There Ain't Nothing in This World For Free
Even though my soon-to-be cable and internet provider probably has a security apparatus that rivals anything George Orwell could dream up, I wrote the following words a few days ago:
"I would call Comcast the Khmer Rouge of cable companies, but I don't want to be unfair to the Khmer Rouge."
Yes, that's right, after going without television for the past two years, I'll be re-joining the rest of you in the 21st century on Tuesday night. Well, that's when my appointment is scheduled. If my previous interactions with Pol Pot's favorite cable company are any indication, I might actually receive service in time to watch the 2012 election returns.
With TV on the brain, I submit the following idea to you, my dear readers: television channels a la carte. I know that some of you (coughTimKirkseycough) killed my idea last year about having barbers charge per minute for haircuts instead of a flat rate, but what about charging for TV channels a la carte?
If you're like me, you only watch a few channels (the major networks, Comedy Central, the ESPN family of networks, Fox Soccer Channel, GolTV, and a smattering of cable news networks) the vast majority of the time. What if you had to pay more per channel than you pay now (taking your total cable bill and dividing it by the number of channels in your plan), but you paid less overall because you only purchased (just for the sake of example) 15 channels?
There's surely some large impediment to this that I am missing, but it just seems like the trend in television delivery is towards a greater specificity of service tailored to the whims of each individual consumer.
What do you think, folks? A brilliant idea whose time has come or a potential disaster on par with New Coke?
"I would call Comcast the Khmer Rouge of cable companies, but I don't want to be unfair to the Khmer Rouge."
Yes, that's right, after going without television for the past two years, I'll be re-joining the rest of you in the 21st century on Tuesday night. Well, that's when my appointment is scheduled. If my previous interactions with Pol Pot's favorite cable company are any indication, I might actually receive service in time to watch the 2012 election returns.
With TV on the brain, I submit the following idea to you, my dear readers: television channels a la carte. I know that some of you (coughTimKirkseycough) killed my idea last year about having barbers charge per minute for haircuts instead of a flat rate, but what about charging for TV channels a la carte?
If you're like me, you only watch a few channels (the major networks, Comedy Central, the ESPN family of networks, Fox Soccer Channel, GolTV, and a smattering of cable news networks) the vast majority of the time. What if you had to pay more per channel than you pay now (taking your total cable bill and dividing it by the number of channels in your plan), but you paid less overall because you only purchased (just for the sake of example) 15 channels?
There's surely some large impediment to this that I am missing, but it just seems like the trend in television delivery is towards a greater specificity of service tailored to the whims of each individual consumer.
What do you think, folks? A brilliant idea whose time has come or a potential disaster on par with New Coke?
Labels: Comcast, George Orwell, Inane Theories, Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, Television
posted by Justin @ 9/20/2009 05:42:00 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Ain't no rest for the wicked-- cage the elephant
You're welcome for introducing you to that song.
In terms of your tv idea, you should know that when you bring me into the Scott family, on top of those channels you mentioned, you'll need to add several more.
I don't want to say anything about favoritism, so I'll just let you know that Cage the Elephant's use of slide guitars in "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" is brilliant. It gives it a great, Deep South, Midnight-in-the-Garden-of-Good-and-Evil feel. We view the narrator like we view the voodoo witchdoctoress: a guide into the weird halls of truth and evil.
As to your a la carte idea: Sirius XM Satellite Radio is experimenting with a la carte programming. You buy a basic package (mostly things like NPR and BBC, I think), then pick what you want from the rest. For example, maybe you only need one or two country stations instead of the thirteen offerings. Or maybe you only want the Cowboys' games and not the Buccaneers' or Seahawks'. You pay the basic rate (something like $4.95/month) plus a little rate for each station you pick.
I can't tell you if it's nice or not. I can only afford the Only Music Package. But I figure if Sirius XM can do it, why can't Comcast?
Oh right---they're the Khmer Rouge and don't believe in truth, justice, and the American way.
Since you are not a Businees major, let me introduce the "economy of scale" method. Cable is a package created for the masses. Any messing around with the basic package could cause this world to spin uncontrollably. Consider a la carte when ordering your movie channels.
A la carte is something that just makes too much sense and would make too many people happy, that's why cable companies won't do it. Also, good luck with Comcast in Houston. They suuuuuccccckkkkk. Expect frequent skips, and non-sensical outages, it's really the norm with those guys. But good luck with that!
Props to Tim and Lance, they hit the nail on the head. Congress has entertained about "cable a la carte" bills in a number of previous sessions, driven mainly by religious types who want to get 9 kinds of TBN but no MTV. Cable lobby shot it down because they'd never sell all 7 Nickelodeon spin-offs if you didn't get them lumped in with all the VH1's (why aren't these numbered something other than "1"?).
How do you know you've had a great idea? When somebody pays Congress a billion dollars not to pass it into law.
Less channels would lessen the hypnotic effects of channel surfing and under power many persons drug of choice.
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