7 ms·

Apple Looking To Slice Up Cable 99 Cents At A Time

57 points by ssclafani 16y ago

thought_alarm 16y ago
As I was preparing for the new Mad Men season, I noticed that AMC was selling old Mad Men episodes for 99¢. At that price, it's about as cheap as renting the DVDs, and I thought Finally a network is coming to its senses. That was short lived, however. They jacked up the prices when the new season started. At 99¢ per episode or, say, $20 for a season I would jump right in and probably cancel my cable.
mrshoe 16y ago
This sounds wonderful, but I think it's unrealistic to expect this model to go mainstream. The pricing logic here completely ignores the costs involved. It's like saying that some people are sick of paying $20k for their cars and predicting that Apple is going to design a better car (tangent: wouldn't that be nice?) and sell it for just $1k. Sounds great, but it's just not possible. Contrary to popular belief, not all of that $150 you give to Comcast each month (ouch) goes to buying yachts for Comcast's CEO. Some of it goes to building and maintaining a network. Some of it even goes to pay for the production of those movies and television shows you're watching. The costs of producing entertainment and running large-scale networks is probably not going to drop by 90% any time soon. The more likely scenario is this: Comcast: May I help you? Me: Yes, I'd like to cancel my $150/month TV+internet package and just get an internet-only package because I can get all the content I want over the internet now much more affordably. Comcast: OK, no problem. Our internet-only packages run $145/month. I still think this is a huge improvement, mind you. Having everything on demand is much better than worrying about TV networks' schedules. And those who watch less can now pay less (i.e. those who watch more can pay more...). I just don't see everyone's bill going from $1,500 a year to $100 a year, like the article suggests.
- emmett 16y ago
  We know what it costs to buy internet-only: you can buy internet from AT&T for $30/month if you get DSL. So it's unlikely that many people will opt into $145/month internet-only cable. Will the pricing go from $150/month to $10/month? Almost certainly not. Will pricing go from $150/month to $70/month? It seems quite possible - because internet access is a commodity, unlike cable tv.
  - mrshoe 16y ago
    Right you are. The $145/month was a bit of hyperbole. I think expecting this market to allow 50% of its revenues to dry up is pretty optimistic. 93% (as the article suggested) is just very naive. They'll find a way to extract our money.
    - binarysoul 16y ago
      It really depends where you live. I'm in South Florida... $42 AT&T DSL doesn't even stay connect all the time and maxes out at 400kb/s. Whereas $62.50 comcast internet stays connected a little more reliably and maxes out between 200kb/s and 1mb/s depending on their whims. Its ridiculous that aside from moving or paying multiple hundreds of dollars per month I can't get quality internet service
- jrockway 16y ago
  Except, I already did this. "Hi Speakeasy, I don't want TV." "That's great, because we don't sell TV service." I have never had cable or satellite TV in my adult life. And I've never had to pay extra for Internet access. If people actually want Internet-only TV subscriptions, the market will force Comcast to lower their prices. But I think most people want an endless stream of crap so even when they're bored, they can do something that requires minimal energy expenditure. So Comcast should be fine. But anyway, I'm pretty sure that paying 99 cents an episode for shows that are already broadcast into your house for free (courtesy of "the networks") is a good deal for Apple and not such a good deal for you.
  - donaldc 16y ago
    If people actually want Internet-only TV subscriptions, the market will force Comcast to lower their prices. Perhaps yes, eventually, but it could be years. The market for high-speed internet connections in most locations is, at best, a duopoly, due to the high fixed cost of installing infrastructure. By analogy, think of what unreasonableness the electrical company could get away with if they weren't regulated. The market for high-speed internet connectivity isn't that bad, but it's certainly not a free market in the same sense that pizza delivery is.
  - Avshalom 16y ago
    Alternatively the market will force Internet-only TV subscriptions to raise their prices. 10 dollars a month to Hulu isn't going to pay ESPN's bills.
    - illumin8 16y ago
      Hulu doesn't carry ESPN content, so I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.
    - jrockway 16y ago
      Quite the opposite. The market is forcing content to be given away for free.
- illumin8 16y ago
  The pricing models are ridiculous. I cut the cable cord over a year ago, cancelled my $150 a month plan, and now enjoy $30 a month Internet only with $10 a month streaming Hulu plus, $9 a month streaming Netflix, and save a ton of money every year. The cable business model is dead. I'm sorry, but it does not cost $billions to produce these TV shows. I only watch about 3 TV shows regularly and spend maybe 2.5 hours a week doing that, so I'm not going to pay more than a few bucks a month. Also, I'm sorry, but if I pay for content, I am not going to let you get paid to show me unskippable ads. Not going to do it. The market has spoken. Technology is catching up to the cable companies and they are going to be relegated to bandwidth provider status.
