Comcast Sues Maine To Stop Law Requiring Sale of Individual TV Channels (arstechnica.com) 141
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast and several TV network owners have sued the state of Maine to stop a law that requires cable companies to offer a la carte access to TV channels. The complaint in U.S. District Court in Maine was filed Friday by Comcast, Comcast subsidiary NBCUniversal, A&E Television Networks, C-Span, CBS Corp., Discovery, Disney, Fox Cable Network Services, New England Sports Network, and Viacom. The companies claim the Maine law -- titled "An Act To Expand Options for Consumers of Cable Television in Purchasing Individual Channels and Programs" -- is preempted by the First Amendment and federal law. The Maine law is scheduled to take effect on September 19 and says that "a cable system operator shall offer subscribers the option of purchasing access to cable channels, or programs on cable channels, individually." The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent the law from being enforced. "I submitted this bill on behalf of Maine's hundreds of thousands of cable television subscribers," Representative Jeffrey Evangelos, an independent, said in testimony when the bill was being debated in March. "For far too long, consumers have been forced to purchase cable TV packages which include dozens of channels the consumer has no interest in watching."
But the current system involving service tiers and bundling "reflect[s] the exercise of First Amendment rights -- both by the programmers who decide how to license their programming to cable operators, and by the cable operators who decide how to provide that programming to the public," the industry lawsuit said. The lawsuit also says that "an array of federal statutory provisions precludes Maine from dictating how cable programming is presented to consumers." The state law "is expressly preempted by several provisions of the Communications Act," including a section that "prohibits state and local authorities from regulating the 'provision or content of cable services, except as expressly provided in' Title VI of the Communications Act," the lawsuit said.
But the current system involving service tiers and bundling "reflect[s] the exercise of First Amendment rights -- both by the programmers who decide how to license their programming to cable operators, and by the cable operators who decide how to provide that programming to the public," the industry lawsuit said. The lawsuit also says that "an array of federal statutory provisions precludes Maine from dictating how cable programming is presented to consumers." The state law "is expressly preempted by several provisions of the Communications Act," including a section that "prohibits state and local authorities from regulating the 'provision or content of cable services, except as expressly provided in' Title VI of the Communications Act," the lawsuit said.
Didn't read TFL (Score:2)
I haven't read the actual law so I'll ask: what stops them selling individual channels for $999,999,999 each?
Re:Didn't read TFL (Score:5, Informative)
Notwithstanding any provision in a franchise, a cable system operator shall offer subscribers the option of purchasing access to cable channels, or programs on cable channels, individually.
To your point, apparently nothing. Of course you wouldn't want a law like this on the books to begin with since someone will decide that it should be amended to include language about being at a "fair" price.
The solution to this problem isn't trying to legislate how cable companies must provide service, but to prevent companies from having a monopoly in the areas which they operate. The only reason that they can get away with shit like this is because they have very limited competition and are often granted exclusive franchise rights by local governments which keeps competition out. Once companies have to actually compete, they naturally do what consumers want or they lose business to companies that provide what customers want.
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I don't understand why they don't develop the technology for Maine, and then market it across the country as a feature. I know many Catholics, for instance, who would love to be able to get EWTN but not TBN, many sports fans who want ESPN2 without ESPN1, science fiction fans who would want SciFi and Comet without CNN, etc.
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It may be a feature to the viewer, but not to the cable cartel.
They effectively have colluded on forced bundling. Since there has historically been no alternative, no cable company has wanted to kill that golden goose.
Of course, this is typically short-sighted behavior on their part, they are blinded by greed. They don't understand that they can be replaced.
Disney should have been their wakeup call. But they are still too stupid and too greedy to understand what is happening. By the time they figure it out,
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A law like this will not really help customers. The cable companies will just make the a la carte channels prohibitively expensive, or they'll charge fees on top enough to prevent people from getting only the channels they want on the cheap.
They're clinging to an outmoded business model. Consumers are making their choice to move away from cable, and their only hope is to win in the courts to prevent consumers having any choices beyond the 2 or 3 they offer.
