Is alacart even feasable?
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The question I asked is totally unlike any asked before. Most of us know alacart can't work and the reasons are pretty much agreed on. My question revolves around mandated alacart programming. It's not meant to be a deadly serious question. Just a way to illustrate how certain companies, like ABC/Disney/ESPN can force carriers to have such a huge up charge for preferred channels. If you could order alacart from Dish would you pay say a $50 per month fee for ESPN? If that was the only channel you wanted would you pay the asking price?
while it is a great idea the providers figured out to split channels on different themes requiring you to get more than 1 theme
Do you really believe that? If I go back to the original post you ask about what it would cost for a la Carte. That ha been asked and discussed several times before. If you want to discuss it again fine but we have discussed feasibility, cost, the Canadian model, capitalism, etc. before.
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What little bit of a la Carte exists in the market place is wildly popular (it's called netflix). We're starting to see ESPN get their toe in the game too with ESPN 3. ESPN, by the way, is the reason many stay with the old providers (my self included). It's the old provider's killer app. Interesting that ESPN bought the SEC right back in '09. That would be a nice package to offer as a streaming subscription. Can't see keeping any old provider in my house if I can stream SEC for ~$150 to $200 a year to my HTPC. Once you get ESPN's content on the net, you've got a tipping point. Like there is the music industry before and after iTunes. Game changer.
Oh, and to answer the thread topic, "is alacart even feasable?", well I'm ready to dump VH1 (no music) and MTV (no music) and Discovery (dumbed down to reality shows) and the History Channel (dumbed down like Discovery), I could go on. A lot of the channels only available in the higher tiers are what the low tier channels used to be (Music on VH1 classic, real history shows on History International, better science shows on the Science channel instead of Discovery). It's not worth another $20x12 to for me.
For me, I wouldn't mind if 70% of my channels fold. I'm not watching them anyway. But I do pay for them.
Oh, and to answer the thread topic, "is alacart even feasable?", well I'm ready to dump VH1 (no music) and MTV (no music) and Discovery (dumbed down to reality shows) and the History Channel (dumbed down like Discovery), I could go on. A lot of the channels only available in the higher tiers are what the low tier channels used to be (Music on VH1 classic, real history shows on History International, better science shows on the Science channel instead of Discovery). It's not worth another $20x12 to for me.
For me, I wouldn't mind if 70% of my channels fold. I'm not watching them anyway. But I do pay for them.
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What makes the scenerio different is that we are assuming that a la cart is the only available option thus highlighting how companies like the ABC/ESPN/Disney empire must structure their individual offerings to the providers. For instance,would you be willing to pay $50 mo for ESPN as a stand alone channel? The question is how much would you be willing to pay for your favorite 12 channels and that you would undoubtedly pay less for those same 12 channels if they were bundled with 100 more channels you could care less about. It's just a what if thing that of course will never happen.
Sounds like they have been looking southward to the U.S. on how they force us to pick higher programming packs to get everything you want.
Unless, say, you have zero interest in two particularly-expensive specific categories of channels... say, sports (the ESPN cartel) and children's (the Disney Mafia).
At the very least, they could maintain their price points and probably make a few million customers happier by turning it into a "Chinese Menu", where the expensive sports channels were considered to be equivalent to HBO or Showtime. For example:
America Silver/Gold -- substitute Platinum HD for the sports & kids channels
America's Top 200 -- optionally substitute HBO or Showtime for the sports channels
America's Top 250 -- optionally substitute HBO and Showtime for the sports channels and kids channels (also excluding HBO/Showtime's kids channels)
I mention the sports channels in particular because, as a group, they're probably the biggest single chunk of Dish/DirecTV/Cable's programming expenses, and they also happen to be a large, unambiguously-identifiable block of channels whose entertainment value approaches zero to specific demographics who'd be delighted to get an otherwise-"premium" channel(group) for "free" in exchange for them. No net revenue loss to the provider, happier customers.