  - samratjp 16y ago
    Wait, you have Hulu plus already? I thought it was still in preview invite only? Do tell us if you are a preview invitee.
    - Timothee 16y ago
      Hulu Plus is still in preview but I got an invite recently. (though I haven't used it yet) I suggest you sign up here for the waiting list: http://www.hulu.com/plus http://www.hulu.com/plus I received mine 3 weeks ago and had signed up a couple of weeks after the announcement.
    - tedkimble 16y ago
      I received my invite about two weeks ago and signed up immediately. I do not have cable (or a tv), but I'm not sure if I will keep subscribing. I don't spend enough time watching it on my iPad, and there's far too many shows that are still restricted to the last x (5 normally) episodes. If you're caught up on the shows you watch, there's no need to subscribe unless you want it on other devices as well. But if you want to watch the whole series of a show, $10 is much cheaper than buying or renting elsewhere.
    - jmtulloss 16y ago
      I've got an invite, and I was not impressed. A lot of the recent content is still only available through the web site, and the recent content is the only reason to get hulu in my opinion. If you want old shows, netflix is the way to go. This will probably improve over time, but I don't anticipate keeping it much longer.
- lliiffee 16y ago
  Incidentally, Time Warner just informed me that they were raising the price of my internet-only plan to $54.95, and pointed out that internet + cable plans start at $56.95.
  - rbritton 16y ago
    We have Comcast at our business location and they do something similar. Internet is something like $63/mo and Internet + cable is $68. We switched over to them after Qwest notified us that their DSL rate was going up 20%: $65 for 1.5 Mbps from Qwest or $63 for 12 Mbps from Comcast.
- jsz0 16y ago
  Contrary to popular belief, not all of that $150 you give to Comcast each month (ouch) goes to buying yachts for Comcast's CEO Programming costs alone are going up about 10% per year while the average provider rate increase is only about 5% per year. Over the next 2-3 years we're going to hit the point where selling linear video service is unprofitable for cable providers. The ESPN 360 model of IP services being bundled with access is probably the future. I could see Hulu, Netflix, etc partnering with providers on this. Apple is probably at a disadvantage because you know they won't be interested in offering iTunes Store access on some cruddy Motorola or Cisco set top box. This makes me wonder if the new iTV could perhaps be something Apple sells through partnerships with cable / telco video providers. They got into bed with AT&T so it's not unthinkable they would do the same with Comcast or TWC.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    I would be all over a basic cable/basic internet/hulu/netflix bundle.
- sandGorgon 16y ago
  about-the-better-car: ever heard of the Tata Nano ? 2000$ 56 miles a gallon
samratjp 16y ago
Hmm, this is in a way Apple's entry into the home console wars with iPod Touches, iPhones and iPads as controllers.
tomjen3 16y ago
I doubt this will do much - people have found out that you can download whatever tv show you want online, why should they pay for it on iTunes? It might have a very, very small chance of working in the US, but outside its borders it faces an even bigger problem: most tv shows that can be seen here are several seasons behind, how can Apple compete with that handicap against free downloads for anything other than the "I am too scared of computers to even go near them crowd?"
- jon_hendry 16y ago
  "I doubt this will do much - people have found out that you can download whatever tv show you want online, why should they pay for it on iTunes?" Simplicity. No need to deal with format issues, or un-seeded torrents, or corrupt files, or varying quality.
  - alextgordon 16y ago
    Are you sure? I never have any of the problems you state.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      I have had those problems. If someone only watches a few shows, this could be a good deal. Also, I could never see my dad using bittorrent. It would be way too complicated for him.
    - nickdunkman 16y ago
      People like you are a very small percentage of the cable tv market.
- pwim 16y ago
  iTunes makes money on music, which you can download online, so why can't it on TV?
jsz0 16y ago
I still think the pay-per-episode model just isn't going to work in the US. We just watch too much TV. If you're an average American who sits down and watches 4-5 hours of TV a day that's going to be at least $150 per month in rentals. That's just for one individual too. A household of people watching different shows at a 99 cent per show fee could rack up a $500/month bill pretty quickly. Rental prices would have to be much closer to 5-10 cents per episode to be economical for most people to replace cable/satellite.
- sprout 16y ago
  >that's going to be at least $150 per month in rentals. That's the kicker right there. At $1/episode they're practically charging the cost of buying a DVD, except for all you're getting is streaming or crippled DRM'd 640x480 video - really just a rental. $15/season ain't happening, and the formats they're offering aren't a reasonable value proposition for the buyers.