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Once this wall has been shattered, people will start to demand it.
Right now not a lot of people don't demand it because the way it is is now is how it's always been.
People are creatures of habit, and the way things were when they were young is the 'correct' way it has to be.
“If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses.” - Ford.
Re:Didn't read TFL (Score:5, Interesting)
A law like this will not really help customers. The cable companies will just make the a la carte channels prohibitively expensive
At first, yes. But if they are forced to provide them, eventually they will compete on price, which is what consumers really need. That's why stopping the cable cartel from continuing this inherently abusive pricing model is important.
They're clinging to an outmoded business model. Consumers are making their choice to move away from cable, and their only hope is to win in the courts to prevent consumers having any choices beyond the 2 or 3 they offer.
Ironically, their only hope is to offer cable a la carte, because consumers want choice; and to offer it at a reasonable price, because consumers have alternatives. And yet, they are fighting tooth and nail to avoid doing the only thing that could keep them going. I for one would prefer the high quality and reliability of a cable stream (which I can capture with a DVR for the purposes of time shifting) if only I didn't have to buy a bunch of crap I didn't want. And it would be convenient to pay one provider for both internet access and for content, if only it weren't so convenient for them to screw people over by providing both of those things. Regulation is actually good for everyone in this case, but they are avoiding seeing that with a truly spectacular effort.
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They aren't too stupid, they nwo damn well what theya re doing.
Guess what? a CEO only has to keep thing going till he gets a couple of bonuses, after that it becomes someone else's problem and they make there million when they leave.
The concept the CxO's are actually interested in the company being around in 20 years is not true.
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Without forced bundling, the NFL cartel would crumble in short order
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Unfortunately, most companies operate under the same short-sighted considerations as the average stupid individual. In this case they're just interested in making the next quarterly report look good for their shareholders. They really don't care how the company is doing in 20 years, they'll be retired on a beach in the Caribbean by then.
So you can't use "this will b
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I don't understand why they don't develop the technology for Maine, and then market it across the country as a feature.
It is not a technology issue. It is a business issue. Channel owners often require that their channels be bundled. Everyone wants ESPN, not everyone wants ESPN4 so ESPN requires an all or nothing package. It allows them to subsidize adoption of the less popular channels. This means that EWTN gets a boost from all the people who get TBN. Without it, EWTN may not be profitable enough to keep around.
Al a cart programming is a double edged sword. Sure, you may only want to buy 8 channels, but if those 8 channel
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". Everyone wants ESPN, "
No, not true. That's the point not everyone want everything.
I left cable because 30-40% of a cable my bill goes to sports channels that I do not want. Including ESPN.
I am not alone.
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many sports fans who want ESPN2 without ESPN
It wasn't meant as a literal everyone. I left cable because I watched 10 out of 150 channels.
Discounts (Score:2)
The reason would be because the more discrete your billing, the more expensive the billing is to do. Modern electronic processing makes automating the process easier and cheaper, but it still costs.
This is why, in the days of toll booths on toll roads, the cost of collecting the tolls was often the single largest expense - exceeding 50% in many cases. IE If you were paying $1 as a toll, out of that dollar $0.54 went towards collecting it, $0.10 towards profit, and only $0.36 towards maintaining the road i
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The increase cost form billing would be minor. Literally pennies.
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The technology does already exist. When my parents first got cable, the operator had an initial basic package, but then you could choose to subscribe to individual channels. You'd call the support, subscribe to the channel, and depending on how many issues the techs had to deal with, the channel would become available to you in anything from 2-3 minutes to a couple of hours.
The operator was StjÃrnTV, and operated a star topology cable network
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That can work when the number of a la carte channels to subscribe to is small enough If you have 300+ channels, however, it won't work... the Pareto principle will invariably apply, and most of the channels will not be able to sustain a critical mass of viewers.
A la carte channel selection only works when the number of choices available is relatively small... ie, probably no more than a dozen or so.
