Why isn't all cable provided on an a la carte basis? Re: Time Warner's offers to a la carte CBS.

[Baitball Blogger]

Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 08:19 AM - Edit history (1)

The prices for cable are just ridiculous. What I want to see is another cable company in the area to compete against Time Warner. Not Dish t.v., but another cable company. Especially for these days when we associate companies with one party or the other, it would be nice to know that the profits are not going to the wrong causes.

Any way, for those who don't know, Time Warner has offered to a la carte CBS, and it doesn't look like CBS is buying it.


Time Warner Cable offers unconventional deal to end CBS blackout

Britt proposed selling CBS to customers as a single channel on an "a la carte" basis, an idea dismissed by CBS as a "sham."

The exchange was the latest development in a contentious public battle between the No. 1 rated U.S. broadcast network and the No. 2 cable provider that has left millions of customers unable to watch the summer hit "Under the Dome" and live sports that airs on CBS such as golf.

As the blackout that began late Friday stretched into its third day, rival TV provider Verizon FiOS said it was receiving requests for service from Time Warner Cable customers who couldn't watch CBS.


To end the standoff, Britt said Time Warner Cable could offer customers the chance to pay for the CBS network "a la carte," an idea viewed as risky in the U.S. cable industry.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/consumer/sns-rt-us-timewarner-cbs-letter-20130805,0,7287191.story

[warrant46]

1. An antenna would be helpful

[Atman]

3. Why?

Most people would then get two or three channels at most -- ABC, NBC & CBS. If they're "lucky." I'd throw my tv out the window given that choice. I can't think of anything I actually watch on broadcast tv other than an ocassional bad sitcom.

[geckosfeet]

5. "I'd throw my tv out the window given that choice." Now there's a thought.

But as far as antenna go - I don't think you know what properly situated modern antenna can do. You should be able to pull in more than three broadcasts - depending on signal strength and atmospheric conditions.

[madville]

15. I get 20 channels with a coat hanger I attached some coax to

But I mainly use Netflix, Hulu, and stream ESPN online.

[geckosfeet]

17. Sweet. I use netflix (a little hulu) as well. No broadcast or cable at all unless I am out.

[tsuki]

23. I am rural with the closest station about 40 miles away.

I get CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, 4 PBS, My, Me, This, Bounce. Viper Weather and CW. With Roku, I get netflix for 8.63, RT, Democracy Now!, Pandora and a bunch of other stuff for free. If I wanted to pay $8.63 more, I could get Hulu Plus. No need. I have more TV than I can watch.

[Atman]

2. There would be no MSNBC, for starters.

Most channels, including MSNBC, don't actually attract that many viewers. Given the choice to actually pay specifically for these channels would make most viewers simply drop them. I mean, I watch crap like those house hunter shows only because my wife loves them and defaults to them when she can't find anything else to watch. But would I actually PAY to watch them? Heck no. It's kind of like insurance...if the pool is big, everyone gets covered and the healthy subsidize the weak and infirm.

[kcr]

4. That's true. It's also a mistake to believe that cable companies would charge less

for those channels. If cable goes a la carte we'll just pay the same high rates for fewer channels.

[customerserviceguy]

13. Agreed

ESPN currently gets about five bucks per cable TV subscriber. If they were an a la carte selection, they'd easily double that. In the end, most people would pay about the same, it's just that they'd get less.

Of course, I've cut the cable and been on antenna for about a year now, and I don't miss that much. Of course, with college football season coming up, it may be harder to say that.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Then we'll take credits.

Give us a base channel, and then give us credit for eliminating the Christian channel and Shopping network.

[Atman]

11. I pay for mostly God channels and sports

Most of my cable channels are God and sports, and I don't watch any of them. They should at least sell a discounted No-Sports package. It would eliminate literally half the channels.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. I would approve of a secular package.

Good bye 500 Club!

