fox Sports, and Turner Classic Movies - even if I quadruple the rate for all of them - would still save me money.
And re: the niche channels, I would happily pay a higher price for a History Channel (for example) that was actually focused on real history instead of mass market history. Programs about history that focus on the facts of history rather than spend 75% of the program reenacting something designed to appeal to the great unwashed would draw my money, but would be cheaper to produce.
I see no reason not to let the market decide.
I have Dish Network satellite and pay too damn much considering I have no premium channels. My bill itemizes like so: SilverHD, 10.00; PlatinumHD, 10.00; service plan (15/0), 6.00; America’s top 200 with locals, 52.99; tv2 connection 5.00; DVR service 6.00 for a total per month of $100.34. Why I have both “silverHD” and “platinumHD” I don’t understand - seems like you’d have one or t’other. I used to have HBO, but when they killed Deadwood, I cancelled it. I’m going to check out the link someone posted above for a la carte tv. This crap really pisses me off; there are a bunch of channels in my “top 200” that I don’t give a rat’s ass about. I used to have DirectTV and they weren’t any better, plus I found out I’d bought the dish and other equipment which I had to get rid of.
So can you tell this NZer how much you pay a month? Would it make me weep with envy?
To get us off th-e old UHF, Sky has given us a special deal. We used to pay a whopping NZ$33.95 a month for just Sky Sport 1 & the Box. Now we are getting the basic package plus 4 of the 5 sports channels for the same price. We have the Arts Channel on trial for a month. I love it but if we keep it its over NZ$12 a month for *1 *channel. No movie channels. I would love TCM or MGM but have to take all four channels & it was expensive.
When the special deal comes of I think it will be around NZ$65 a month & we’ll have to decide if we can still afford it.