“I argue that, in some fashion, consumers will be able to purchase a basic bundle from TWC/CMCSA and proceed to complement/supplement it with individual options,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “It should come as no surprise that readers have responded with a resounding Marv Albert-style ‘YESSSS!’ to my speculation.”
“There’s probably nothing more popular than the notion of a la carte pricing from cable (or satellite). In fact, there’s so much consensus that a la carte is righteous and cable companies are evil for not providing it that you really can’t be against it,” Pendola writes. “Being against a la carte pricing is akin to being for cancer or child abuse.”
“Apple offers a la carte. Amazon offers a la carte. That’s what we want. Apple, for instance, doesn’t make you buy a package of core apps or something of the sort. It’s choose what you use. And, while it makes perfect sense for the circumstances, it’s not like it’s all that sexy,” Pendola writes. “I expect a similar dynamic to unfold if we ever see a la carte pricing from cable. However, it won’t end quite the same way, primarily because you’ll get a bill every month itemizing your expenses. It doesn’t happen quite that way when you buy stuff from Apple (or Amazon). You pay and receive a receipt as you go, which means there’s different psychology at play. But with cable… it could prove to be a rude awakening for plenty of subscribers.”
Read more in the full article here.
Write a list of the programs you watch and if you’re like me, the number is quite small. Therefore simply buying the episodes may be less expensive than the cable bill.
Of course you also have to add up the internet access fee, the sporting events you want to watch.
I agree. I only watch a few things. I don’t have time for the rest. I would rather by a whole season once than pay $100+ a month. Besides, for those of us who really are couch potatoes, I am sure the cable companies will still offer package deals. Apple allows you to download one song at a time, or you get a discount for buying the whole album. Nothing changes other than we have greater choice.
The potential cost saving is one aspect and I also hope that this way I am not supporting every type of programming the content providers dream up in the existing bundled channel A la cart model.
Quite frankly, I would be happy to get channel A la Cart versus program/episode model by the likes of Apple/Amazon, etc…
I use the favorite channels setup in my DVR so I only see 11 channels out of 100s.
As long as TWC, Verizon or AT&T are behind this, we’ll never pay less than what we’re paying now. You all witnessed how the aforementioned just shut down net neutrality, right?
unless you only watch like one show, buying a la carte from itunes is too expensive
$50 – $60 for cable internet
$120 for internet and TV
$30 or so per season on itunes for a lot of shows
might as well just get the whole cable deal
What deal are you getting? My Comcast bill for TV and Internet is ~$200/month!
Paid my CONcast bill today and it was $129. What are you buying for $200/month?
I have the “Triple Play” including phone (which I don’t use, but it actually brings my bill down due to the “special” I got), with equipment rental and a premium channels package. Honestly I think I would be better off à la carte, but I’m locked in for a few more months at least. Still, my internet is rocket-fast, so I don’t complain too much.
comcast is advertising special $79.99 triple play bundles now. call it $120 after the intro year or two
what kind of special did you get?
The kind that leaves me paying ~$200/month :-/ But thanks for the info, I’ll look into when my “deal” ends!
for now i have a one year special bundle for $130 that is tv, 20/2 internet, hbo and a DVR
next year i will dump the dvr and HBO except for the few months when game of thrones is on and plan to pay around $130 for regular TV with 300 or whatever channels and internet will be 50/5 by then since time warner is rewiring NYC right now.
if i need to, i will also buy my own modem and get a cable card to save the $13 in equipment rentals per month
once comcast buys time warner it will actually be better for me since time warner doesn’t have streaming rights to most cable sub content now
We dropped TV service from our U-Verse account and, with the equipment fees, etc. we were paying, we dropped $100 off of our bill per month. $1,200.00 per year can buy a lot of season subscriptions from iTunes.
I pay $60 per month for internet only, $7.99 for Netflix, $7.99 for Hulu, and occasionally rent movies off of iTunes. I also download lots of free news podcasts to get my news. That is all I have time for. Total cost about $75 for unlimited internet and all the TV I want to watch. Occasionally I rent movies about 1 or 2 per month, so add about $10, and I watch everything I have time for never spending more than $85 !
Unless you have to go three levels up in the bundle scheme to get the one show you want. But I agree the iTunes pricing levels are too high.
I’m not for or against à la carte but as a sports nut it’s not for me.
Exactly. Live sports will be the biggest hurdle for cable companies to figure out.