What makes it the same is the fact that all of the topic raised (and the question itself) were discussed before. I am not going to play ping pong with this though. If you want to insist that this conversation is unique you can do so----and have the lat word.
A la carte is a simply retarded idea. There is no other way to put it, it’ retarded, plain and simple. All a la carte will achieve is higher prices and less content and choices. Why don’t all those that support a la carte, support true a la carte. If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right. Buy all of your TV shows on iTunes for $2 or $3 bucks a pop, and then come back here and tell me how much money you’re saving. Take the ‘Why should I pay for channels I never watch?’ argument one step farther ‘Why should I pay for a channel I only watch one show on?’ I only watch A&E for The Glades, why should I have to pay for 168 hours of programming a week on a certain channel, if I only watch it for one hour?
Bottom line is, no matter how much one bitches about it, nothings going to change. A la carte is simple not going to happen, or at least I hope it never happens, which it probably won’t.
Bottom line is, no matter how much one bitches about it, nothings going to change. A la carte is simple not going to happen, or at least I hope it never happens, which it probably won’t.
If I could buy the shows I genuinely care about for $2-3 apiece the day they air for the first time (instead of having to wait 3-6 months or more), I'd cancel my satellite service tomorrow and come out ahead financially. Frankly, if channels like MTV and Bravo would allow it, Time Warner/Viacom/whomever could literally start their own virtual cable companies by letting you subscribe to all of their content for a month, and having some standard DVR platform download one copy of every show a few days before the episode airs for the first time (2048-bit encryption, keys published moments before the episode airs and made available on demand thereafter). Add some minimal client-side intelligence to be a virtual VJ mixing in customized commercials in realtime, and the whole concept of broadcasting episodes over and over starts to seem kind of silly. As much as I despise Apple, I can easily see them becoming Virtual Cable Company #0 and skimming off customers like me who spend nearly every waking moment of the week online, and maybe a dozen hours per month watching actual TV shows. All that's missing is the money to break the cable/satellite industry's stranglehold on the content of Showtime, HBO, Bravo, etc... and all the industry really HAS anymore is temporary exclusivity
Ala Carte can work and work well, except its all about greed now, Back in C band analog days it worked great and you saved quite a bit. Now the programmers and providers want to maximize cash flow and profit so if it was offered on pizza or cable it would be tall dollar.
If the middleman (charlie, Directv, SRL,ect....) was cut out of the picture and a person was able to pay the channel owner directly at the same wholesale cost that ((charlie, Directv, SRL,ect....) pay. It would work and it would be cheaper! Way cheaper! But, it would also require everyone to have cband dishes again and a receiver that was able to take multiple authorizations from any programmer on the list! As you know alacarte gets way expensive when uplinkers are involved. Eliminate the uplinker and buy direct from the source and you have a winner.
Back in the C-band days you didn't have the amount of channels available today. You all know that almost everyone that wants a la carte is a pretty big complainer and usually never satisfied? I'll bet if you actually had a la carte you would start complaining about how you are paying too much for a channel just because you watch oneh on it. Then everyone will just want to pay for just the program they wish to watch. Now we no longer have any channels, just programs that you pay to watch. Is that really what you want? I'm pretty happy just the way it is and I think most people would not be willing to give up what they have now.
Even Cband was flawed from the beginning as you still had to go through a middleman that had thier hands in your pocket. Just for pushing a button to turn on the channel. 50 cents to them and 25 cents to the actual channel providing the content!
. Now, if that same thing happened today it would be $4.00 to charlie and 50 cents to the channel owner!
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Very clear! Because you don't want to pay $10 for the next tier and want to cherry pick from those extra channels, you and the others who do this will simply drive the price of the upgrade package higher for everyone else. Figure it out. I'm not interested in a price increase to solve your problem.
Maybe subscription TV in general could be cheaper if we didn't have several channels running 'The Real Hooker Housewives of Whatever County' and 'Keeping Up With The Kardoucheians' nonstop, all day and every day. For what we pay, there should be more original programming, perhaps on fewer channels ...
... Just sayin'
... Just sayin'
