FCC Head Supports Ala Carte Cable

MikeyTheK writes "PC Magazine Reports that Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC, supports ala carte cable. In a letter to several minority groups on Wednesday, Martin said "While I believe all consumers would benefit from channels being sold in a more a la carte manner, minority consumers, especially those living in Spanish speaking homes, might benefit most of all,". He goes on to argue "Cable companies act as gatekeepers into the programming allowed by the expanded basic cable package, preventing independent content producers from reaching viewers,", citing the example of Black Family Television, which was forced to go online-only because cable operators refused to carry it, even after it reached 16 million homes."

And a la carte solves the problem?

[fireboy1919]

Television is still mostly paid for by commercials. Any channel not generating much viewership isn't generating much sales. Either that, or the target audience doesn't buy things as much.

Either way, a la carte would end up looking exactly the same...except probably with less variety, since channels that are currently not competing would start.

Of course, I'm with the majority, so it'd be great for me. USA, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi Channel, and Comedy Central are my channels, and I know that they're all pretty popular. Then again...I wonder what's more popular. It could lead to more of that reality-tv crap infesting my channels. There are already full channels that run nothing else.

Good.

[darnoKonrad]

I've never ordered cable or satellite because there are only a half dozen channels I care about. I'll take the 6 channels I like and they can charge me 6 bucks a month. For an extra dollar I'll take the university channels. If they want to charge more, well I will continue to abstain from purchasing their product.

Since I've upgraded to Digital TV OTA, I now get a music video channel, and 8 PBS channels -- amongst the others. I could care less about cable unless they want to give me the product I want to buy. Still I think paying for COMMERCIAL television is retarded, but then I don't buy bottled water either.

Re:Translation

[ystar]

Naturally, but this might also point to cable companies' desire to stop pushing everything over coaxial at once and move towards a TV over IP system. It's probably cheaper to gain bandwidth by pushing out new cable boxes to everyone than digging and laying new lines. For my parents, who only want one or two international channels, this would probably be a good move.

I hope that it cuts down on the number of folks around the country watching crappy tv once they have to shell out cash for it specifically. If moms and dads aren't willing to pay for MTV anymore, we might actually see the Viacom monopoly start to crumble, fingers crossed. Maybe folks will even start tuning into PBS more often! Yay! Quality entertainment, despite the terrible telethons.

Re:And a la carte solves the problem?

[Dracos]

In a way, it would.

There are so many worthless niche channels out there that skate by because everyone pays for them, but no one watches them. Who in their right mind would specifically subscribe to the Game Show Channel, the Reality TV channel, or any home shopping channel?

Plus, it might have added benefits:

• Putting G4 out of its misery
• Teaching SciFi a lesson about canceling all their good series.

Seasonal subscriptions (ie, I would only want FX when Rescue ME is on) would probably throw cable into utter chaos. The cable companies know this, and it's probably why they'll fight it, unless they can convince the FCC to allow some outrageous fee structure for subscription changes, like you can only change once a year, in [random month that makes it not worth doing, based on previous viewing habits], otherwise there's a $5 fee per channel added or removed.

Re:Populist crap.

[spoco2]

Yeah, you could be a complete dick and look at it that way, or you could price structure it like:

Cable will cost you $XX servicing fee, that includes YOU CHOICE of Y channels, whatever ones you like (I guess they could have different pricing based on 'premium' channels so maybe you get X premium and Y not so premium channels... whatever)... then any extra channels you pay per channel some small amount.

How would that not work to everyone's advantage? I live in Australia and cable penetration is much, much lower than in the states... because we've got pretty a ok free to air really... but mostly because for the base cable package I get a couple of channels I like plus a WHOLE LOT I couldn't care less about, while missing out on others I would like, but I have to purchase a whole other package on top of the basic one to get them... also getting a whole slew of other crud channels that I don't want.

So, if I could instead pay the basic amount price and get the same number of channels, but the ones I actually WANT, I'd actually sign up to cable.

They'd get another customer

And there are many more like me.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Populist crap.

[uncreativ]

ESPN accounts for approximately 1/3 of the entire cost of expanded basic cable programming. This is because ABC/Disney FORCES cable companies to cary every ABC channel, every ESPN channel, every disney variant or none at all. ABC/Disney can go F@!# themselves because I don't want to watch any of their content, yet because they are one big company offering content, they can force cable companies to carry channels very few people watch (like ABC News Now, a cable news channel that nobody wants and that cable companies are being forced to carry when they renew their ESPN content agreements)

There are basically just a few companies that own the vast majority of content on the cable channel lineup. They are:
GE--NBC, Telemundo, MSNBC, Bravo and the Sci Fi Channel.
Time Warner--The WB Television Network, CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT
ABC/Disney--ABC Television Network, ESPN, The Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E and Lifetime
Viacom--Music Television, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, (and until spun off last year, CBS Television Network, UPN, Showtime)
Scripps--HGTV, Food Network
News Corp--Fox, National Geographic and FX,

There are very few channels these companies do not own. Forcing these companies to allow consumers to choose what they watch will give them less incentive to conglommerate and force feed mediocre content down our throats. You know, cable companies have to spend quite a bit of money on their plant to expand the number of channels they offer. By forcing cable companies to carry channels nobody wants, content companies are increasing cable bills by more than just the cost of the content.

I've been researching the cable industy looking into IPTV, and I have to say, there are more layers of evil than you would imagine in this industry. If you think cable companies suck--and for the most part, they do--the content companies suck even more.

Re:From a Cable Operator's View...

[Anonymous Coward]

The "mini-box" would be capable of being authorized on a channel-by-channel basis, using the removable security (CableCARD) currently mandated by the FCC, and still provide compatibility with older analog TVs. If we could get such a product for less than $100 cost per unit, we would order 20,000 of them tomorrow.

Are you serious about this? I'm quite surprised, because DVB-C receivers are available for less that 100 EUR in the EU, and since that includes 19% sales tax, it should work out to about US$ 100 retail. Apparently this device does not include the european CableCard equivalent (Common Interface), but a smart card reader for one specific encryption scheme.