Ala Carte programming

[osu1991]

That's why Directv wont get my business back. I wont do contracts anymore. I bought all my Directv and Dish equipment and had both services for many years before dropping Directv and keeping Dish. I own my equipment and have no contract. I don't like being locked into things, as you never know what will happen. I spent many years paying off all debt except for my main house and occasionally vehicles. I like knowing if I had too, I can get by with minimum expenses each month. I have enough trouble justifying the perceived value of paid tv for me now and it will be really hard once football ends.

 

[pdiddy]

That's why Directv wont get my business back. I wont do contracts anymore. I bought all my Directv and Dish equipment and had both services for many years before dropping Directv and keeping Dish. I own my equipment and have no contract. I don't like being locked into things, as you never know what will happen. I spent many years paying off all debt except for my main house and occasionally vehicles. I like knowing if I had too, I can get by with minimum expenses each month. I have enough trouble justifying the perceived value of paid tv for me now and it will be really hard once football ends.

I couldn't agree with you more,good for you,you have the right idea osu 1991.Contracts are the biggest rip off.More people need to wake up.we get to complacent and just think that's the way it is.But it's not.

 

[Jimbo]

I couldn't agree with you more,good for you,you have the right idea osu 1991.Contracts are the biggest rip off.More people need to wake up.we get to complacent and just think that's the way it is.But it's not.

Problem is, if you Want the item that has a contract with it, you have 2 choices, get it and agree or pass it up even if you want it.

 

[Jimbo]

That's why Directv wont get my business back. I wont do contracts anymore. I bought all my Directv and Dish equipment and had both services for many years before dropping Directv and keeping Dish. I own my equipment and have no contract. I don't like being locked into things, as you never know what will happen. I spent many years paying off all debt except for my main house and occasionally vehicles. I like knowing if I had too, I can get by with minimum expenses each month. I have enough trouble justifying the perceived value of paid tv for me now and it will be really hard once football ends.

You say D* won't get your service back because of commitments ?
DISH also has commitments, does it not ?

I too hate commitments, but they appear to be the norm any more ...
As for TV, I don't like to be in a commitment, I may or may not be in one now with D*, don't remember ...

As far as c the commitment if I am in one with D*, doesn't matter to me as I have no plans to leave, unless something drastic happened.

 

[osu1991]

You say D* won't get your service back because of commitments ?
DISH also has commitments, does it not ?

I too hate commitments, but they appear to be the norm any more ...
As for TV, I don't like to be in a commitment, I may or may not be in one now with D*, don't remember ...

As far as c the commitment if I am in one with D*, doesn't matter to me as I have no plans to leave, unless something drastic happened.

Dish you can still use your own equipment and get service without commitments.

I had Directv and Dish both for about 7 or 8 yrs. I gave directv up as I hated the equipment when they stopped using Hughes and Sony receivers. I also had no way to get WB or UPN which I watched a lot of, so the superstations became more important, in addition Dish offered to let me have two 501/508's with no commitment when my owned Dishplayers started acting up after Microsoft stopped supporting them and Dish updates screwed them up even more.

I've bought and owned every receiver for Dish and Directv, which I also think there should be a little discount or something for subs with owned equipment as opposed to leased equipment.

 

[Drucifer]

Just for my own knowledge,I'll like to know how many people would like ala carte programming?. . .

Well I would want to go all the way. So I'm not interested in a la carte channels. Now if want to talk individual series, I might be interested.

 

[joed32]

C-band was ala-carte. It was easy, inexpensive, and worked just fine. The notion that ala-carte will cost as much or more than what is available now just doesn't hold water. You can bet the farm, though, that a significant number of (garbage) channels would disappear. I suspect there would be an upward nudge in quality as well as long term network viability would switch back to pleasing the end user as opposed to cable and satellite providers.

C-Band was ala carte and when you decide what channels you actually wanted to watch and total up the prices you could always find a package that included those channels at a lower price and with more channels. You're going to pay one way or another.

 

[harshness]

C-band was ala-carte. It was easy, inexpensive, and worked just fine. The notion that ala-carte will cost as much or more than what is available now just doesn't hold water.

The epic fail in the C-band argument is that the channels have become spread so thinly (what used to be 1 channel is now spread across three or more) that you can't pick just one and get what you want. To suggest that they will surely condense back to a single channel based on limited subscription is short-sighted as they'll just add more ads and deliver even cheaper programming.

Blaming DIRECTV (or any other carrier) for bundling is like blaming your local law enforcement for bad legislation.

 

[Jimbo]

Dish you can still use your own equipment and get service without commitments.

