MCain Bill: Allow Consumers to Pick Their Own Cable Channels

[DudeAsInCool]

John McCain: Make cable go a la carte

The fix for soaring cable-TV bills is competition and channel choice, say the Arizona senator and the FCC chairman.

By John McCain and Kevin Martin, SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-Ariz.) is introducing the CHOICE Act. KEVIN MARTIN is the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

AMERICAN consumers have little choice when it comes to cable television. If you want ESPN, you must pay for 60-plus channels that you may never watch. If your child loves Nickelodeon, your family must pay for the same 60-plus channels, some of which may not be suitable for young children. Now, imagine deciding for yourself which TV channels you want to purchase. You could select the channels you want to pay for, and opt out of those you don't. In fact, right now millions of TV viewers outside the U.S. have these choices. They buy their television channels individually or in smaller bundles — and get better deals as a result.

Why can't Americans do this now? Because there is too little competition, too much regulation and not enough consumer choice in the cable TV business. As a result, in just the last two years alone cable prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation — and more than 90% since 1995. Cable companies explain away their skyrocketing prices by saying they are giving you more and more channels. At no time, however, have the cable companies actually asked if you want those additional channels. You have to pay for them whether you want them or not.

Read more at:

The LA Times

[CTC Command]

Watching Cable TV a la Carte

Weekend Edition - Saturday, March 4, 2006 · As an on-demand society affects TV-viewing habits, the FCC supports what is being called "a la carte cable programming." Viewers would pay for the channels they actually watch. New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera and Susan Stamberg discuss TV's future.

Listen to this story...here

VERY interesting and intelligent discussion of the whole issue of "bundling" of cable programming and the effect a la carte would have on small cable networks and our cable bills...

[DudeAsInCool]

Watching Cable TV a la Carte

Weekend Edition - Saturday, March 4, 2006 · As an on-demand society affects TV-viewing habits, the FCC supports what is being called "a la carte cable programming." Viewers would pay for the channels they actually watch. New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera and Susan Stamberg discuss TV's future.

Listen to this story...here

VERY interesting and intelligent discussion of the whole issue of "bundling" of cable programming and the effect a la carte would have on small cable networks and our cable bills...

Would it be good or bad, financially? I get the sense that by bundling, they can make things cheaper, than by piecemeal - what did they say?

[The Hunter]

This all sounds good, but in my experience the cable company will split up the bundles, so you have to buy numerous bundles to get popular channels. this is a link to my local cable provider.

http://www.eastlink.ca/cable/channelguides/channelguide.asp

[CTC Command]

what they need to do is have like a checkbox system. like i would check off history channel, discovery science, biography, and the weather channel. Never watched any others when we had cable, which we don't anymore...what your talking about Hunter is the problem we ALREADY have--to get discovery science i had to be in the top tier of DISH NETWORK programming. Which is stupid.

seems like they think cost will go up if they unbundle. and some of the smaller networks would lose so much revenue they would go under.

listen to the npr thing, Dude--its not even 5 minutes long

[DudeAsInCool]

seems like they think cost will go up if they unbundle. and some of the smaller networks would lose so much revenue they would go under.

that's what i suspected - i will check out the show