Recently, I was more or less forced into subscribing to digital cable. My old TV died and I bought an LCD set for a hundred dollars less than I paid for the old TV 11 years ago. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.The upshot of the deal is that I am paying an extra 5 dollars a month for about a dozen hi-definition channels, which are part of some package that Comcast has put together to make my life more pleasurable. Thanks. Meanwhile, most of the hi-def channels are also available in regular-def, so I am paying for duplicate channels thatI will never watch. Is this making sense?
I guess it doesn't make sense to somebody else, too because now, a lawsuit is being filed in California that is seeking to require the cable companies to offer channels on an a la carte basis. The theory is that you would pay for what you want. So, most of us would opt out of the Spanish channels and shopping channels and whatever else we weren't interested in so that we could save a few bucks off our bill. For instance, I have no use for about 20 music channels that are buried in the 400s. If I want to listen to music, I'm not turning on the TV. I'm not sure what kind of person I would have to be to listen to music on my television, but I guarantee you it isn't the one I am now. So, dropping all of those needless channels will save me money, right? I'll bet you can already guess what will happen.
The cable company will increase the charges for the popular channels so that it will be fiscally impractical for us to dump the channels we don't watch. My bill is $65 a month. I'd be willing to bet the whole 65 bucks that if Comcast offered a la carte pricing, my bill would be $70. There are meetings going on right now. You betcha.
The antitrust laws protect the right of choice," antitrust lawyer Maxwell M. Blecher said. "Here the customer is denied that choice."
"The complex web of contractual arrangements among service providers and networks amounts to a monopoly or cartel that has "deprived consumers of choice, caused them to pay inflated prices for cable television and forced them to pay for cable channels they do not want and do not watch," Blecher wrote in the complaint filed on behalf of cable subscribers in several states.
"The complex web of contractual arrangements among service providers and networks amounts to a monopoly or cartel that has "deprived consumers of choice, caused them to pay inflated prices for cable television and forced them to pay for cable channels they do not want and do not watch," Blecher wrote in the complaint filed on behalf of cable subscribers in several states.
Meanwhile, calls to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group for the U.S. cable television industry, were not immediately returned. I'm thinking that the NCT isn't made up of the same type of people who make up that Soap group. It's just a feeling.
Blecher contends cable and satellite television subscribers should be able to pay only for the channels they actually want to watch. Oh, Belcher, you're so naive. I hope you're not working on a retainer, because you aren't going to make diddly-squat. Besides, even if you win, we lose.
Here's something fun to do: Let's check back to see if anyone from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association drops by and leaves a nice comment, like Brian did yesterday. I'll go double or nothing for the 65 bucks I bet on the other thing that they don't show.
They probably blog a la carte.
2 comments:
If I didn't have this 'access' to cable that I do now, I wouldn't have it. I cannot afford $65 a month (sad eh?). Then again if I didn't have cable I guess I would not have spent more time sitting on the couch than going out.....My boyfriend doesn't have cable (and sometimes it sucks because there is something on the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel that I so wanted to watch when I was visiting him), but if I don't have it, after that initial detox of missing it, then I don't miss it.
yes but golf is great to watch in Hi Def
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