- megablast 16y ago
  It doesn't have to replace cable to be successful. You can still miss a show, and want to get it NOW! This 99c model allows you to do this, without even thinking about it. There are lots of people who miss a few episodes. There are lots of people who don't want to own tv shows? (what is the point?). There are lots of people who don't watch as much tv.
cellshade 16y ago
It looks as though Apple TV is going to do what the Roku Player has been doing for well over a year now. I got my Roku box for $99 (it's even cheaper now), and at the time it only did SD streaming from Netflix, but they have done several software updates since then, and it not only does HD from Netflix (and works beautifully), but it also streams from Amazon's VoD service, which is where I get most of my content when I can't get it through Netflix. They've also added "channels" which allows any streaming video provider to hook into their API and stream to the Roku box, including the handling of paid subscriptions. Every day it seems like there's more. You can even get live baseball games and UFC fights. I dropped my cable after the Roku. And to the above poster that said internet would barely be cheaper without TV, I have ATT U-verse, and it's $65 a month for internet-only 24mbps, but if you want an inexpensive option, I believe it goes all the way down to something like $25 a month. I used to use torrents for some TV, but now that it's so easy to just stream stuff from Netflix, Amazon, etc, and watch it on my TV the same way I'd watch something on a Tivo, it's just not worth the hassle anymore. The cable company's days are numbered here if they don't adapt to this new business model. I could never imagine paying $100+ a month for TV ever again.
bbuffone 16y ago
I stopped using my iPod and went to a zune because I was tired of getting 99c to death. It was the best move, I would rather just pay my music "tax" and have access to all the music I want. Currently, there is about $1000 dollars of music on the device, when I had my iPod I never spent more than $100 dollars a year. I am one of the few that actually want to pay for the things I like, as it will ensure that more of those things will be available.
- zmonkeyz 16y ago
  On top of that the ability to chose 10 of those songs to keep a month DRM free is such a good deal.
- kzsystems 16y ago
  out of (genuine) interest what happens to the $1000 of music if (gasp!) you ever decide to move to a non-zune device? Can you export it in an open format to move to the new one?
  - bbuffone 16y ago
    I'm sure they don't travel with me, but at $13 a month it is worth it. they will still cost $1000 and I have only to pay $140 (year). So if I need to move and want all the music which I won't not at $1000. I would have paid a 14% premium. the subtract all the music that I am either done with or didn't really like, I am sure that I will come out a head. Hey, maybe that is a good business model, get a two month subscription service where you can access all the music and train the system to understand what you like so you can pay as little as possible for DRM free music. Best of both world. Or we can all just enjoy Justin Beiber and the Youtube way of picking music.
res0nat0r 16y ago
Apparently pay is the new free.
Groxx 16y ago
$1/show/2days? No thanks. It'd mean I'd end up paying $0. Quite frankly, no show is worth $1 for a single watch. Except maybe Nova (and PBS is OTA). If their non-prime-time dropped to $0.10, possibly all the way up to $0.10, then I might go through upwards of $50-$100 per year. Which is $50-$100 more than they're getting from me now. You'd think they'd be interested in a market they've previously had totally untapped, but they don't seem to be.
- wmf 16y ago
  If tapping the Groxx market would require them to lose money in a larger market, they aren't going to do it. Econ 101.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Or so the theory goes, if adhered to the current hypothetical parameters which seem to be making the media industries perform very slow seppuku. If people were happier with what they watched, wouldn't it stand to reason they'd watch more? Doesn't Econ 101 also cover why demand is good for your income? Not that I think you're wrong :) I'm definitely in the minority in this. But I do doubt these sentiments / desires / tendencies are in the minority.
- dagw 16y ago
  It may be $50-$100 more than they're getting from _you_, but it is several hundred dollars less than they're currently getting from your neighbour. And since they can't find a way to offer that deal to only you and not your neighbour, they're better off not taking your money, since it means they get to keep taking more money from your neighbour.
marcinw 16y ago
Seriously, when am I going to be able to pick and choose what channels I want to subscribe to?
- megablast 16y ago
  Never, it does not work that way. Get rid of your cable, it is a waste of time anyway.
- dagw 16y ago
  As soon as people, when faced with a choice between Everything and Nothing, start choosing Nothing.
  - kzsystems 16y ago
    one of the best replies ever. Thank you.
  - marcinw 16y ago
    I chose Nothing, and currently only get HD over the air with an antenna.