I had Directv and Dish both for about 7 or 8 yrs. I gave directv up as I hated the equipment when they stopped using Hughes and Sony receivers. I also had no way to get WB or UPN which I watched a lot of, so the superstations became more important, in addition Dish offered to let me have two 501/508's with no commitment when my owned Dishplayers started acting up after Microsoft stopped supporting them and Dish updates screwed them up even more.

I've bought and owned every receiver for Dish and Directv, which I also think there should be a little discount or something for subs with owned equipment as opposed to leased equipment.

I bought all mine until the change to leased came along, back in the day when you could have different recvrs with different options on them, that was nice ... i had Sonys and RCAs and a friend had Hughes.

 

[acostapimps]

I used to pick channels individually before Comcast existed, at least what I remember being on AT&T as a cable system.

 

[NGeorge]

I'm surprised no one has brought up DishPix -- E* tried this for a number of years ago. It was pick any 10 channels for $14.99, Viacom channels not available -- it went away around 2003 IIRC, then they kicked everyone off it around 2010.

If something like that could come back, I think it wouldn't be too bad. Not sure if E* dropped it simply because they wanted higher ARPU, or if the contracts with the networks were just getting so complex that they couldn't offer it anymore.

N

 

[Jimbo]

Dish you can still use your own equipment and get service without commitments.

I had Directv and Dish both for about 7 or 8 yrs. I gave directv up as I hated the equipment when they stopped using Hughes and Sony receivers. I also had no way to get WB or UPN which I watched a lot of, so the superstations became more important, in addition Dish offered to let me have two 501/508's with no commitment when my owned Dishplayers started acting up after Microsoft stopped supporting them and Dish updates screwed them up even more.

I've bought and owned every receiver for Dish and Directv, which I also think there should be a little discount or something for subs with owned equipment as opposed to leased equipment.

I didn't know that you could still buy a DISH recvr, they are the ones that started all this Lease stuff in the first place and in '06, D* followed suit.

 

[Jimbo]

I'm surprised no one has brought up DishPix -- E* tried this for a number of years ago. It was pick any 10 channels for $14.99, Viacom channels not available -- it went away around 2003 IIRC, then they kicked everyone off it around 2010.

If something like that could come back, I think it wouldn't be too bad. Not sure if E* dropped it simply because they wanted higher ARPU, or if the contracts with the networks were just getting so complex that they couldn't offer it anymore.

N

I would love to see the provider give you a list of the channels on the system with the price we would need to pay to get them that way ...
Of course, the provider would have to have a minimum that the person needed to purchase.

This could be interesting.

 

[lnbchris]

I'd bet that a substantial majority don't want to deal with it.

The insurmountable problem with a la carte is that picking a channel no longer gets you what you thought it was going to bring. History is perhaps the best example. Most of the interesting program is on H2 while the original channel is substantially crap TV. Most of the MTV channels don't offer much in the way of music (Palladia being a notable exception). The cooking channels are more about reality TV and other filler rather than delivering cooking ideas, tips and recipes.

Then there's the elephant in the living room that is Disney.

Something I noticed is that Mike Rowe's new show is on CNN (ok I can understand why he did that), or the Dirty Jobs reruns are now on Animal Planet.

 

[dishfan82]

Well Verizon is coming out with Ala Carte over the Internet soon so it should be interesting.


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[lparsons21]

I would love to see the provider give you a list of the channels on the system with the price we would need to pay to get them that way ...
Of course, the provider would have to have a minimum that the person needed to purchase.

This could be interesting.

From the provider side of the equation, they would probably need to have an 'access fee' that would be some meaningful number and then a per-channel cost after that. In the end I suspect the ARPU would end up about the same as it is now, just less channels.

You could accomplish the same thing if you had more than 2 user-editable guide listings I would think.

 

[JUCJ85]

I'm perfectly happy with my package on directv, my house hold is different for each person, I am a sports guy, my sister is movies/network shows, and my mom does her things with like TLC, Food Network, Cooking Channel, WE TV, and channels like that.

I have the ultimate package, and we pretty much watch 80% of those channels combined between the 3 of us in the house.

 

[Jimbo]

Well Verizon is coming out with Ala Carte over the Internet soon so it should be interesting.


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Imagine the bandwidth being used !

 

[dishfan82]

Imagine the bandwidth being used !

That's where I think it'll fail. If all these providers put a cap on then people will be forced to pay TV.


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[robert 3400]

ala-carte is doable but the broadcasters dont want it they have lobbing to keep it the way it is for years
they know people only watch a limited amount of channels but they would lose revunue if you just wanted lets say cnn, history and your locals.
the fcc should help but never did and congress is romanced by the big brodcasters to make sure it doesnt happen iv wanted ala cart for 20 years but i doubt it will happen.