Over the air
Apple TV
Friend or family with cable to setup ESPN on Apple TV
OTA is only football and some baseball. no NBA
ESPN is only sports news and very little real sports games
the MLB and NBA streaming on the apple tv blacks out local games. even then it’s like $350 per year plus VPN fees if you want local games so you might as well get regular cable
Exactly. Licensing sporting events would be an absolute nightmare for Apple, the cable companies, and whoever else might be involved.
So, this comes down to the usual issue of personal responsibility. Fine with me!
Of course, hidden gouging of customers via inflated prices for individual programs is never welcome.
It’s not “could” cost more, but “will” cost more.
It shouldn’t be “will” be more. It should be “could” be more.
$15/month (more in a large metro with more channels) for a basic Over-The-Air package that includes local government and public access stations.
Add $5/month/channel for basic cable channels
Add $10/month/channel for singular sports channel (ESPN, no ESPN2) or a singular movie channel (HBOE1, no inDemand).
Add $20/month/channel for a premium movie group (HBOE1, HBOW1, HBOE2, HBOW2, HBO inDemand, HBO Go, etc) or a network group like Disney (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, Disney, DisneyJr, ABC Family) or Fox (FoxNews, FoxBusiness, FX, FX2, FoxSportsChannel, FSNSouthwest, etc). Obviously these would go down if I were buying packages.
If I get my OTAs and only watch, say, CNN: Then I pay $25 and am getting it for less than the current just under $35 I pay for a basic cable package.
I’m already doing À la carte – a little over a year ago I put up antenna and started buying “cable series” via iTunes, Blu Ray compilations and watching the free stuff on Amazon Prime*. I saved over $1400 in the first year.
http://atariage.com/forums/blog/148/entry-10670-december-savings/
As always, YMMV.
*I don’t count the price for Amazon Prime as the free shipping more than offsets the subscription price. If I counted that my savings would have been over $1300.
Same here. I’m easily saving over $100 per month while using A la carte (i.e amazon.com) to augment over-the-air TV and Netflix.
Do not forget that your cable bill is the *minimum* that you pay. There are pay-per-view shows on top of that. My $180 per month cable bill was, realistically, over $200 per month after adding on the extra shows that my family watched.
So, you are getting some level of a la carte now but not what you want.
I can a DVR over the air network shows, watch Amazon or Netflix. The shows that I buy on iTunes are only cable shows. Plus I only used iTunes gift cards bought for at least 15% off. Last one was $75 for a $100 card. This brings the total cost way down.
This would be good, this would be bad…
Bad is if we continue to watch as much TV as we presently do
Good in that we will be mindful as to what we watch and we’d probably stop watching too much!
Oh. It’s Rocky. Never mind…
If I had to buy everything off of Apple that our household watch through SKY TV it would cost a fortune. With Amazon and Netflix creating original material, if you wanted them and paid for each it really begins to add up quickly. We pay about £80 a month for three boxes, HD, Sports, Movies, etc. Not that I could get the Sport elsewhere and when my broadband contract ends, I will have to pay for BT Sport (which means I will go without), but watching 3-4 movies a week alone through Apple TV (or other) would come close to what I’m paying and that’s without all the other content factored in.
Ultimately, broadband in my area isn’t fast enough to replace watching TV, so cost is almost not a factor.
I’m fine with paying more if the money goes to creating the types of programs I enjoy watching, and I’m no longer subsidizing useless crap like Lifetime and Fox News.
Those with the gold make the rules. They whoever that is, are going to get our money every month somehow. It is not going to be cheaper going forward to get the same amount of content that we get today. It may go to a different provider but it won’t be cheaper.
But your cable company doesn’t own the content (in most cases). Consequently, all that is needed is somebody that can deliver the content to you for less cost. That is not all that hard — especially given the outrageously high prices that the cable companies are charging to do this today.
The cable companies have abused their monopoly but their position is eroding daily. It is just a matter of time before the prices become more reasonable.
Cable companies control the delivery of the content. They are becoming stronger not weaker.