57 points by ssclafani 16y ago

As I was preparing for the new Mad Men season, I noticed that AMC was selling old Mad Men episodes for 99¢. At that price, it's about as cheap as renting the DVDs, and I thought Finally a network is coming to its senses. That was short lived, however. They jacked up the prices when the new season started. At 99¢ per episode or, say, $20 for a season I would jump right in and probably cancel my cable.

mrshoe 16y ago

This sounds wonderful, but I think it's unrealistic to expect this model to go mainstream. The pricing logic here completely ignores the costs involved. It's like saying that some people are sick of paying $20k for their cars and predicting that Apple is going to design a better car (tangent: wouldn't that be nice?) and sell it for just $1k. Sounds great, but it's just not possible. Contrary to popular belief, not all of that $150 you give to Comcast each month (ouch) goes to buying yachts for Comcast's CEO. Some of it goes to building and maintaining a network. Some of it even goes to pay for the production of those movies and television shows you're watching. The costs of producing entertainment and running large-scale networks is probably not going to drop by 90% any time soon. The more likely scenario is this: Comcast: May I help you? Me: Yes, I'd like to cancel my $150/month TV+internet package and just get an internet-only package because I can get all the content I want over the internet now much more affordably. Comcast: OK, no problem. Our internet-only packages run $145/month. I still think this is a huge improvement, mind you. Having everything on demand is much better than worrying about TV networks' schedules. And those who watch less can now pay less (i.e. those who watch more can pay more...). I just don't see everyone's bill going from $1,500 a year to $100 a year, like the article suggests.

