[Cialug] OT: A la carte cable (was: no more UPS needed)

[Nathan Stien]

On Jan 6, 2008 5:43 PM, Stuart Thiessen <sthiessen at passitonservices.org> wrote:
> Ehhh ... I have never gotten cable or satellite because I never felt I should subsidize channels in which I have no interest.

Fair enough -- it *is* mostly crap. :-)

> They are not entitled to my money to support their programming. That should be my decision, not theirs. An all or nothing choice means they get nothing from me. It's almost like pre-installing Windows and not giving me the option to have Linux or other OS pre-installed. :-)
>

It's not about whether they are entitled to your money to support
their programming, it's about whether they are entitled to decide
their own business model.  Imagine if someone were trying to get the
government to prevent newspapers from bundling their sections.  I
personally cannot think of anything more boring than the sports
section, but yet I have to buy it if I want the rest of the paper.
But who am I to *force* them to give a different business model that
may or may not be profitable?  Does it really make sense for something
so benign as content bundling to be an actual *crime* in our country?

If I am really, really offended by paying to produce the sports
section, I can do like Stuart with cable and just avoid buying the
paper.  If there are enough people like me, then it would become
profitable to offer a la carte newspapers, or some approximation
thereof.

And besides, cross subsidies are common throughout business.  When you
buy a USB cable at Best Buy, you are paying a huge markup, some of
which helps cover the losses on the loss leader items of the week.  In
effect, you're helping someone else buy their $500 laptop.  Should we
also criminalize this practice?  Seems like the logic is the same.  In
fact, in a sense it's worse, because at least with cable you can watch
those other channels if you want.

The cable companies should be free to do a la carte if they want.  If
a la carte is really workable, and it's really what people want, then
there's a lot of money for those who figure it out first.  But I don't
think it would work out very well if we forced them to.

- Nathan