Mediafrog+ said:
Memo to the right-wing preachers pushing A La Carte: The first thing I would get rid of with such a scheme would be all the religious channels.
Bad news then. Those channels are considered public interest channels, and are free. So like the shop at home channels, even under a "a la carte", you would have abunch of religious, shopping, government (NASA, local, school), and public interest (which most cable system pick a religious channel for anyway. Directv recently replaced PBS you, with one.) ontop of whatever channels you decided to pay for.
tested said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: a la carte would lead to higher cable rates and fewer channels.
Some smaller channels would go dark, but most of the big popular ones would jack up their per-household rates to become premium channels. They would cut down or eliminate ads, allow more profanity on air and charge you at least 5 bucks a month to watch. Many would take them up on that offer willingly, others would do so grudgingly. In most cases, cable rates would double or triple while the number of channels would drop by half or more.
The only winners out of this deal would be the broadcast stations. Their viewership would go up as cable stations died off.
Alot of niche channels would go dark. HDTV, most digital cable channels for sure, ofcoarse most of them turn away from the niche programing after awhile anyway.
Fewer channels is ofcoarse obvisous. Even if none went dark, very few would order all of them. However, I don't think it would be that bad. I think you would see alot of clustering. Much like HBO, with HBO family, HBO comedy, ect. For example, time warner might package tbs, court tv, TnT, ect at a lower price, then to buy them individually. NBC, might have USA, sci-fi, Bravo together. MTV might join up with VH1, and offer all its current digital cable music channels with a MTV/VH! package. Ofcoarse ESPN, would be espn, espn2, espnews, and espnclassics.
I don't think they would all try and be like premium channels. Some would allow more bad language, and maybe even light nudity, but I think most would try for maxium audience. We already got HO, showtime, and others. People aren't gonna order TNT, just because it is more like hbo, when they can just order hbo, see the same movies sooner.
However, your right about the commercials. To gain a edge, and be more appealing, channels will want to cut down on commercials. However, just as the competition is there to force less ads, its also there to keep the channel prices in cheack. I'm more worried about ESPN (who is already the most expensive.), since they have little competition. Channels like USA, tbs, spike, and FX all compete with eachother.
