Embrace the change, NuTV and others are the future.
Is
a la carte cable really a “farce” as 21st Century Fox CEO Chase Carey claims? Well we’re about to find out because our neighbors to the north are doing us the favor of giving it a try.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, TV subscribers in Ontario this week will be able to buy channels a la carte from IPTV startup
VMedia, whose UChoose Store will charge subscribers around $2.12 per month for each channel they subscribe to. Subscribers will also have the option of buying small bundles of 6 channels that will cost $1.65 each per month or 12 channels that will cost $1.41 each per month.
Canadian
cable companies are predictably pitching a fit about
VMedia’s business model and are claiming that such a la carte services will result in “less investment in homegrown programming and more American shows filling primetime schedules,”
The Hollywood Reporter says. But if VMedia is successful, it will severely undermine
the cable industry’s usual scare story that claims a la carte services would be just as or more expensive than traditional bundles because they’d have to charge a lot more per channel to make up for all the subsidies they get from home shopping channels.
Needless to say, anyone interested in seeing whether the economics can work for a la carte will be watching VMedia’s progress very carefully
http://bgr.com/2013/12/12/vmedia-a-la-carte-cable/
Currently, providers pay $28.32 for about a dozen channels, but that cost is expected to increase 36% by 2018 according to estimates by media research firm SNL Kagan.
Which network charges cable providers the most each month per customer? ESPN with an estimated cost of $6.04. That figure doesn’t include ESPN 2, which is also among the 10 most expensive channels at $.74 per customer. By 2018, SNL Kagan estimates providers will pay $8.38 per month to air the sports network.
The cost for ESPN is nearly 43-times the median average price of 14 cents paid for each channel a subscriber receives. The next most expensive network is TNT, which charges $1.48 per month per customer. Among the least expensive networks are Nick 2, Hallmark Movie Channel, MTV Hits and CNBC World.
It’s worth noting that Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is responsible for three of the 10 most costly cable channels. USA clocks in at $0.83, SyFy costs $0.27 and Bravo costs $0.25.
http://consumerist.com/2014/08/05/espn-accounts-for-more-than-6-of-your-cable-bill-could-soon-top-8/
