hammb wrote:Personally I wish we could get a la carte programming, but in the end I don't think my (or many of us on this website) would see their bills go down much. It's my understanding that these sports channels (specifically ESPN & ESPN2, etc) are by quite a large margin the most expensive channels that your cable company pays for. Right now the little old ladies who just watch game show channel are helping subsidize our viewing of ESPN. I think I saw somewhere that ESPN alone was $3/month for each person who gets the channel. If you moved to a la carte type pricing you can bet that would be at least $5, probably more. And that's just one channel.
I don't deny that a la carte pricing would be great for a lot of people, but I think most of us sports fans that want all the various ESPN, Fox sports, etc, would end up paying just as much if not more than we do now.
I work for a cable company as my second job (Bryan Municipal Cable in Bryan) and we paid $4 per subscriber last year for ESPN. ESPN 1 - not the Deuce, not Classic, not News, not U. $4 for ESPN. Then you add all the other ESPN networks, Fox Sports Ohio, Fox Sports Detroit, SportsTime Ohio, etc. and it is a lot of money for sports programming.
HSN and the other shopping channels are free or low cost for cable companies. In fact, they get a cut (albeit small) of purchases. That's why they stay.
I used to complain about high prices of cable, but not since I've been on the other side. It's the networks, not the cable companies that are pushing this. Heck, Disney/ABC recently tried to get us to pay $1.50 per subscriber for Channel 13 in Toledo. We said f*ck you... we have the Ft. Wayne station here for free. Guess what they said to us? "Uh... OK... forget about it."