[opendtv] Re: 20051129 Twang's Tuesday Tribune (Mark's Monday Memo)
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:26:26 -0500
> - Speaking today at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing
> on indecency, FCC head Kevin Martin said the commission
> was wrong in finding previously that "a la carte" cable
> (where consumers pay only for channels they want) would
> cost the public more than the current system of tiers:
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-262484A1.pdf>
Except that the main motivation for this was to give
parents more choice as to what their kids watch on TV, not
to reduce the price of cable for the average customer. The
main thrust of Martin's talk was "decency." And even then,
he discounted the additional cost of whatever extra
hardware would be needed for a la carte programming. And
as far as I can tell, other administrative costs weren't
mentioned. And on top of that, he isn't really addressing
a la carte, but rather a more varied quantity of tiers. He
calls it "more a la carte," and talks about subscribing for
bundles, not individual programs.
Unless cable companies are making excessively high profits
now, one has to figure that the median cable subscriber
would pay somewhat more, not less, with "more a la carte"
programming. The cost of running the plant won't go down,
so what I think would happen is that the basic tier
subscribers would be subsidized more than they are now,
the median would be paying roughly the same (with a
marginal increase caused by the additional overhead
incurred by the service provider), and the top tiers would
go up in price compared to now.
If this were truly a la carte, then the situation would be
even more onerous, and a lot of those channels that are
carried now to appease legislators would go dark, since
they take up space and provide no significant revenue.
Bert
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