Cable Customers' Choices Being Debated

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The Federal Communications Commission chairman is once again pushing for cable companies to offer a choice to consumers that allows us to choose only the channels we want. The head of the FCC (and every cable subscriber on the planet) believes consumers should be able to pick and choose what channels they want instead of being forced to buy prepackaged bundles.

The overall lack of support might seem surprising, considering that the average household in 2006 received 104 channels, yet tuned in to only 16 of them, according to the Nielsen TV ratings company. If we aren't watching all those channels, why can't we just pick the ones we want and avoid paying for the rest?
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OH HELL YES!

I've been dying for something like this. All I need is History Channel, Food Network, TLC, and Discovery Channel!

:D
 
i can see it now, you get 100 channels for your your $50... or you can pick each channel for only $5 a month! what a deal!

also this would be quite litererally impossible to do with analog cable...

would have to be with digital cable
 
Excellent I hate how you only get 70 channels with their basic service (in my area) and to get all the good channels you have to bump up to the next package which costs almost $100. Those 70 basic include 10 spanish, which no one in my house speaks, the various paid advertisment channels and only a couple news channels like cnn and msnbc.
 
This is the greatest idea that will fail.

Not fail because it is flawed. It will fail cause cable companies want it to fail.

I love the idea of handpicking the channels I want. Heck why not go a step further and open up the cable lines so I get to choose which provider I want. They talk about competition and the evils of monopolies yet where you live you have only ONE choice of cable company.

Sure you can select to get TV through your phone company or satellite so why can't I choose a different cable provider? Because they make the rules up as they go.

Plain and simple, the game is rigged and we all know it but there is nothing we can do about it.

I hope this passes I do. But it is the FCC pushing for this they have little control over what cable companies offer.
 
This is a great idea, too bad it wont happen.

I would just like to thank Rogers Cable for forcing me to sign up for 900+ channels just so I can watch the 10 HD channels, that hardly ever have true HD programs on them anyway.

Ya thats a real deal. :rolleyes:
 
Man, I'd love this if it ever comes alive.

CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, History Channel and maybe a couple others and it would be so much better than the $50 for basic cable then $55 for cable internet that the one local provider in my area charges. :(
 
This has been floating around for a long time now.
It won't happen.
 
Actually this idea would destory a great many stations that we love an enjoy. The reason why we can get new shows or channels so quickly is the low inerstion cost because of the cost shared by the "swarm". If we isolate the swarm....it will become a very dark day indeed for any new content.

However..if this idea was "enabled", it would force a great many show online.
 
FLECOM said:
i can see it now, you get 100 channels for your your $50... or you can pick each channel for only $5 a month! what a deal!
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I wouldn't be complaining; heck, I'd be happy at $10 per channel. All I want is Food Network, History Channel, CNN, and Fox. That's all I ever watched when I was paying $140 a month for Satellite back in the day. :rolleyes:

Oh yeah, the on-demand movies would be great too, for those simultaneous theater/cable releases. :p
 
This will never happen, it's a dream of most people with myself and tons of people I know included but will never see the light of day. It won't happen b/c advertiser's pay for tv and the channels we like and enjoy. In order to get the good channels we all like and enjoy the most, "We the consumer" have to pay for a bunch of crap that we never watch or didn't want in the first place.

It would also cut out a lot of the channels that you may watch on occassion or happen to be flipping channels looking for something to watch and actually find something remotely interesting or an old movie that you may want to watch again b/c nothing is on the channels you normally view on an everyday basis.

If this happens the cost of Satellite tv/Cable Tv will only rise b/c of fewer stations to choose from and less money made by the people that make it all happen. It's win/lose situation for the consumer and for the cable/satellite providers, so honestly I can't see it happening ever, now or in the future.

I guess we can all wish for it though and hope that the cost wouldn't increase too much and all could be happier. (Yeah right!!) :rolleyes:
 
This would end up being a TERRIBLE thing for customers. Yea, at first it seems like an ok idea, only paying for what you want, but i guarantee that average prices paid by consumers would go up. Also, i know some people are thinking that they would order only the channels they want (like 15-20 channels), but there would have to be a minimum number of channels, and then the price per channel would be expensive.