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That can work when the number of a la carte channels to subscribe to is small enough If you have 300+ channels, however, it won't work... the Pareto principle will invariably apply, and most of the channels will not be able to sustain a critical mass of viewers.
A la carte channel selection only works when the number of choices available is relatively small... ie, probably no more than a dozen or so.
So it's a self correcting "problem".
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Don't tell me, tell cable companies that want to offer such a wide number of channels.
If they trimmed the selection down to no more than, say, a dozen or maybe two dozen channels, then a-la carte would be easy to provide.
But then people would start to bitch about a lack of choice.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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You are right about Return on Investment as an inhibitor of increased competition.
But I think the real reason that Cable Companies don't want Ala Carte channel selection is that many of the so called channels like QVC and other shopping channels will probably NOT be selected by customers.
QVC and other direct to consumer channels pay the cable companies to transmit their content unlike other channels that the cable companies pay for.
If only 5% of a cable companies subscribers choose QVC, that is a dent in c
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Even if a consumer chooses to PAY for only certain channels doesn't mean the cable company can't GIVE them additional channels for free.
Re: Didn't read TFL (Score:2)
How is that not identical to bundling?
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There's an internal difference to the cable provider's revenue sources.
If shopping channels send enough money to the cable companies, a cable company could make money providing <shopping channels and nothing else> for free. The same is not true for a bundled channel like ESPN.
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I think the channel that is really at risk from consumers boycotting it is ESPN.
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Look, I'm not even that much of a sports fan, but even "I" don't believe that.
Especially right now during college football season, and NFL season.
I"m guessing it wains a bit after football season, but likely not as much as you'd think.
For as many folks I know that could get by without ESPN, for every one of those, I pretty much know at least 2 that HAVE to have ESPN for their sports fix.
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Two market participants is not enough for a truly competitive market.
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"This hasn't been true for decades."
There are many communities where that is true. Ever wonder what happened to google cable? Yeah, killed by cities that give limited access to the rights.
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Hard to have competition when it requires infrastructure like that. The competitor has to install their own network of cables to every home, and there is only so much space available anyway. Many people would object if there were rows and rows of distribution boxes lining every street, one for each competing company.
In some countries they forced utility pole owners to offer space to any company that will pay for it, at a reasonable cost. That certainly helps but even then installing miles and miles of fibre
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"often granted exclusive franchise rights by local governments which keeps competition out"
This is prohibited under the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992. See https://www.govinfo.gov/conten... [govinfo.gov]
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Technically correct, but practically wrong.
Local government can limit who has access to what infrastructures. So a new company would have to put their own in.. but wait, there are also regulation on when you can dig up roads and lay the required infrastructure.
It what the Portland, Or. government did to google fibre. Along with Comcast having people make false complaints.
Re: Didn't read TFL (Score:2)
Technically, the new guy has to use the current guy to hang stuff on poles or through the pipes. This was one of Google Fibers problem, they had to use the local telco in many places. They took months to do what Google could in weeks.
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They do claim to be competing with satellite providers although we know that when it comes to certain services and service ares there is no competition. It's kind of like electricity and natural gas you only have one choice. The power company is not in competition with off grid solar power and the gas company isn't in competition with propane trucks.
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DO tell people what they want.
I want that law on the books, because competition does not work like you think it does, and cable doesn't work like you think it does.
If competition would drive towards individual channels, it would be there because there are place in the country with competition.
Turns out, the way channels are structured to the cable companies, they make more money by offering packages and screwing over customers then they would selling individual channels.
It becomes an unwritten agreement.
Peo
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Fairness (Score:2)
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No they wouldn't. With the except of mandate access channels, people who want those channels can still get them.