[customerserviceguy]

14. I don't know about the religious channels

but I'd bet that the shopping channels pay the cable and satellite providers to be on them. You see that they often get low channel numbers, not far from the big four networks.

[Baitball Blogger]

16. If you save a penny a day, you will save $3.65 a year.

If you eliminate ten channels, you save over $40.00 a year.

I would LOVE to trim off $40.00 off my cable bill.

[hobbit709]

7. If I had a choice, I certainly wouldn't get any of the infomercial, shopping and religious ones.

Add Fox to that and there'd probably only be about 25 channels I would watch on a regular basis. That's out of the 200+DirecTV gives me now.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. I would drop Fox like a hot potato.

[B Calm]

8. When I first heard about this, I thought great, the consumer will end up paying CBS.

[hack89]

10. Network advertising rates are based on the number of viewers

the networks will lose viewers and therefore money if they are not part of a basic cable package.

[d_r]

18. I've often wished for a la carte pricing

but the more I think about it, the less I am convinced it would be a good thing. There are a ton of channels that I don't watch - country music, fox news, reality shows, entertainment shows, religious channels. But there are also channels I watch that have very few total viewers - national geographic, current tv. By having it in packages, I am supporting channels that I don't watch but there are also people out there who don't watch the channels I do that are paying to support them. If it went ala carte, we would lose some of those lesser watched channels and end up with only a fewer number of mega channels driven by popular choice, and I don't think that is a good thing because the more popular shows aren't what I watch. We'd end up with reality shows and celebrity dancing.

[Recursion]

19. Why do you think a la carte would be cheaper? You've proven you're willing to pay as much as you do

for the channels you actually watch. They'll price accordingly.

[Baitball Blogger]

20. What do you mean we've proven we'll pay as much as we do?

The determination of prices will come down to the number of people who drop the services.

From what I hear, the cable t.v. is losing out to the internet options like netflix. Supply and Demand and good competition. That last part is lost on the capitalists.

[Recursion]

21. I mean you pay whatever you pay for the four channels you watch

You've demonstrated to the cable company that that is your price point. The channels that you don't watch don't matter.

[Baitball Blogger]

22. I pay them because I prefer cable and they are the only option.

It's time to bring competition into the formula.

[Atman]

25. Cable tv is losing out to Netflix?

Not only is that factually untrue, it begs the question: Who do you purchase your Internet access from? My guess is the cable company. They're not losing out on anything, and they won't.

[zipplewrath]

26. What the market will bear

Supply and demand has little to do with retail markets, which is what the cable industry is these days in most places (except where they have a monopoly). Most retail markets are under the rules of "what the market will bear". You'll see this in almost any pricing where all the products seem to cost roughly the same. That's no mistake. The price of an object is often based upon what the customer will pay for it. Market research is often done PRIOR to a product development to determine what the market will pay for an item, and then it is manufactured to fit within that price point. One can often see this in the infamous "size shifting" that occurs in everything from candy bars to laundry detergent. The price of a product stays the same, but the size slowly "shrinks". Then, a larger size is introduced (at a higher price) and they slowly shrink the price until the market accepts the "new" pricing for roughly the same size as the original.

If cable goes to an "ala carte" system, it will figure out how much people are willing to spend, and then price the various channels in a manner to ensure they get roughly what they are getting now. Think about airline seats. Every seat costs differently and they have whole peices of software that do nothing but manage that pricing to maximize the revenue of the airline.

[Orrex]

24. Blame the content providers more than the cable companies

Content providers sell "bundles" of channels, so that in order to get a particularly popular chanel (like A&E or Nickelodeon or whatever), cable companies must also buy a bunch of other (often crappy) channels, and this of course is passed on to customers. If you want ESPN, you have to pay for a dozen additional channels of shit.

You can comfort yourself with the knowledge that this crappy arrangement guarantees a huge payoff to the CEO and board members of the content providers, and that must count for something, right?