A la carte lawsuit against cable companies dismissed
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Nov 3rd 2009 5:27PM
posted Nov 3rd 2009 5:27PM
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[Via TechDirt]
posted Nov 3rd 2009 5:27PM
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Well this pisses me off. I was hoping that a la carte would at least get a hearing. It is BS that subscribers are forced to pay for content that they do not want. The majority of your cable bill goes to pay for ESPN, NFL Network, Big Ten, and MTV. You could cut your cable bill in half if you cut out those stations.
I should be allowed to buy BBC America and without having to buy a channel package with SoapNet, Wealth TV, and 100 other worthless channels.
The cable companies paid off Congress because they know revenue will drop in half the day after a la carte would be mandated. The next day they would just start charging $20 for any channel you want outside basic programming.
That is the problem. Even if we get a la carte pricing the cable companies would just price the option higher than a package deal. Congress would have to mandate that the a la carte pricing must be the actual per user fee charged through basic cable.
Another thing that pisses me off is the number of ads on cable TV now. The cable networks get money through subscriber fees. Some one hour shows now have 22 minutes of commercials. With that amount of advertising I shouldn't have to pay to watch a cable channel.
You're an idiot. I'm not trying to be mean spirited or insult you but you really need to know what you're talking about before you say something as moronic as this. I work for a major cable company and you don't know your butt from a hole in the ground. Cable companies pay the broadcasters money each month per subscriber. Your bill is barely enough to cover that. They make money off of internet, phone, pay per view, service calls and dvr fees. And most of the ads are through the broadcaster. Only your local ads are by your cable company so talk to them. Every time the broadcaster wants to renegotiate their contract they want to increase the fee per subscriber. Sometimes the cable co. can eat the cost for competition reasons, others they pass on to you.
Go yell at the broadcasters if you have a problem.
Also, understand that if they switch to a la carte, a lot of channels may not be able to get enough subs and we could get 150 channels of american idol and survivor. Packages add variety. Just an FYI
Ala Carte was much more than an vain attempt to have cheaper pricing. For me ala carte would have done two things for me.
1. Give the consumer true voting power. What do I mean by this? Had I had the ability to single out the Sci-Fi channel when they started showing wrestling, then I could vote with my wallet and send a message to the specific channel about what I think about their line up by cancelling them. Instead, you don't get to do any such thing. You don't get sent to the retention department, and the cable company acts as a middleman blowing sunshine up your rear and telling you the value of programming they're giving you. If not Sci-Fi, then how about MTV which has nothing to do with music anymore and more to do with alternative lifestyles and social standards which I don't want my kids emulating? If it's an all or nothing approach, then I have no problem going OTA.
2. Package bundling is nothing more than programming socialism. What do I mean by this? How many people would go out of their way to get every religious, ethnic, or shopping channel crammed down one's throat? I would rather pay an overall higher price just so I have the power to cancel channels and not subsidize someone else's viewing habits.
Regardless ala carte programming is a pipe dream. There's too much money to be made by forcing programming packages. Ala Carte is not what a cable or satellite provider would offer you because it hurts their bottom line. Therefore it's a conflict of interests between the consumer and the service provider.
Well, you win.
Internet! Get him his medal
In my locality, there is a rural telephone cooperative that provides cable programming. They would really like to provide ala carte programming, but the big programming providers won't let them. Disney, for example, says "If you want to carry ESPN, you have to buy all of our other channels with it - and put them all on your basic package so all subscribers pay for them." All of the major programming providers do this. Big money corporations like the NFL seek to force cable companies to put their own propriety channels (like NFL channel) on the general package as well - again, so all cable subscribers pay money to the NFL. You're right, it really is programming socialism. I dropped cable and put up an antenna for this very reason. If enough people would drop their cable and satellite tv (which is just cable without the wire), we'd have some leverage, and ala carte programming "could" become a reality. Trouble is, most people are sheep.
I'm about ready to cut off all cable but local channels (the very basic package) and live a-la carte off iTMS. Yeah, some of the season passes are pretty expensive but spread out over the year, it'd actually come in slightly cheaper then the cable cost I've got now, and I've already been buying some shows due to lame time shifts (cutting off tivo recordings) and signal issues with cable anyway.
Got an AppleTV to watch things and have been pretty happy, though I've been thinking of giving a mini a shot in the future to allow for hulu and such as well.
Well the biggest reason why these lawsuits never work is because the American Public sues THE WRONG ENTITY. Talk about not seeing the forest from the trees. If you want ala carte programming you need to start suing the Time-Warners, NBC Universals (before Comcast buys them), and Disney. It's like suing Target because you don't like the way Coke packages their beverages.
I dont understand why cable cost so much. Every channel on cable has ads. The ads pay for programming.... i basically pay an insane amount of money for the cable company to pipe it to my house....
Since cable and telco has to use public right-of-way in order to operate at all, I don't understand why they don't have to lease out their lines, it should have been a condition of the lease. Not any yokel can just lay cable along side the roads, with good reason, IMO, but not without requiring some amount of competition for the services provided on the run in question. The problem may well be because of corrupt local government.
I would love not to have to pay for the sports channels ... and the christian channels ... and the shopping channels ...