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The telecommunications act of 1996 would prevent it. They are only allowed to raise rates once a year. I'm pretty sure in order to have two prices they would have to classify one of them as a promotion. I worked for a cable company for over 11 years and part of that time I was responsible for maintaining the programming including the agreements we had through the NCTC. Truth is many cable providers are dropping video. The upstream providers, including many middle men have taken all the profit out of it
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The fact that it's not the cable company which receives the $999,999,999. It's the channel operator. They simply kick back a flat fee or a percentage to the cable company to be able to reach viewers. Since channel operators are motivated to maximize revenues (and the $1 billion price point certainly doesn't do that) their prices will be lower.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This has NOTHING to do with the first amendment.
Secondly, the article doesn't ban tiers/packages completely, it merely gives customers the option, as should be case everywhere, not just Maine.
The cable companies can kiss my ass.
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You know they're desperate when they try to reframe the forced bundling of cable channels as a matter of "free speech".
I guess to them, profit *is* speech.
Pathetic.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess to them, profit *is* speech.
Pathetic.
Well, the Supreme Court did rule that money is speech. So if you interfere with the flow of money you are interfering with the flow of speech. Of course, since it's our money flowing to the cable companies it should technically be considered our speech, not theirs.
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Cable TV has been sold as packages literally from day one
Actually, before 'day one' cable TV was essentially a community antenna. Which allowed people with poor reception to select whichever channel they wanted using their tuner. With no additional charges per channel. Congress broke that model and violated the First Amendment rights of all of the content providers like HBO by forcing consumers to subsidize the 'free speech' of other content providers supplying unwanted garbage through the bundling mechanism.
And while we are at it what if I only watch one show?
It's called pay-per-view and it's already a thing.
Re: Bullshit (Score:2)
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1) PPH is right about the origins of cable TV. That is how it all began, read a book.
2) Who gives a fuck if the pay per view is for a certain time and certain day. Just go in the fucking menu at some point after its been released and fucking play it.
3) lighten the fuck up.
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Those who are less aware of the complexities of technology are always the ones who complain about not being able to magically have their cake and eat it too. Amazon for example does have the option to subscribe to individual premium channels/services, but on the flip side, once you are getting many of them, you may find it is cheaper to get a larger bundle from your cable provider. The same goes for individual channels, you don't want the cable providers to be forced to unbundle out of packages offered
Let them carry on (Score:2)
Re:Let them carry on (Score:4, Insightful)
By insisting in forcing you to buy packages, rather than allowing you to pick and choose individual channels, cable providers are only digging their own graves deeper.
It's not just the providers. The channel studios themselves force package deals onto the cable providers. Want ESPN? Great, you're also going to have to pay for ESPNews, ESPNU, etc. The studios charge fees per subscriber per channel, so by forcing cable companies to carry less popular channels in order to get popular channels like ESPN, Disney, etc, they force the cable providers to pay them more.
Of course, even if we ever do get a la carte channels, you can bet the cable providers will tack on countless extra fees for every channel you order, because that's just what they do. Unless you seriously limit the number of channels you order, chances are your bill won't be much cheaper than it currently is but you'll have a lot fewer channels.
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By insisting in forcing you to buy packages, rather than allowing you to pick and choose individual channels, cable providers are only digging their own graves deeper.
It's not just the providers. The channel studios themselves force package deals onto the cable providers. Want ESPN? Great, you're also going to have to pay for ESPNews, ESPNU, etc.
Even worse, as I recall, if you want ANY of Disney's suite of channels, you have to have ESPN, ESPNews, ESPNU, ESPN2, etc. Maybe that's changed in the 10 years since I was paying for cable, but I doubt the mouse let that go.
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Their loss since I can do without sports and the Mouse. If there's something I really want to see, I can always go to a pub.
Re:Let them carry on (Score:5, Funny)
By insisting in forcing you to buy packages, rather than allowing you to pick and choose individual channels, cable providers are only digging their own graves deeper.
It's not just the providers. The channel studios themselves force package deals onto the cable providers. Want ESPN? Great, you're also going to have to pay for ESPNews, ESPNU, etc. The studios charge fees per subscriber per channel, so by forcing cable companies to carry less popular channels in order to get popular channels like ESPN, Disney, etc, they force the cable providers to pay them more.
