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Chris Wysocki
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Tuesday, 17 July 2012
[Guest post] Death to Channel Collectivization!
We're now in week two of the blackout of Viacom channels on DirecTV. Thank goodness The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are on hiatus; I'm also relieved that one kid is away at camp for the summer and the other is far too old for Nickelodeon and Dora The Explorer. But a few choice words from the DirecTV folks got me thinking about the cable TV racket.
At the "our side of the story" web site DirecTV CEO Mike White presents their view of the dispute with Viacom. But in the course of the discussion of the blackout, about 15 seconds into the video, he says:
Whoa, stop the presses!
Broadcast TV content distributors like cable companies such as Comcast or Verizon FIOS, and satellite TV outfits like DirectTV and Dish make their money off of selling bundles of dozens to hundreds of channels to their subscribers. (It would be an interesting bit of research to try to figure out where this "in order to get A you also have to buy B" racket started. Off the cuff, the earliest such instance I can remember is when I was six or so and the family went car shopping: in order to get air conditioning, Dad had to "step up" to the next more luxurious (and expensive) model, with a bunch of other accessories he didn't want.) My current sat TV package has 225 channels, but I remember we likewise had to step up to this package in order to get a dozen or so specific cable channels the family really wanted. Throw in the local broadcast channels and some occasional special programming, and the total number we watch most frequently won't come to more than a couple of dozen channels in all. Yet every month I have to pay $50 or so for things like:
- 21 different sports channels
- 17 different news channels
- 25 "family" channels (including 6 different Disney channels)
I could go on and on. And I'd bet that a good share of my monthly $50 goes towards these things "I don't watch or care about".
That's why I am so delighted to see DirecTV taking the principled position that bundling TV content is "unreasonable". Finally, someone in the entertainment industry is going to get out in front of a trend towards decollectivization, where the content owners and distributors decide what and when you can and can't watch. If the other content distributors don't follow their lead, then a-la-carte and on-demand services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu will wind up eating their lunch.
Posted at 13:54 by Rich Stelt
[/guest/rich]
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