emmett 16y ago
We know what it costs to buy internet-only: you can buy internet from AT&T for $30/month if you get DSL. So it's unlikely that many people will opt into $145/month internet-only cable. Will the pricing go from $150/month to $10/month? Almost certainly not. Will pricing go from $150/month to $70/month? It seems quite possible - because internet access is a commodity, unlike cable tv.
- mrshoe 16y ago
  Right you are. The $145/month was a bit of hyperbole. I think expecting this market to allow 50% of its revenues to dry up is pretty optimistic. 93% (as the article suggested) is just very naive. They'll find a way to extract our money.
  - binarysoul 16y ago
    It really depends where you live. I'm in South Florida... $42 AT&T DSL doesn't even stay connect all the time and maxes out at 400kb/s. Whereas $62.50 comcast internet stays connected a little more reliably and maxes out between 200kb/s and 1mb/s depending on their whims. Its ridiculous that aside from moving or paying multiple hundreds of dollars per month I can't get quality internet service
jrockway 16y ago
Except, I already did this. "Hi Speakeasy, I don't want TV." "That's great, because we don't sell TV service." I have never had cable or satellite TV in my adult life. And I've never had to pay extra for Internet access. If people actually want Internet-only TV subscriptions, the market will force Comcast to lower their prices. But I think most people want an endless stream of crap so even when they're bored, they can do something that requires minimal energy expenditure. So Comcast should be fine. But anyway, I'm pretty sure that paying 99 cents an episode for shows that are already broadcast into your house for free (courtesy of "the networks") is a good deal for Apple and not such a good deal for you.
- donaldc 16y ago
  If people actually want Internet-only TV subscriptions, the market will force Comcast to lower their prices. Perhaps yes, eventually, but it could be years. The market for high-speed internet connections in most locations is, at best, a duopoly, due to the high fixed cost of installing infrastructure. By analogy, think of what unreasonableness the electrical company could get away with if they weren't regulated. The market for high-speed internet connectivity isn't that bad, but it's certainly not a free market in the same sense that pizza delivery is.
- Avshalom 16y ago
  Alternatively the market will force Internet-only TV subscriptions to raise their prices. 10 dollars a month to Hulu isn't going to pay ESPN's bills.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    Hulu doesn't carry ESPN content, so I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Quite the opposite. The market is forcing content to be given away for free.
illumin8 16y ago
The pricing models are ridiculous. I cut the cable cord over a year ago, cancelled my $150 a month plan, and now enjoy $30 a month Internet only with $10 a month streaming Hulu plus, $9 a month streaming Netflix, and save a ton of money every year. The cable business model is dead. I'm sorry, but it does not cost $billions to produce these TV shows. I only watch about 3 TV shows regularly and spend maybe 2.5 hours a week doing that, so I'm not going to pay more than a few bucks a month. Also, I'm sorry, but if I pay for content, I am not going to let you get paid to show me unskippable ads. Not going to do it. The market has spoken. Technology is catching up to the cable companies and they are going to be relegated to bandwidth provider status.
- samratjp 16y ago
  Wait, you have Hulu plus already? I thought it was still in preview invite only? Do tell us if you are a preview invitee.
  - Timothee 16y ago
    Hulu Plus is still in preview but I got an invite recently. (though I haven't used it yet) I suggest you sign up here for the waiting list: http://www.hulu.com/plus http://www.hulu.com/plus I received mine 3 weeks ago and had signed up a couple of weeks after the announcement.
  - tedkimble 16y ago
    I received my invite about two weeks ago and signed up immediately. I do not have cable (or a tv), but I'm not sure if I will keep subscribing. I don't spend enough time watching it on my iPad, and there's far too many shows that are still restricted to the last x (5 normally) episodes. If you're caught up on the shows you watch, there's no need to subscribe unless you want it on other devices as well. But if you want to watch the whole series of a show, $10 is much cheaper than buying or renting elsewhere.
  - jmtulloss 16y ago
    I've got an invite, and I was not impressed. A lot of the recent content is still only available through the web site, and the recent content is the only reason to get hulu in my opinion. If you want old shows, netflix is the way to go. This will probably improve over time, but I don't anticipate keeping it much longer.
lliiffee 16y ago
Incidentally, Time Warner just informed me that they were raising the price of my internet-only plan to $54.95, and pointed out that internet + cable plans start at $56.95.
- rbritton 16y ago
  We have Comcast at our business location and they do something similar. Internet is something like $63/mo and Internet + cable is $68. We switched over to them after Qwest notified us that their DSL rate was going up 20%: $65 for 1.5 Mbps from Qwest or $63 for 12 Mbps from Comcast.
jsz0 16y ago
Contrary to popular belief, not all of that $150 you give to Comcast each month (ouch) goes to buying yachts for Comcast's CEO Programming costs alone are going up about 10% per year while the average provider rate increase is only about 5% per year. Over the next 2-3 years we're going to hit the point where selling linear video service is unprofitable for cable providers. The ESPN 360 model of IP services being bundled with access is probably the future. I could see Hulu, Netflix, etc partnering with providers on this. Apple is probably at a disadvantage because you know they won't be interested in offering iTunes Store access on some cruddy Motorola or Cisco set top box. This makes me wonder if the new iTV could perhaps be something Apple sells through partnerships with cable / telco video providers. They got into bed with AT&T so it's not unthinkable they would do the same with Comcast or TWC.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  I would be all over a basic cable/basic internet/hulu/netflix bundle.
sandGorgon 16y ago
about-the-better-car: ever heard of the Tata Nano ? 2000$ 56 miles a gallon