Of course, even if we ever do get a la carte channels, you can bet the cable providers will tack on countless extra fees for every channel you order, because that's just what they do. Unless you seriously limit the number of channels you order, chances are your bill won't be much cheaper than it currently is but you'll have a lot fewer channels.
It's wonderfully fun business model:
... Well I'm sorry but we only offer this as a package wherein you can only get what you want by also paying through the nose for the literal shit ton of assorted garbage that comes with it.
Want to buy food? Well then you also have to buy a pound of radioactive waste, this bucket full of petrifying guts, this one ton pallet full of compressed used toilet paper and this bag full of hospital waste. Now please sign this document pledging to permanently store the stuff in your back yard. Oh, and every month you will get a new shipment of garbage.
What? You only want the food?
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Yeah! I won't give them money and instead give it to their competitor...of...uh??
Nope. There is another option. I stopped giving Comcast my money for cable, gave them their gear back, and that money goes right into my pocket, not some other cable co. It doesn't even go into hulu / prime / crunchyroll, that comes off a different piece of my budget and is already accounted for.
The 140-something bucks a month I save on cable goes right into my savings.
I had stopped watching with any intensity years ago, once reality TV destroyed TV. All that was left was cartoons, the F1 races, and th
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Who provides the Internet for your "hulu / prime / crunchyroll"? In a lot of places in the US it's another monopoly, by guess who? The same Cable company.
Why, Comcast, of course.
But, I have denied them of 140/ month in perpetuity, starting six months ago.
THat's money that won't reach the CATV content sellers.
So, in a small way, I have stopped money from getting to their tills.
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* Hybrid F1? No more pit babes? HALO device? What? What kind of pussy bullshit is this?
I don't like the halo, but based on the experience of the past 18 months, it has saved at least four lives by my count.
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I don't like the halo, but based on the experience of the past 18 months, it has saved at least four lives by my count.
I wish they'd just man up and either remove it complete, or enclose it completely. Having it open like this is like having eyeglass frames without the lenses.
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I don't like the halo, but based on the experience of the past 18 months, it has saved at least four lives by my count.
I wish they'd just man up and either remove it complete, or enclose it completely. Having it open like this is like having eyeglass frames without the lenses.
The goal is to preserve the 'open-cockpit'. IndyCar is doing what you've suggested: https://www.thedrive.com/accel... [thedrive.com]
To me, that's no longer even a nod at 'open cockpit'. But we're never going back to the days of the Lotus 24.
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Yeah! I won't give them money and instead give it to their competitor...of...uh??
Bittorrent
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By insisting in forcing you to buy packages, rather than allowing you to pick and choose individual channels, cable providers are only digging their own graves deeper.
No doubt.
Constitutionality aside, how about a more limited bill? I'd like the ability to permanently block the channels I don't ever intend to watch so the program grid doesn't go on for tenteen pages.
Seriously though, Maine has no right to demand a cable company offer or not offer a specific product. If you don't like what they offer, re-negotiate the contract which grants them a monopoly. Or, as others have written, revoke that legally-protected monopoly.
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There's actually a very easy and common-sense way to do that, with no downsides and lots of upsides.
Outlaw DRM.
If TV goes back to using a standard interface that anyone can implement, then you'll have multiple, competing front-end implementations. Then you can have your client filter its menus however you wish.
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You're never going to revoke copyright, so the monopoly is always going to dictate terms to the cable companies who will pass it onto you.
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In this day and age I thought all cable providers' channel guides could be customized to only show the channels you wanted. I know that I have been able to do this on my guides for at least 10+ years.
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Huh? (Score:4)
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Do you favor forcing the Baker to offer croissants despite the shop name being "The Perfect Wedding Cake"?
Or the Ford dealer being forced to carry Teslas? Or perhaps less strainedly: only blue vehicles?
Admittedly, the analogies there are a bit strained, but still.
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While the situations mentioned may all have different reasoning as far as whether
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Essentially, it seems like Comcast's argument that their channel selections are a matter of free speech may actually work. However, the courts may not buy their reasoning that this means they can't be regulated along those lines.
