IT is obvious you have an anti -niche and pro sports agenda bias. The best part of ala carte would be you could have your sports and I could have my niche channels too, if we both want to pay for it. AS for ABC it is must carry and it is also forced in bundling for companies who have to bargain in rates for Espn/Abc/Disney. They are all one programming pack and they force higher rates on EVERYONE because of the forced bundling. IF you want Espn you have to take Disney and ABC too. This is something that DISH has tried to get changed in congress but the idea hasn't taken hold ,yet.
Whether you want to talk about HD or not this same company is trying to extort more money out of existing subs forcing double payment for HD feeds that you already pay for SD feeds. A dangerous precedent that if allowed to exist will be copied by all companies forcing our bills to double and the whole cable/sat model to fail . People will NOT pay double for the channels in hd and sd. THe $10.00 fee was easier to understand when HD was new and often was called a tech fee at Directv. But HD is the norm now and a separate fee can't be justified any longer.
Even Craig Moffett a senor analyst in an article at Multi channel news is saying that the media industry is "intractably addicted to price increases" and where will the money come to pay for them. He says that the price of programming and retransmission consent have helped boost the cost of expanded basic to a cost of $60.00" at a time when the average family at the bottom quintile spends just $50.00 on all media".
As for competition in the market place , if you mean that then ala-carte is true competition. IF you charge to much for your channels people will stop subscribing to them forcing lower prices for the rest of us . IF you charge to much in the market place you sell less and people go elsewhere. Real capitalistic free market competition is the goal of ala-carte. I think you are afraid without the rest of us being forced to pay for Espn and other sports channels in our basic programming , you would see your rate for sports ala -carte skyrocket and thus your pro sports agenda is revealed in all of your comments.
I'm not anti niche. In fact I watch some niche stuff. However I rarely watch. That menas if those channels became part of another package, I wouldn't miss them.
None of us should be paying extra so others can have what they want. I am a firm believer in user fees. Use it, pay for it. Dont use it , don't pay for it. Simple. Sort of like toll roads.
ABC is even on what cable companies term "lifeline" service. With that there are no pay services to speak of. Just your locals and a couple local access and public tv channles. No Dis, no ESPN....Basic basic.
So how you make the leap to " it's packaged" is a mystery.
" As for competition in the market place , if you mean that then ala-carte is true competition. IF you charge to much for your channels people will stop subscribing to them forcing lower prices for the rest of us . IF you charge to much in the market place you sell less and people go elsewhere. Real capitalistic free market competition is the goal of ala-carte. I think you are afraid without the rest of us being forced to pay for Espn and other sports channels in our basic programming , you would see your rate for sports ala -carte skyrocket and thus your pro sports agenda is revealed in all of your comments".
MIke, calm down....In the above paragraph you repeated what I stated. You worded it differently to argue a point I am not arguing. I agree with oyu on the free market aspect.
And no, I fear nothing. I told you earlier that I think we should all pay for what we want and not pay for what we do not want. Where this "you're afraid" stuff comes from is an idea you created.
I'll state this one mor time and very clearly......I would like to see either a la carte or theme packs. I would be ........read carefully....willing to pay more for the stuff I want at the exclusion of stuff I do not want. Ok, there. Are we clear? Crystal?
As far as thge HD thing is concerned. I mad emyslef very clear on that issue. I don't sub to HD because of the Disney/ Dish dispute an because I am not going to get rid of two perfectly good working CRT tv's just to have HD. It is of little interst to me. And based on the compliants about HD and the fact that the novelty wears off, it has little value to me. ]
Now, before you shoot back with a comment that I am anti HD, NO....I am not. I CHOOSE to not have it because I don't need it.
Or maybe you are a direct descendant of Voltaire's fictional hero Candide who famously asserted that the world we live in is, by definition, "the best of all possible worlds"; so it is folly to worry about it or try to improve it. Or loosely applied to the topic of this thread -- The Sat TV business model we have now is the best of all possible business models; so why would anyone suggest an alternative.
