Elmer Fudd Gets Revenge
We were watching the Family Guy 100th episode special, and I randomly took a picture of the TV.

To Pay Per Channel, or Pay For A Package?

I heard another report (on the radio) recently that the Federal Communications Commission is once again taking up the à la Carte cable channel issue. This is really nothing new with the FCC or the media in general.

Personally, I think it’s a good and bad idea. All at the very same time! 🙂 As a satellite television subscriber, I welcome the opportunity to ‘cut the crap’ from my channel lineup while allowing me to hand-pick a few of the channels for which I would now currently need to pay an additional $5-10/month (by subscribing to a higher tier and receiving thirty more channels I don’t want, but the two I really did want). At the same time, I’m not convinced that there may necessarily be any significant savings by having this switch (or option) available.

When we lived in town and had ‘proper’ cable television service, we frequently would receive notices (once or twice per year) that the base rate would be increasing. The argument: new channel offerings bump up the rate for everyone. The fact: cheap channel ‘profits’ can only subsidize so much of the expensive channel cost. To date, we’ve only experienced one or two small increases in the satellite rates, and I have to say that I’ve been relatively pleased with how my provider (DirecTV) seems to be handling the situation.

I watch relatively small amounts of television, really. It’s usually anywhere between twenty minutes and two hours a day, but often times closer to the former than the latter. With that in mind, I have a fairly small set of channels I frequently watch (or would consider my ‘interesting’ channels). I don’t know off hand what our current channel count would be (it’s quite a few over one hundred), but I can guarantee that I’ve only watched about thirty of those at any time. And let’s not forget about the all-important music channels. 🙁 Folding laundry en masse is about the only time one of those is ever tuned in…

If I could get on the order of 50 channels for less than what I currently pay right now, I would certainly jump on that bandwagon. And if I could manage that dynamically through an online account (the channels to which I subscribe), that would be even better. You could do the ‘try before you buy’ or switch them off and on as necessary.

I could go on (and I won’t), but this could be one of those situations that is ‘too good to be true.’ One must be careful in that for which one wishes. Look at the NFL network or the BTN (Big Ten Network). They’re possibly prime examples of what could happen if not everyone is forced to subscribe to them (such as channels like ESPN) — with ginormous (yes, that’s an official word now) rates that only the most dedicated (read: ridiculous) fanatic could justify paying.

There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before anything changes at this point, but it will be interesting to see what (if anything) transpires on this issue this time…

“Facts are the enemy of truth.”
– Don Quixote – “Man of La Mancha”

–MZ