The Washington Post ran a great article on Friday about the Senate Commerce Committee hearing that took place on Cable TV channel selection and the technological and contractual obstacles to driving such decisions all the way down to the individual household.
Imagine what true a la carte channel choice would mean in this country. If my wife and I decided that we want Fox News and MSNBC but not CNN, we could theoretically pay less than we do today. I say “theoretically” because my sense is that some channels would have to be more expensive if cable and satellite companies didn’t force people who never watch them to take them anyway.
My cousin works at ESPN. I don’t think there’s any way that they could run the number of channels that they do without receiving a flat payment for each subscriber from cable and satellite systems throughout the country. Could they produce as much HDTV programming as they do already or plan in 2004? I doubt it.
I’d pay for ESPN if they organized themselves differently. If they segregated the major sports, so that you could buy a channels devoted to football, hockey, basketball, or baseball, I’d buy some of them and leave others off. I would definitely pay for the Outdoor Life Network so I can watch the Tour de France, the Giro, and the Vuelta.
I know my wife would want many of the broadcast networks, so long as they keep producing programming like ER or The Apprentice— one of the few entertainment shows that I like.
But, I guarantee that true a la carte channel selection would change the economics of programming a channel much more than TiVo or the Internet. We might truly be surprised what the cost of channels we like would be if we had to buy them all separately.