Think about it, I currently pay~$45/mo for cable TV (Comcast). I receive around 190 channels. That's about 24 cents per channel. Of course there's a ton of channels there that I have never watched. What would happen is Comcast, or WOW, or charter or whatever, would start charging 30-50 cents (or more, 50 cents is a good number too) per channel. SO yea, you may end up paying a little less on your bill, but your per-channel cost will skyrocket, and at the end of the day, I don't think there will be a huge difference.
At the same time, the per channel cost of premium channels would increase as well to balance off the customers who buy like 10 regular channels and a bunch of premium ones, which cost more.

The bill you receive may be lower, but at the end of the day you will be getting reamed worse than we are now.
 
I would prefer if they just made the content available instead of channels only. I may not watch channel but there may be a show I would like to watch with friends or if someone is over. Sites like youtube, break etc just show how popular that format can be.
 
Trepidati0n said:
Actually this idea would destory a great many stations that we love an enjoy. The reason why we can get new shows or channels so quickly is the low inerstion cost because of the cost shared by the "swarm". If we isolate the swarm....it will become a very dark day indeed for any new content.QUOTE]

Ding ding ding...

I'll start on some of the issues and get back to this.

First off is this "television violence" issue they speak of. Cable is a pay service. No one is forcing you to pay for it. I'm sorry the government should have nothing to do with a pay optional service. Also every modern tv and cable box I have seen has some kind of filtering built into it. It is the parents duty to block the content. No one elce should have to deal with it.

Second do you really want the goverment trying to regulate something? How often do they get this right? I mean come on leave them out of it.

Big thing I see though as this would hurt content. Sure the big networks would be ok but what about the ones that go for a niche crowd. Think those spanish channels would stay around? Not in my area. The number of people paying for them would be so low the cable operator wouldn't carry them. Think oxygen could survive? What about a bunch of the kids channels? How many people would really pay for all of them if they were seperate? Hell even channels like the discovery channels would have to cut back as their funding would drop. I also see this making cable even more confusing for people which just makes people angry and makes the cost go up.

I also wonder about how much this would save your average person that wanted say 20 or 25 channels? I just don't see this helping at all.
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please, i watch two "shows" a week, that i download from itunes so i dont have watch commercials, and the nba, which i pay extra for already. I say bring it on..im sick of my cable bill.
 
I think they should make smaller packages, but not the single channel selections. For example there should be a learning package that gives you all the channels like TLC, discovery & history; or a cartoon package that gives you all the cartoon networks. This would allow you to pay for less channels but still give the smaller networks a chance because they could be packaged with the channels that relate to it.

I just get so annoyed because I am paying for all the religious channels, all the 24 hour news, sports, etc. All I want are the learning channels (TLC, Discovery, etc) and the cartoon channels.
 
I would love for this to happen. There are only about 5 channels I care about. Of course this would make some of the niche networks shut down, but honestly, is that a bad thing? It will save some satellite bandwidth for the stuff we actually care about in HD.
 
They should do this with internet speeds where you can select your own speed based on dollars per megabit. I want a faster upload without paying $2000 a month for business quality internet. :rolleyes:
 
I can see making some stations optional (yes I'm talking about ESPN, which is probably the most expensive basic channel), but if you really went ala carte on all stations, you'd pay more money for less channels and, I suspect, it'd be next to impossible to get a new channel launched, simply because nobody is going to pay 2 bucks to check out some new station.

That said, cable is just silly. Where I'm at, Comcast has lifeline cable (just the locals) for 10 bucks or so. The next step up is something like $50.00 or $60.00! If the crappy picture quality of Cable doesn't send you to Dish or DTV, surely the outrageous price of basic cable will.

that said, I'd probably get the news channels, USA, SciFi (must have BSG), FX and Discovery....I'd probably get ESPN a few months a year, but most of the time I can live without it.
 
