[mythtv-users] All clear QAMs gone in Portland, OR

Gary Buhrmaster gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com
Fri Nov 1 16:15:03 UTC 2013


On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Eric Sharkey <eric at lisaneric.org> wrote:
....
> But that $7 price point factors in the large number of people who pay
> for those channels but never watch them.  Without that, they'd jack up
> their rates, probably to around $50/month.

Which might be OK.  I think we can agree that there
are two obviously separable charges here.  One for
the infrastructure necessary for the carriage of
the content (the fiber, cable, head-end, etc.) and
then the actual content itself.  This is no different
than separating the electric companies into the
transmission and generation parts (and, depending
on your jurisdiction and their attempts at maintaining
various regulations, that either went well, or badly).

There is clearly a cost to run/maintain/improve the
infrastructure through the community, regardless
of how many subscribers you have in that community.
The cost per subscriber will, of course, vary based
on the subscriber base, but is likely in the tens of
dollar ranges.

Now there is also a "usage" (i.e. consuming content)
charge.  I have no problem with charging people for
the content they consume (whether it is internet bits,
or "Game of Thrones") as long as the price reflects
the cost to obtain/deliver it.  And while I choose not
to spend money to watch/view sports events, I have
no problem with people who choose to spend money
doing so (although I do have a problem with others
spending my money to reduce costs to those others
in the form of subsidies or tax reductions).  So, if
ESPN cost $10/month to subscribe to, let those
who wish to (or "need" to) view it pay to do so.

I do agree that pure a-la-cart is probably impossible
and impractical.  But their could be smaller bundles
and channels being placed into multiple difference
bundles; ESPN could be in a "sports, all sports,
and nothing but the sports" bundle which included
the current Baseball, (American) Football, Basketball,
Hockey, and Auto Racing packages, and it could
also be in the "NFL Ticket" bundle.  There could be
a "News" bundle which included CNN, FOX and MSNBC
(no, I do not want to discuss the various commentary
or opinion shows and whether they deserve the category
news) Al Jazeera, and the Weather channel.  And so on.

btw, if there is any serious action in Congress by
McCain (or others) to achieve true a-la-cart pricing,
I would seriously consider shorting Disney (about
40% of their stock value is due to the ESPN property).

Gary


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