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"Do you favor forcing the Baker to offer croissants despite the shop name being "The Perfect Wedding Cake"?"
A better analogy would be to force the wedding cake baker to sell cake by the slice.
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Do you favor forcing the Baker to offer croissants despite the shop name being "The Perfect Wedding Cake"?
No. But don't be surprised if people complain when the only way to get a chocolate cupcake is to buy an assorted dozen that comes with mandatory flavors like peanut butter and pickle or wasabi apple.
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The analogy doesn't work for 100 reasons because bakers aren't municipally regulated monopolies.
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Huh? Comcast needs to put down the crack pipe .... (Score:2, Informative)
For starters, the cable companies are government regulated. They're not typical private businesses. They're granted a number of privileges in return for complying with a number of regulations. (EG. In many neighborhoods, they enjoy guaranteed exclusive rights to provide residents with service for a number of years. Where I live, for example? Comcast had at least a 10 year exclusive deal so when Verizon started to roll FiOS service out to the new subdivision, they weren't allowed to sell anyone television s
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"Notwithstanding any provision in a franchise"
Since communities in Maine grant franchises, this give them an out from this law. Or, I suspect, it renders the law moot. Just wait for a community to grant permission for bundling, or more likely, force local carriage and bundling to ensure subscribers are treated 'fairly'.
And we begin the decline into expecting our government, at every level, to enforce 'fairness' in all things. Égalité.
Comcast needs to get a grip! (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, the cable companies are government regulated. They're not typical private businesses. They're granted a number of privileges in return for complying with a number of regulations. (EG. In many neighborhoods, they enjoy guaranteed exclusive rights to provide residents with service for a number of years. Where I live, for example? Comcast had at least a 10 year exclusive deal so when Verizon started to roll FiOS service out to the new subdivision, they weren't allowed to sell anyone television service over it. Had to be broadband and voice telephone only, despite paying the same price everyone else paid for FiOS that included the TV bundle. Needless to say, no more than a few homes ordered FiOS.)
Seems to me it's only fair that government can dictate people are allowed to pay for only the channels they want to actually watch.
Their complaint is ridiculous when they get into the part where they claim, "Tiers and bundling reflect the exercise of First Amendment Rights". They're trying flip around the consumer's flexibility to order channels OR packages however they prefer, to say it removes consumer choice when you don't let the cable providers bundle things the way they feel is more cost effective. Hah! If they can't offer some of the programming at a reasonable price, so their standard practice is "hiding" that fact by bundling it with a bunch of low cost, lower quality content to make it feel like you're getting a better value -- that's not a 1st. Amendment issue, nor should it be an issue where they're getting "micro managed by 1 of the 50 states". It's about the consumer having more clarity about just what costs what with the offerings, and I'd love to see it enforced as a Federal mandate.
Comcast doesn't have to comply. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why Comcast is whining to the courts. If they don't want to comply then they don't have to do business in that state.
reflect[s] the exercise of First Amendment rights -- both by the programmers who decide how to license their programming to cable operators, and by the cable operators who decide how to provide that programming to the public,
It's this kind of bullshit which is exactly why we need an amendment stating that corporations are not people.
Re:Comcast doesn't have to comply. (Score:4, Insightful)
See I disagree Comcast, Disney and friends should be allowed to produce/sell/market their content however they like. The PROBLEM is that governments granted cable operators monopolies in the first place.
If anything we need and Amendment that prohibits governments from granting any sort of exclusivity to a commercial operator.
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If individual blocks of channels come from the same source, being forced to break up that block just to offer an ala carte service makes no sense. It would be like buying 300 variety packs, but you aren't allowed to sell the variety packs directly to others, and are forced to break open those variety packs to sell the individual items.
What you have done is increase the work needed to sell the product, which does mean increased costs for the final consumer. Now, big packages should be seen as a cost savi
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Except the law doesn't say that you can't sell packages. It says that you must offer them individually. That means if I only want the Science channel, I shouldn't have to buy the Super Ultra Mega package of channels that I will never watch because Science is only in that package. I can just buy the Science channel on top of basic service.
