It's about freaking time!

[SirPoonga]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/30/0551213&from=rss

[Clonedsheep]

Oh yeah, I really only need a few channels for my family. This is going to be very interesting. I think most families like myself only watch a good 10% of the channels we buy if even that. Channel surfing will for sure be more enjoyable and I am sure a few channels might go under. Nice find SP-

[TOK]

There is no way you're going to get individual channels over cable for a few bucks per month. The FCC has been pushing this since 96.
The indecency stuff is really irritating me. They're tying to impose regulations on programming people willingly PAY for.

[RetroJames]

I for one support it.  The sooner I can stop paying for this PG-13 stuff the better!   

[grueinthebox]

I don't think the FCC is really interested in the a'la carte pricing at all, but rather they know it would be bad for the cable companies and are using it as a lever to force them to censor cable programming.

I feel a bit dirty for agreeing with a corporate entity, but I think the cable companies are right this time  (as did the FCC before they decided it was convenient to disagree with them - flip floppers!)...  A'la carte pricing ultimately wouldn't be good for the consumer.  It MIGHT save you a little bit of money if you only watch one or two channels on any given month...  Of course, you'd better hope those two channels are MTV and the NASCAR channel, since things like the History Channel likely won't be around very long.  Smaller audience channels would have to be priced higher to make them worth carrying, which would in turn result in an even smaller audience than they had before when only the biggest fans of that channel turn out to pony up the cash.

Personally, I think I'd be fine with just TBS, TLC, Discovery, Comedy Central, Speed Channel and Spike TV.  At $5 a channel plus $20 in assorted fees, I'd be about breaking even with my current cable bill...  Once you account for the fact that a good half of those channels would likely cease to exist, I'd actually be saving money!

Likely, though, what you would have is bundles where you can choose, say 5 channels for the current Basic cable price, 10 for the next price up, and so on, or something to that effect.  It's not like you're going to be able to get a single channel for just a couple of bucks a month if you so choose - it wouldn't be worthwhile for the cable companies to deal that way.  So you end up paying the same amount, getting more "choice" in which channels you get, but not having as much of a variety of channels from which to make your selections.

You don't really think these companies are going to switch to a business model that's going to net them less profit, or that the government really has any interest in forcing them to do so, do you?

[Generic Eric]

I really look forward to the time when I don't have 5 god channels and 10 home shopping network channels just to get discovery or the history channels.

But

Perhaps what helped prevent this from occurring sooner is technology,  I think it would be a nightmare to administer user selectable cable programing effectively.  What kind of hardware and network infrastructure would the consumer need to have every channel available to them so that they could tailor their own plan?  Not even considering the network, but what about the billing?  I would want to be able to fluctuate between plans if I had the whim to.  How much flexibility could I have?

I think tv is ready to evolve and is already.  I think TIVO should help cut some of the crap programming out.  Also the www.slingbox.com sling box looks like a cool gadget.  The fact that I can buy many of my favorite TV shows on DVD and not watch the current offerins will help spur honest efforts in quality TV shows as well.

Maybe the real reason we aren't offered such plans is because most providers know there content is lacking and probably won't stand on its own for too long.  So the alertanative is to give large bundles of crap because we won't focus long enough to notice the content is lacking while we channel surf. 

[brophog]

I don't think the FCC is really interested in the a'la carte pricing at all, but rather they know it would be bad for the cable companies and are using it as a lever to force them to censor cable programming

You got that right. If they'd let me just get ESPN and the Cartoon Network (no kids)........I'd have cable.

As it is, it's not worth my cash.

[RayB]

I agree with what Grue said. But at the same time, television is going to have to compete more and more with digitally delivered content over the internet. This may be a pre-emptive move on the FCC's part since on-demand entertainment is inevitable.

[duffjr]

History, Discovery, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, HBO, and Showtime...I can't even name much more than that.

[SirPoonga]

WEll, I think the cable and sat companies should continue with a basic service as people expect those channels to be around,e ven if they don;t watch them.
It's the premium packages and extras that would be nice for al la carte.

Now, there is the complaint that going a la carte the oddball non-mainstream channels won;t be able to survive.  Bah, there's always an underground world to everything.  If it wasn;t meant to survive mainstream the people that want it will find a way.