FLECOM said:
i can see it now, you get 100 channels for your your $50... or you can pick each channel for only $5 a month! what a deal!

also this would be quite litererally impossible to do with analog cable...

would have to be with digital cable
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No, heres how it will work.
First in order for this to work, you have to have a Digital Cable box, all the sttandard cable channels will have to be scrambled, so to get anything at all, you have to have the decoder box, thats going to be $40 a month and comes with one free channel. then you get additional local channels for $1 a month more, regianal channels are $2 a month more, and standard national channels are $3 each a month. premium National channels will be $4 a month each and finally your movie channels will be $5 a month more. the people who use to have Everything are paying about the same and getting less channels cause there not going to want to pay $3 a month each for 6 differant CNN channels and the christian channels and such. the people who complained about having to pay for channels they didn't want are now paying for an expensive tuner box, only getting to watch TV on a single TV and paying more!

As it is now with the package system, if you want the base package they simply run a cable to your house and you plug it into all your TVs, if you want a little larger selection they remove a $2 filter from the line and now your getting 76 channels instead of 16 and your only paying about $30 for it. who do they think is going to pay for a $600 digital cable box? the people that dont want to pay for all the 76 channels when there only watching 5 of them.

They wont be paying for the channels, but there still going to be paying!
 
Well then why not have a basic package that includes these lower channels with the option to pick 10 you want, and then have the next package to choose 20 and so on?
 
The cable companies need to do away with the current welfare system they have in place. If we can “trim the fat” and get rid of all of these channels that are leeching money off of the must have channels we may actually get even better content. Also, al la carte doesn’t mean there has to be a flat rate for each channel. ESPN, for example charges the cable companies a small fortune to carry it. Why can they charge that fee plus a small fee? Say, charge the customer $3.95 for ESPN, but only $.025 for Lifetime? At least this way the customer knows exactly what they are paying for. Also, this will provide the cable companies with a ton of metrics and statistical data on the channels that actually subscribed to, what other channels often grouped together, how long those channels are subscribed to, etc. Advertisers will eat that kind of data up.
 
Farseer said:
The cable companies need to do away with the current welfare system they have in place. If we can “trim the fat” and get rid of all of these channels that are leeching money off of the must have channels we may actually get even better content. Also, al la carte doesn’t mean there has to be a flat rate for each channel. ESPN, for example charges the cable companies a small fortune to carry it. Why can they charge that fee plus a small fee? Say, charge the customer $3.95 for ESPN, but only $.025 for Lifetime? At least this way the customer knows exactly what they are paying for. Also, this will provide the cable companies with a ton of metrics and statistical data on the channels that actually subscribed to, what other channels often grouped together, how long those channels are subscribed to, etc. Advertisers will eat that kind of data up.
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Nah, that wont happen either, got to remember, how do they sell the packages, not by saying it has a couple really good channels in it, but by saying with this package you will have 380 channels to choose from. Those useless channels are a marketing tool!
 
This sounds logistically complicated, imagine the phone calls..

cust: "what channels you got?"

supp: "100 channels, sir."

cust; "can you list them to me?"

The only way to do it would be in person, which means no more phone upgrades/downgrades mostly, a step back, or over the net, which won't work obviously for people without net access.
 
swatbat said:
Trepidati0n said:
Actually this idea would destory a great many stations that we love an enjoy. The reason why we can get new shows or channels so quickly is the low inerstion cost because of the cost shared by the "swarm". If we isolate the swarm....it will become a very dark day indeed for any new content.QUOTE]

Ding ding ding...

I'll start on some of the issues and get back to this.

First off is this "television violence" issue they speak of. Cable is a pay service. No one is forcing you to pay for it. I'm sorry the government should have nothing to do with a pay optional service. Also every modern tv and cable box I have seen has some kind of filtering built into it. It is the parents duty to block the content. No one elce should have to deal with it.

Second do you really want the goverment trying to regulate something? How often do they get this right? I mean come on leave them out of it.

Big thing I see though as this would hurt content. Sure the big networks would be ok but what about the ones that go for a niche crowd. Think those spanish channels would stay around? Not in my area. The number of people paying for them would be so low the cable operator wouldn't carry them. Think oxygen could survive? What about a bunch of the kids channels? How many people would really pay for all of them if they were seperate? Hell even channels like the discovery channels would have to cut back as their funding would drop. I also see this making cable even more confusing for people which just makes people angry and makes the cost go up.