samratjp 16y ago

Hmm, this is in a way Apple's entry into the home console wars with iPod Touches, iPhones and iPads as controllers.

tomjen3 16y ago

I doubt this will do much - people have found out that you can download whatever tv show you want online, why should they pay for it on iTunes? It might have a very, very small chance of working in the US, but outside its borders it faces an even bigger problem: most tv shows that can be seen here are several seasons behind, how can Apple compete with that handicap against free downloads for anything other than the "I am too scared of computers to even go near them crowd?"

jon_hendry 16y ago
"I doubt this will do much - people have found out that you can download whatever tv show you want online, why should they pay for it on iTunes?" Simplicity. No need to deal with format issues, or un-seeded torrents, or corrupt files, or varying quality.
- alextgordon 16y ago
  Are you sure? I never have any of the problems you state.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I have had those problems. If someone only watches a few shows, this could be a good deal. Also, I could never see my dad using bittorrent. It would be way too complicated for him.
  - nickdunkman 16y ago
    People like you are a very small percentage of the cable tv market.
pwim 16y ago
iTunes makes money on music, which you can download online, so why can't it on TV?

jsz0 16y ago

I still think the pay-per-episode model just isn't going to work in the US. We just watch too much TV. If you're an average American who sits down and watches 4-5 hours of TV a day that's going to be at least $150 per month in rentals. That's just for one individual too. A household of people watching different shows at a 99 cent per show fee could rack up a $500/month bill pretty quickly. Rental prices would have to be much closer to 5-10 cents per episode to be economical for most people to replace cable/satellite.

sprout 16y ago
>that's going to be at least $150 per month in rentals. That's the kicker right there. At $1/episode they're practically charging the cost of buying a DVD, except for all you're getting is streaming or crippled DRM'd 640x480 video - really just a rental. $15/season ain't happening, and the formats they're offering aren't a reasonable value proposition for the buyers.
megablast 16y ago
It doesn't have to replace cable to be successful. You can still miss a show, and want to get it NOW! This 99c model allows you to do this, without even thinking about it. There are lots of people who miss a few episodes. There are lots of people who don't want to own tv shows? (what is the point?). There are lots of people who don't watch as much tv.

