— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
TWC Warns TV Programmers
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
The solution is simple and not one the content owners want; a la carte programming across the board. The content owners force a bundle of channels on the cable/satellite providers and usually require those channels to be available to all consumers in the low-end tier.
Take ESPN for example, this channel is available to virtually every single subscriber. Even if you do not watch it, you are $4.69 to have it and you have no choice but to receive it. Take TNT, they get $1.16 per subscriber. If a la carte was offered, the consumer could pick and choose what channels they wanted. Don’t want ESPN, you can save nearly $5 per month. Most likely, ESPN would raise their rates if enough people didn’t subscribe and then the sports fans would see it over $5 a month; the same would hold true for other channels. A la carte would allow the cable/satellite companies to charge a customer fee and then just pass the programming costs directly onto the consumer. So if the content owners wanted to raise the rates, they are free to do so at any time they want. What they risk is that the consumer views their programming isn’t worth the price and drops it. There are many channels that show large amount of paid for programming; the 30 to 60 minutes infomercials. How many subscribers are going to pay for those? Not many, so either a station is going to have to get better programming or offer their channel for free just to have viewership. The content owners are the ones against the a la carte method as then they have a harder time making money.
Yep, seems like they're all shooting themselves in the foot if they make it normal to premier big shows like Breaking Bad via online stream.