It is funny to me that you have to tack on negative terms (socialism, pyramid-scheme) and make up a channel (basket weaving) to make that argument.
Bundling is how this industry works, I don't see the per-channel fight being fought by the consumer anytime soon and remain a battleground for the producers and providers for the foreseeable future.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
There are plenty of real channels I could have named.. simpler not to pick a channel and find that 3 of it's 4 watchers are here in the forum. Folks don't talk about "500 channels and nothing on" for no reason.
As for the terms, laugh as much as you'd like... the terms are reasonably accurate for the current business model.
EDIT: and it's always possible both could co-exist.. ie. full alacarte + alacarte where the provider has mini-package deals (ie. buy 2 of our channels, get 10% off.. buy 3 get 20% off, etc).. and even still with cable/sat pkgs of 40/60/100 channels... but the consumer could buy that 40 ch pkg and then add on 2-5 other channels they wanted from the higher tier pkgs, presumably for less than subscribing to the entire upper tier pkg. Point being that right now.. you can't (in most cases.. yes, there are _some_ "add-on" channels.. but not ESPN, TNT, USA, NatGeo, etc)