cellshade 16y ago

It looks as though Apple TV is going to do what the Roku Player has been doing for well over a year now. I got my Roku box for $99 (it's even cheaper now), and at the time it only did SD streaming from Netflix, but they have done several software updates since then, and it not only does HD from Netflix (and works beautifully), but it also streams from Amazon's VoD service, which is where I get most of my content when I can't get it through Netflix. They've also added "channels" which allows any streaming video provider to hook into their API and stream to the Roku box, including the handling of paid subscriptions. Every day it seems like there's more. You can even get live baseball games and UFC fights. I dropped my cable after the Roku. And to the above poster that said internet would barely be cheaper without TV, I have ATT U-verse, and it's $65 a month for internet-only 24mbps, but if you want an inexpensive option, I believe it goes all the way down to something like $25 a month. I used to use torrents for some TV, but now that it's so easy to just stream stuff from Netflix, Amazon, etc, and watch it on my TV the same way I'd watch something on a Tivo, it's just not worth the hassle anymore. The cable company's days are numbered here if they don't adapt to this new business model. I could never imagine paying $100+ a month for TV ever again.

bbuffone 16y ago

I stopped using my iPod and went to a zune because I was tired of getting 99c to death. It was the best move, I would rather just pay my music "tax" and have access to all the music I want. Currently, there is about $1000 dollars of music on the device, when I had my iPod I never spent more than $100 dollars a year. I am one of the few that actually want to pay for the things I like, as it will ensure that more of those things will be available.

zmonkeyz 16y ago
On top of that the ability to chose 10 of those songs to keep a month DRM free is such a good deal.
kzsystems 16y ago
out of (genuine) interest what happens to the $1000 of music if (gasp!) you ever decide to move to a non-zune device? Can you export it in an open format to move to the new one?
- bbuffone 16y ago
  I'm sure they don't travel with me, but at $13 a month it is worth it. they will still cost $1000 and I have only to pay $140 (year). So if I need to move and want all the music which I won't not at $1000. I would have paid a 14% premium. the subtract all the music that I am either done with or didn't really like, I am sure that I will come out a head. Hey, maybe that is a good business model, get a two month subscription service where you can access all the music and train the system to understand what you like so you can pay as little as possible for DRM free music. Best of both world. Or we can all just enjoy Justin Beiber and the Youtube way of picking music.

res0nat0r 16y ago

Apparently pay is the new free.

Groxx 16y ago

$1/show/2days? No thanks. It'd mean I'd end up paying $0. Quite frankly, no show is worth $1 for a single watch. Except maybe Nova (and PBS is OTA). If their non-prime-time dropped to $0.10, possibly all the way up to $0.10, then I might go through upwards of $50-$100 per year. Which is $50-$100 more than they're getting from me now. You'd think they'd be interested in a market they've previously had totally untapped, but they don't seem to be.

wmf 16y ago
If tapping the Groxx market would require them to lose money in a larger market, they aren't going to do it. Econ 101.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Or so the theory goes, if adhered to the current hypothetical parameters which seem to be making the media industries perform very slow seppuku. If people were happier with what they watched, wouldn't it stand to reason they'd watch more? Doesn't Econ 101 also cover why demand is good for your income? Not that I think you're wrong :) I'm definitely in the minority in this. But I do doubt these sentiments / desires / tendencies are in the minority.
dagw 16y ago
It may be $50-$100 more than they're getting from _you_, but it is several hundred dollars less than they're currently getting from your neighbour. And since they can't find a way to offer that deal to only you and not your neighbour, they're better off not taking your money, since it means they get to keep taking more money from your neighbour.

marcinw 16y ago

Seriously, when am I going to be able to pick and choose what channels I want to subscribe to?

megablast 16y ago
Never, it does not work that way. Get rid of your cable, it is a waste of time anyway.
dagw 16y ago
As soon as people, when faced with a choice between Everything and Nothing, start choosing Nothing.
- kzsystems 16y ago
  one of the best replies ever. Thank you.
- marcinw 16y ago
  I chose Nothing, and currently only get HD over the air with an antenna.