Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Of course they can. They are charging each cable operator either a per viewer fee regardless of whether that viewer ever watches their channel or a high subscriber fee in the case of HBO.
I'd like to see them compete in a true free market where I could buy access to just the channels I want to watch. One recent report stated that a la carte pricing, which several cable companies would like to impose, would result in the demise in of 75% of existing cable channels and in the case of things like sports, especially local sports, would require viewers to pay as much as quintuple current monthly fees.
For example, I never watch sports on TV yet I pay ESPN nearly $5 every month for access to channels I do not want.
My wife watches a total of 5 channels; I never watch TV at all. Yet we pay close to $100 a month so that we can be given 220 channels that should be allowed to die. Compared to the cable channels and cable providers, the BPHs are saints, not sinners, with their pricing and business schemes.
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Shrug. I simple dropped cable. however I pay the price. I'm not "current" with the rest of the world. I get news from internet sites, for free, and if I think I want to watch a particular TV show (extremely rare), I wait until it comes out on DVD. Then I have it and it's reruns forever... All at less than the cost of cable.
(My next show acquisition will be the 1st season of Maverick (1957). 6 discs of a comedy/western, with probably 24-26 hour long episodes for $30. I watch the sampler years ago and have been waiting ever since for it to come out. Black and White, but I like B/W movies and shows...)
That's the point of disintermediation, I'm not dependent on mass-market providers who used to dictate when I consumed my media, and only from the limited palette that they chose to offer at any particular time. Same thing with books. I can buy and read an old book just as readily as a new book. I just spent $104 dollars at Jack Vance's website for The Demon Prince series the Tchsai series, the Big Planet series, and 5 volumes of short stories. They all have been out for years in paper. I could have spent the same money with the BPHs, but why? I don't care about being "current".