It is of my opinion that unbundling will cost the consumer way more than what they expect. Be careful what you wish for.
the trouble is cable packages are like welfare for channels that hardly anybody watches. Why should viewers of USA, TNT, Comedy Central, IFC, TBS, ESPN, Disney have to subsidize the dozens of channels that have popped up in the last 15 years. There is no demand for new channels. Yet the Viacoms, Disneys and the rest of the big cable networks create more and more channels and then force them into the bundles. The end consumer has no real choice. The bundles are usually an all or nothing menu. Buy all 200 channels or cancel and by the way your monthly bill is climbing 15% as the cable providers continue to add more channels. We have long passed a point of diminishing returns on more channels being more value.
this is the way they make money
create a channel full of old syndicated shows that are pennies to license or costs have been paid for
add to their bundle and force TV provider to pay extra for it
if the TV company refuses and there is a blackout, create PR storm for customers to say how comcast or direct TV is greedy and they can’t watch some show
TV company rolls over and then people blame TV company when their bill goes up
I would bet that if all television providers (cable, satellite) went to an “a la carte” model, the obesity level in the US would drop substantially over the following 2-3 years.
People would no longer have 300 channels of crap TV to mindlessly channel-surf while chowing down on yet another bag of Doritos, etc. They might actually get off their oversized behinds and DO something, maybe BURN some calories instead of shoving more into their mouths.
Heck, IQ levels might actually go up, too…even the dumbest people might realize that “wow, it’s not worth $35 a season to watch whatever stupid sh*t the Kardashian’s are doing,” etc, etc, and the dumbing-down of America might finally end…or at least slow down.
And I’m not just throwing stones in my glass house, because while I watch FAR less TV than m ost, I have wasted entire evenings watching mindless TV (though never the Kardashians!!) when I should have been doing something productive, reading a book, going to the gym, practicing guitar, etc, etc.
As someone mentioned, the cable companies are also the sole high-speed ISP. If they can’t make as much money through cable programming, they will just raise their internet fees to (more than) compensate. Add that to the a la carte fees, and you are almost guaranteed to be paying more out of pocket if you watch more than an hour or two per day.
The other issue is program diversity. In the present model, the most popular channels allow the less popular channels to survive. Within a single channel’s lineup, the more popular programs subsidize those with a smaller (even if more ardent) audience. Even so, we have seen most of the cable channels go downmarket. Compare the offerings on A&E, Bravo, History Channel, SyFi, etc. with their lineups when they launched.
A la carte programming isn’t going to do me a lot of good if the only shows available are yet more wrestling, cagefighting, and alligator hunting. Those shows have vastly bigger audiences than, for example, the quality shows on HBO, which can currently pad its margins with lots of reruns that its subscribers pay for whether they watch them or not.
The law of in intended consequences could leave us paying a lot more for programming that is even worse than today’s.
Cost more? Bullshit
I have over 200 channels of crap from CONcast and to be honest watch very little broadcast TV. I watch HBO- which I get charged extra for.
I watch a little PBS, a little MSNBC (Rachel Maddow- usually via podcast) some ESPN during college football season and HBO. That is about it- once in a while I will watch an old movie on TCM.
I so despise commercials and the superimposed lower thirds that commercial TV seems intent upon putting up that I BUY shows like Mad Men that I do watch rather than Tivo the AMC commercial fest version.
Once in a Blue Moon something is good on Palladia.
That is about it, people.
We unplugged cable several years ago…. Digital antenna for local stuff, netflix for other stuff, and once in a while Amazon movie through the net. We watch little tv now and DO things as a family….
saving tons
Not worth just sitting and watching crap….
As long as the drone of “endless growth” mantras dominate all economic planning, then pricing will always be designed to increase over time. Inflation is a designed-in condition that affects everything. Moreover, what Apple user doesn’t understand that paying a premium Apple product often provides not “more stuff”, but rather “better experience”? Often when you pay more, you get better experience and better value.
While we’re at it, let’s write other useless headlines:
– Custom-fit clothing may cost more
– Modern supercars may cost more
– Superior quality may cost more
– Customer service may cost more
– Private tutoring may cost more
– In-home private health care may cost more
– Durable goods may cost more
– Airplanes may cost more
– Lifetime warranty may cost more….
Bottom line, consumers by law should have the CHOICE to reject receiving bundled crap they don’t want. Relative pricing is irrelevant to that point: you know if people demand it, capitalists will charge as much as they can get away with.
Do you realize our cable bills are directly subsidizing the astronomical salaries of pro athletes — thanks to the inclusion of ESPN in most versions of “basic” cable.
Why should I pay $5-$6 a month to ESPN if I never watch sports? It’s by far the most expensive channel on cable (except for HBO and Cinemax), but I’m virtually all cases, you don’t have a choice about it.
Personally, I’d pay the same money (but far more willingly) if I didn’t have to get religious channels, sports channels, shopping channels, reality channels and other bandwidth-wasters.