I also wonder about how much this would save your average person that wanted say 20 or 25 channels? I just don't see this helping at all.
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Unfortunately the cable industry is heavily regulated. Thats why you do not have a choice of different cable providers. So you get stuck with whoever services your area and they can jack the price up with little recourse for the consumer. What they need to do is de-regulate it and allow competitors to go against the various cable companies. Just like the phone industry. Take Philadelphia for example. We are not allowed to have Verizon Fios service in the city at all because Fios can be used as a television service provider and because of that they won't let them in because they would be in competition with Comcast and apparently you are not allowed to compete with a cable company...So all consumers suffer here even if you live in the few areas that are not services by comcast (which is done to prevent a total monopoly but then Comcast just buys those guys up) and are unable to get any really high speed internet past the DSL speeds.
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stabilep said:
Unfortunately the cable industry is heavily regulated. Thats why you do not have a choice of different cable providers. So you get stuck with whoever services your area and they can jack the price up with little recourse for the consumer. What they need to do is de-regulate it and allow competitors to go against the various cable companies. Just like the phone industry. Take Philadelphia for example. We are not allowed to have Verizon Fios service in the city at all because Fios can be used as a television service provider and because of that they won't let them in because they would be in competition with Comcast and apparently you are not allowed to compete with a cable company...So all consumers suffer here even if you live in the few areas that are not services by comcast (which is done to prevent a total monopoly but then Comcast just buys those guys up) and are unable to get any really high speed internet past the DSL speeds.
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Verizon could still pump in Fios and just offer phone and internet on it. Besides they just have a monopoly on the tech in the area. You can get the service from satellite. Yea de-regulating the industry would help but it isn't the only issue.
 
Don't blame the cable and satellite companies for lack of a la carte channel selections. Most of them probably wouldn't mind doing it because it would a) potentially allow them to raise prices (especially for the people who will over-order) and b) free up bandwidth by releasing channels that most people don't want.

No, the people who absolutely don't want this to happen are the owners of the channels - Viacom, ABC/Disney, NBC/Universal, Time Warner, etc. What happens is that when they're negotiating with the cable/satellite providers, they sell the channels in packages and force those providers to take channels they don't really want in order to get the ones they do. They also require the cable/satellite companies to place channels in particular packages (for example, NBC might let a company put Sleuth in the second tier but only if the company guarantees USA and SciFi in the basic package). Sometimes, if one is being honest, this can actually benefit the consumer in that the cable/satellite provider can't price-gouge people to the point that they'll quit entirely and the companies still have to compete with other providers.

If the cable/satellite providers could get, for example, Disney to consolidate their multiple kids' channels into one or two channels and then offer those channels a la carte, they'd love it. As it is, they tend to get forced to provide those channels at the lowest rate they charge because Disney might hold out, say, ESPN2 on them if they don't. <--just a hypothetical example, not a specific situation I'm aware of.
 
The Gonz said:
This is the greatest idea that will fail.

Not fail because it is flawed. It will fail cause cable companies want it to fail.

I love the idea of handpicking the channels I want. Heck why not go a step further and open up the cable lines so I get to choose which provider I want. They talk about competition and the evils of monopolies yet where you live you have only ONE choice of cable company.

Sure you can select to get TV through your phone company or satellite so why can't I choose a different cable provider? Because they make the rules up as they go.

Plain and simple, the game is rigged and we all know it but there is nothing we can do about it.

I hope this passes I do. But it is the FCC pushing for this they have little control over what cable companies offer.
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Son;t forget that when you are late in paying the bill the cable company is very quick to shut you off and when you pay they take forever to switch your cable back on and sometiems fry their own cable equipment in doing so. Had my cable modem die when they restored the internet to mny house after ebing late witht he bill. I wish they would get rid of these "legal" public monnopolies so I caould choose wwho;s got the best programming and prices. Cable si still ebtter than DSL. Dont; ahve to buy any equipment its leased for very little each month and I get new stuff whent hey update it. but we area ll getting raped!
 
swatbat said:
Verizon could still pump in Fios and just offer phone and internet on it. Besides they just have a monopoly on the tech in the area. You can get the service from satellite. Yea de-regulating the industry would help but it isn't the only issue.
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Fios competed with Phone/Internet/and Video all things that comcast has a heavy market in (except the phones) in Philadelphia. Fios would have been a hinderance to Comcast's profit. Even if they got rid of the video (which is stupid) Comcast would block it because The FIOS internet is much faster then their cable internet while DSL is slower then Comcast. As for satellite trying to do that in a metropolitan area is not always practical or even possible.