Cable companies already do this with movie and sports channels.
well not all want high cost channels forced in to (Score:2)
well not all want high cost channels forced in to basic plans.
LIke
ESPN at $8-$10+
Local RSN's at $3-$5 each and some places that can add up to $15+
Disney channel $1??
Collage sports net at $0.70-1+ each
Locals can add to $10 for all in market as well.
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I disagree with Comcast here, but your notion is exactly why they're fighting in the courts. The government does not authorize you to do business. Your ability to sell whatever you want to someone else is a fundamental right which transcends the presence of government. The government can restrict some forms of business (e.g. banning certain narcotics and snake oil, licensing o
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"I don't see why Comcast is whining to the courts. If they don't want to comply then they don't have to do business in that state."
That's the same mentality that if you don't like the President, Congress, current laws, or whenever; you can move somewhere else. The founding fathers put in a mechanism for change so people don't have to move or shut down their business when things they don't like happen. The change isn't guaranteed, but that's their right.
And trust me, I am no fan of Comcast. I didn't have ser
Not a free speech issue. (Score:2)
Here is the entire text of the law in question:
[emphasis mine]
In other words the law does not forbid cable operators from offering channel bundles. Characterizing a bundle as "free expression" is a stretch, but even if you grant that, it probably is Constitutional
Pre-Internet Technology (Score:2)
I'm not sure if I know anybody under 50 who buys "cable TV". There are lifetimes of free and interesting content online - I can't see how anybody justifies the cost. Oh, and Redbox is $2.
Producing things is so much more dopaminergic than consuming. Go do that.
Different issues at play (Score:2)
If a given content provider charges for an entire package(NBC for example), then a cable company shouldn't be held to being forced to charge for individual channels within that package. Picture if SyFy, which comes as a part of an NBC bundle had to be selected to be paid for, it would actually cost the cable company more money to break up the block and offer each channel within that package individually. Now, I am all for the idea that subscribers should be able to pick if they even want the NBC/Univers
They should not wonder (Score:3)
why people are ditching cable and cutting the cord. They are just writing their own obituaries.
Like the music and movie industries, eventually they will have to adapt or die. Same goes for the TV channel producers.
If all I want is pie. (Score:2)
If I could just buy CBC (Score:2)
I get all the channels I need over the air with an HDTV antenna, frequently as 1080p instead of the lower bandwidth 1080i that Comcast offers, except for CBC.
If I could just order that one channel, I could stop subsidizing the sportsball infrastructure, and watch all my soccer games using the free to use SAP (second audio channel) that comes with my TV.
That would be great!
Good old Comcast (Score:2)
Always looking out for... well, themselves, really.
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Content companies should be paying the cable companies for carrying their channels...
Re:I don't understand why the companies (Score:5, Funny)
What the market will bear? You mean, like, letting the customer decide what he wants to buy? Next you'd want multiple suppliers competing with each other and the customer deciding with his money which supplier should prevail while others not offering what he wants should perish?
That's communism! Or ... hell, it has to be something bad, whatever that may be called! That's just so un-american!
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> Cable companies often get exclusive rights from the local municipalities
This is not true. The Supreme Court ruled in the 80's towns licensing one cable company to service their area is akin to licensing a single newspaper. They also ruled the utilities HAVE TO rent you space on their poles to run your cables.
Your local town hall will have the paperwork you need.
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Because they already have enough data and they know they can't get enough subscribers to pay for all the special interest programing under the a-la-cart model.
So either the cable operators (who incidentally own a lot of the content production now) would have to either cut some of that programing, and deal with the political consequences of say not carrying something like BET in Maine; which would be severe even though the amount of people in that state in a demographic who actually want to watch might be co
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Just being devil's advocate here, but if the cable companies were required to offer ala carte, wouldn't they be highly motivated to renegotiate their relationship with content providers?