Finally, Cable a la Carte?

I have long suspected that my husband and I may be the only people in D.C. who don't subscribe to cable TV (sorry, David). For years we have resisted, largely because 1) cable is expensive and controlled by monopolies and 2) the only reason we want it is so that we can watch The Wire and New York Giants games that aren't broadcast in our area on regular TV. We don't want to pay hundreds of dollars a year for cable when we wouldn't watch 99 percent of its offerings.

This all might change, however, if the newly energized chairman of the Federal Communications Commission gets his way. Republican Kevin J. Martin is pushing once again to restrict the monopoly power of giant cable companies, whose rates have soared far faster than inflation in recent years. (Comcast haters take note: Martin's work would put a huge hitch in that company's expansion plans.) Among the other measures that Martin is championing, though, is what every cable consumer has long desired: the ability to pick her own channels, without having to pay for all the Home Shopping Network additions forced into the standard packages, the so called "a la carte menu."

The FCC's changes are based on a law that kicks in when 70 percent of the marketplace has cable, which it does. Naturally, the big cable companies hate the idea, but it should be a boon for consumers. Indeed, the measure might not improve my New York Giants' watching (we'd need Direct TV's NFL Sunday Ticket for that), but we might actually get to watch The Wire in real-time instead of waiting months for it to make its way to Netflix.

Comments

Just download The Wire. Eps are usually up within a few hours of being finished on HBO out East. Check out isohunt.com. Screw the corporations.

Posted by: Brock on 11/12/07 at 7:40 AM Respond

Be careful what you wish for. Technologically, the only way they can offer a-la-carte is with a digital converter box so they can selectively turn off the channels that you are not paying for.

This means goodbye TiVo or any other innovative service in the future that wants access to the raw television signal. The cable-company would have a stronger position to control access to the people and this is not a recipe for long term happiness.

Posted by: Solar Moon on 11/12/07 at 11:17 AM Respond

["Technologically, the only way they can offer a-la-carte is with a digital converter box so they can selectively turn off the channels that you are not paying for"]

a couple of comments i'd like to make.

1: i've spent years involved in engineering test and distribution equipment used by the cable tv industry. (no, i do NOT work for a cable tv company, and never have)
what is 'technologically' limited today will almost certainly not be in the future, particularly there's customer demand and if it provides a means to eliminate one more converter box in every system the providers install
just a handful of years ago, TiVo itself wasn't technologically feasible

2: why shouldn't cable tv providers turn off feeds you aren't paying for?
do you have some right to expect services we aren't paying?

3: being in a lightly populated rural area with no available cable, i installed a C-band (big-dish) system back in the 80's, and a-la-carte availibility was one of the things i loved most about it. i only paid for what i wanted, and the list of available feeds grew pretty constantly up until digital dishes became all the rage, and people could get rid of those 10-foot sundials in their yards.
the down side is, the digital dish companies all force you to subscribe to 'package', just like cable does now.
should cable operators start offering a-la-carte, they'll start winning back a lot of the business they lost to digital dish, and it won't be 5 minutes until digital starts to offer the same.

4: i'm highly in favor of it!

5: give this george dubya bush appointed Republican credit for doing something right, and maybe think a twice the next time you're tempted to spout: 'Republicans ALWAYS favor bit-business monopolies, and couldn't care less about the consumer'
'often', yes. but carefully examined, you'll find that Democrats often favor one business interest over another, with scant attention paid to impact on consumers in their policies as well ('corn-for-ethanol' anyone?)

Posted by: jet on 11/12/07 at 12:56 PM Respond

True enough, jet. I don't think either party is very virtuous. Still, The Hightower Lowdown published a long list of the corporations that donated money in the last campaign. The largest amount of them by a huge majority gave wads of cash to Republicans and only a slight percentage went to Dems. I think this has to speak to something. A side note on that list: The Washington Redskins donated six figures to the RNC which was 90-odd percent of their total charitable donations for the year [another good detail of the list]. I thought this was pretty terrible. As a Washington area resident, I think a rich team like that could have done more for local charities to include education programs, physically theraputic programs for kids with disabilities....any of a number of things that would have improved their home town more than a 'paultry' six figures disppearing into the big, boiling pot of lobby money in the GOP.

Posted by: Paul Miller on 11/12/07 at 8:38 PM Respond

[…] On the substantive side, a few legislators got to ask the cable people serious questions. Points for substance go to Garrison (D-Marietta), Stewart (R-Athens), Okey (D-Carrollton), Barrett (D-Amherst), and Foley and Williams (D-Cleveland). […]

Posted by: tom on 06/25/08 at 12:52 AM Respond