Um...some of us do want fewer channels. We have directv and we program it to have about 20 channels of the hundreds we receive. Most what is on isn't worth watching. Ala carte sounds fine to me.
90% of the channels are providing something I am not interested in. I equate my bill to the whole channel offering, and thence, like a cowsumer, what fraction I am interested in and make a judgment on what I feel I should be paying.
If I am interested in 25 channel out of what my provider reports is 600 channels, yet I am paying $100 per month in billing, that equates to me $4/channel. But the interesting thing is that my provider will argue the opposite and say I am paying for 600 channels. If I accept their position then I AM PAYING for 575 channels I do not want.
BTW, "customers aren't really asking for less channels" is BS. They are asking for the right to pay for only the channels they want, and the reward system is a lower monthly bill as a result. Obviously you didn't ask THIS person.
RATS!
I wish DirecTV and Dish had offered a la carte at the beginning. They didn't have the technical limitations that original analogue cable had as far as blocking multiple frequency ranges (channels) without causing problems for the desired ones. I assume they had financial or bargaining issues that prevented them (the satellite providers) from doing that, otherwise it would have been a unique selling point.
They didn't for the same reason no one else does, the channels aren't sold to them a la carte. In order to buy ESPN, DirecTV is forced to carry ESPN2, ESPN News, ESPN Classic etc. Which is really the point of the post.
I'm pretty sure that a la carte IS what I want.
If I can cut out the 50 music channels, crappy home shopping channels, women's networks and bazillion other channels I NEVER WATCH, not only will it be easier to scroll through the channel listing... but I'm pretty sure my bill would be a tiny bit lower.
At this point I'd be happy if Time Warner let me at least hide all of those channels though...
I don't mind paying $80/mo for cable but would be happier about it if a ridiculous number of absolutely useless channels weren't forced on me as part of the deal.
If you don't care about the price, then you can just get a TiVo or Moxi which lets you customize the guide and have it only list the channels you watch.
Until we get a la carte channels, I will continue to receive what I want OTA. I cut off my cable 4 years ago and refuse to give them another dime until I get a choice. I only want 4 or 5 channels on cable anyway. Anyone complaining here should vote with their wallet like I have.
Agreed. I get all of my content OTA, through Hulu, and other various sources. When the cable companies pull their heads out of their ass and offer a good service, I'll come crawling back. I would like Comedy Central, USA, and Sci Fi without getting 550 other useless cable stations. I want BBC without buying a few dozen international stations in a bundle I don't want.
And most of all, the most important point of a la carte pricing: I do NOT a single penny of my money going to fund religious stations.
""Cable companies pay the broadcasters money each month per subscriber""
I never understood why the provider has to pay for the channel. I've always thought that channel should be paying the providers to broadcast their channel, in order to get their channels out there to be seen. I always thought this was backwards.
BTW, I think we need to go back to a C-Band type of way to receive channels. I remember when you could aim a dish at the sky and order only the channels you wanted to. We need to go back to something like this. Something needs to give on the way we receive TV nowadays.
I can't believe Engadget is arguing people don't want a la carte - look at every single tech/media trend for last 20 years - it's about filtering, zoning, channeling etc. chosen controlled and paid selectively by the consumer. From iTunes to RSS to iGoogle to Tivo etc., we don't want to pay for crap we don't want. And we want to decide what we think is crap, not somebody else.
Hell, Engadget is sub-divided into channel, broken down into tags. Almost nobody wants and especially does not want to pay for a giant media dump.
Cable is built on the "more money buys more channels" - they are some of the least customer focused companies on planet earth because of their monopoly positions. I have a cable modem but no cable TV other than the basic channels you "Must" have and pay for to get a modem. I Netflix, online and yes BT so I only watch what I want.
But BT is pain - I would gladly pay for a la carte. But currently, to get the shows (I don't watch a channel - I watch shows) I want, it would cost around $100 to $150 a month and give me 500+ channels of which I would watch roughly 5.
Even if those 500+ channels were $5 a month, I would pay $10 month just to get the ones I wanted so that the damn channel guide and programming devices, remotes is not cluttered with 500 channels.
Better yet, I would pay double that to see no ads at all.
If you read the post you would know Engadget is not against ala carte. What they (and I) are pointing out is that suing the cable company isn't the right approach. The cable company is the middleman in the transaction. The reason you have to pay for 5 ESPNs when you only want ESPN1 and ESPN2 is because the channels are bundled by the content provider (Disney). Disney is the one you need to sue. Every middleman (Cable, Telco, and Satellite) all play by the same rules and that is why none of them offer ala carte.
This is as silly as suing the Cable Company because STBs are not available for retail. (And the reason they aren't sold at retail is because no retailer wants to deal with the hassle and the two STB manufacturers are interested in selling them at retail due to the support costs.)
I, for one, am certainly asking for fewer channels than what I'm currently being offered by either cable or satellite providers. Of the hundreds of channels of PPV, music-only and sports channels, I watch and listen to absolutely zero of them. I don't watch shopping network channels or financial news channels. I don't watch kids channels or soap opera channels. I don't watch reality show channels or Spanish channels. If I could pare all the offerings down to the ones I want---major networks, science and learning, PBS and the like---I'd be far happier paying a reasonable sum than I am paying an unreasonable sum for an unreasonable number of channels I'll never tune to.