Question for Chicos, others who know.....

[Marquette84]

THINK! Chicos.

You have so little faith in your product that you really believe all these channels will disappear if they aren't being subsidized by people who don't want to pay for them. I bet a lot of them will continue to exist, and they will exist with a lot fewer bloated budgets, all the way from cable/satellite companies to the studios and actors themselves.

People are not going to pay for things they are not interested in paying. Massive overhead, channels with few or no viewers. Yes, a lot of stuff will be cut. Absolutely. But a lot of things were cut when the Model T was created. It's called creative destruction. Better get ready for it in the entertainment industry, because its coming.

Yes, the channels people want to actually pay for will go up, because the people who don't want to pay for them will no longer be subsidizing them. Horror of horrors. People will also have the option to NOT subsidize the 100's of channels they have zero interest in. Instead, they will have the option to more closely match their perceived value in a channel with the cost of offering it.

And overall, the amount they will pay for entertainment will decrease because individuals will pay for what they want and very little more.

Please don't quote to me government studies. I am not interested in hearing what Congress thinks something costs. I can't believe you find them interesting or credible. What would you like to have happen, Chicos? Have government ban television options except for giant TV packages? This stuff is coming, whether you or I like it or not.

Besides, if no one actually wants this type of option, there is nothing to worry about, right? You yourself posted an example of some company failing to provide quality ala carte. What are you worried about?

BTW -- CNN Headline News? What will I ever do without it? And honestly, that's what 95% of consumers are going to say as soon as they have the ability to select exactly what they want for channels and nothing else.

The problem is that people adopt this flawed thinking that their bill would go down if only they could pick and choose only what they wanted to watch.

Let's say 50% of the people want ESPN.

Do you think ESPN's business model could support a 50% reduction in revenue? 

Honestly? 

There's no way.  They need to keep the revenue pipeline flowing.  If half their revenue disappears, ESPN and the News networks would double their prices to the remaining customers overnight.  They don't care if they get $2.00/month each from 50 million customers, or $4.00 a month each from 25 million. 

You wind up paying exactly what you pay now, buy you lose access to half the networks.

Don't like that model?

How about this:  the FCC and Congress institute a price freeze. Yay--you only get ESPN, and your bill is cut in half.

So the networks will have to drastically reduce their costs.  No more Big Monday matchups, instead you'll get the NAIA game of the week.  Or worse, talking-head sports talk that discusses games rather than the actual sports. 

[ListerineSting]

As a long time reader of this board I am amazed at the capacity for knowledge demonstrated by this man Chicos. His expertise extends to virtually every subject and he speaks with unquestioned authority at all times. I have noticed he brooks no questioning of his pronouncements but then why should he? Pity the fool who dares challenge such greatness!

[ChicosBailBonds]

As a long time reader of this board I am amazed at the capacity for knowledge demonstrated by this man Chicos. His expertise extends to virtually every subject and he speaks with unquestioned authority at all times. I have noticed he brooks no questioning of his pronouncements but then why should he? Pity the fool who dares challenge such greatness!

You've been a reader of this board a long time.......you joined today per your statistics. 


You'll have to forgive me for weighing in on a subject that was addressed to me in the thread title and something I've dealt with on a daily basis for over a decade...the television business.

[Litehouse]

The problem right now is that there is an incentive to spread out the least amount of desirable programming over the most possible channels, so it has created a false demand.  Take any programming with a huge demand, and give it it's own channel.  The BTN and NFL Networks are perfect examples.  A critical mass of people absolutely must watch 3 extra football games or 10 basketball games of the local State U that aren't picked up nationally.  So they get their own channel that most people watch a dozen times a year, and ignore the rest of the time.  If we had a la carte, we might get fewer channels, but those channels might consolidate to have more interesting programming and less junk the rest of the time.

These sporting events wouldn't go away, they would just get shown on a different channel locally if there was enough interest, like they have been for 20 years.  Major college sports wouldn't disappear from your TV.  Sports are cheap content and inexpensive to produce.  It's the original reality TV, no writers and it's going on anyway, you just have to stick some cameras there.  Granted, it's expensive to produce really well and in HD, but that's another story.  We wouldn't lose big conference games and get the NAIA instead, the big conferences would likely just get less TV revenue, and in the end that might not be the worst thing.

[ChicosBailBonds]

I disagree, those events would go away.  The cost of producing all those Big Ten games is huge.  Besides, what local stations could pick it up and afford to do it....and in HD?  That's what people keep missing here, the only reason all this innovation has happened at the pace it has is because tv has gone from a limited product 15 years ago to an incredibly robust product with competition.  Prior to satellite, it was cable only and they had Zero incentive to do anything.

But since the explosion of alternatives, tv has jumped light speed.  100's more channels, DVR, HD, 3D, sharing shows in muliplt rooms, portability, etc.  These things happened because there was finally a product allowing that innovation.  And the only way that product got to present state is a mix of highly desired channels with niche options, created and developed with the capital provided by such a model.


By the way, Warrior07, only one of the links I provided was a govt study.  The rest were not.

[Chicago_inferiority_complexes]

Okay, you're right. Some were paid government lobbying groups talking about government studies rather than government.

[ChicosBailBonds]

Not the examples I gave, but yes, there are lobbying groups involved in everything and I'm sure they have strong opinions as well.  Unfortunately, that's how a lot of industry \ gov't works.

I can only surmise that you're in your early 20's and don't remember what television was like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. 

Innovation costs money, huge money.  Choice costs money, huge money.   What you want, essentially, is all of this innovation to happen but now say, after the fact, I only want to pay for 10% of it.  Well, you can kiss innovation and choice goodbye moving forward if it goes down the path you want.

What some people want, like you I would imagine, is an iTunes model for television.  The problem is, the television industry isn't anything like the recording industry.  Not even on the same planet, but a la carte folks want to make that comparison. 

At any rate, if you want to go backward, that's your choice.  As I mentioned, there are options for you today that have a form of "a la carte" service and there's a big reason why the offerings are so limited.