All I am saying is that al-carte is not the bigger issue. The bigger issue needs to be the de-regulation of the cable monopolies. There is no reason to have to regulate what cable service you can get. You can decide who your long distance company is, you can decide who your DSL and ISP's are. Heck in some areas you can decide who your electric company even is. Yet not your cable company?
 
I'd love to see this happen,but since the consumer always gets the short end of the stick,it probably won't.If I had to pick one service I felt I was being overcharged for the most,it would be cable.I doubt I watch more than a small fraction of the channels,but the ones I watch regularly aren't included with the cheaper basic package.Even the premium channels like HBO don't seem worth the money anymore.That's progress for you,over 300 channels,and there still isn't anything good on half the time!:mad:
 
I agree with some of those here. Competition is the key here. The bottom line is that right now the cable companies stand to lose nothing, hence why should they change? I used to have Cox Communications for everything. Then I realized that I work so much that I might watch a couple hours of TV a night. When I did watch TV it was news, Animal Planet, Discovery, or history. I was paying over $60 a month after taxes for maybe 6 hours a week of entertainment. I know that doesn't sound like much but when your well below the poverty line like myself 60 bucks is a lot of money. I mean really couldn't the cable companies offer an educational package? I get local news over the air now. I told cox to shove it. While I'm at it should I mention something else. I had the Premium internet service through cox so this meant that in the early morning I could get up to 16 megabits per second(synthetic test from cox's Las Vegas speed test), however during peak hours my speeds were more like less than 6 megabits/sec. For this service I paid about $75/month before taxes. This might have been fine if it weren't for the fact that the packet loss was horrendous. Not a big deal to how most people use the internet but packet loss and competitive gaming don't mix. You think the cable company in this particular instance could get away with the level of service offered if there was competition? I now have no cable TV, and I use ATT Yahoo internet(6Mb no packet loss/lower latency). Cox didn't have it all wrong though. They give you up to 70MB of web space and access to ALL the newsgroups. I guess it just comes down to what you value.
 
meh... so nice "educational" channels like discovery science, the national geographic station,etc are considered "premium" channels, but absolutely useless ones that apparently get lots of viewers so switching that to a premium would make more sense like MTV, MTV2, are 'basic'

Either way, this ain't going to happen. First thing that happens if it does, a majority of households discontinue BET, the NAACP screams outrage, people get fired for their "ethnic insensitivity" and it goes back to the way it was.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Either way, this ain't going to happen. First thing that happens if it does, a majority of households discontinue BET, the NAACP screams outrage, people get fired for their "ethnic insensitivity" and it goes back to the way it was.
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As sad as it is, that is very true
 
sfsuphysics said:
Either way, this ain't going to happen. First thing that happens if it does, a majority of households discontinue BET, the NAACP screams outrage, people get fired for their "ethnic insensitivity" and it goes back to the way it was.
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ROFL. Such is the retarded world we live in.
 
BladeVenom said:
Who cares? Cable TV is a dinosaur. Internet shows are the future. Even AOL has figured that out. http://television.aol.com/in2tv
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That's nice, but its too bad its SD resolution. :( High def would be nice, but of course we don't have the residential ISP's in US who will give us the bandwith to stream HD bitrates of 15mbit to 25mbit.

/wants to steal Sweden's internets. :p
 
w1retap said:
That's nice, but its too bad its SD resolution. :( High def would be nice, but of course we don't have the residential ISP's in US who will give us the bandwith to stream HD bitrates of 15mbit to 25mbit.

/wants to steal Sweden's internets. :p
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Not only that, but many households would need to be able to download streams to multiple TVs. Even the AOL link makes you download a show first if you want to watch it in DVD quality.

I am going to keep my good old analog cable for a long while. I can't remember the last time one of my cable TV shows got interrupted because it had to buffer. :p Not to mention the fact that I get 78 channels for $24.95. :cool: (I get $20 off for it being bundled with my internet)
 
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