Posts Tagged ‘a la carte’

On Saturday, NCTA President & CEO Michael Powell was on C-SPAN’s  The Communicators discussing sports broadcasting, political ads, and how social media might impact the future of TV.

We haven’t heard about a la carte cable in quite a while, but this week we saw several items on the topic that we thought were of interest.

I hope you are following the very vibrant debate that’s been taking place over the last week, involving  Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, Chairman of HDNet Mark Cuban and a host of other people about the relationship between free online video and the programming available from multichannel video distributers, such as cable, satellite and phone companies.

Stories come and go in both the general media landscape and the blogosphere, but often the same issues remain on the radar, but driven by different players and events.

For some time, I’ve been noting on my Twitter account the rising tide of people who have decided to cut the cord that ties them to servicing their television needs through cable, satellite or other wired means, instead turning to the Internet to be informed and entertained.  The topic is blowing up now, with Washington Post tech columnist Mike Musgrove now examining the issue in his column this past weekend (“TV Breaks Out of the Box”).

There was a column in the L.A. Times yesterday from David Lazarus entitled: “Let’s pay only for the TV we watch.” So, once again, back we go to the topic of “a la carte” cable service.

It probably comes as no news to you that the availability and consumption of broadband video has risen dramatically this year. I enjoy using Net-viewing to timeshift or catch up on old episodes of particular shows, as well as watching video that’s exclusive to the Web (I love ill Doctrine, a hip-hop video blog hosted by Jay Smooth).

In the last few months, a number of blogs have written about “a la carte” consumption of content as a cost-savings measure. In these tough economic times, managing your entertainment and information budget is certainly a good idea.

Given the FCC approval of the XM – Sirius merger, and the release of the “voluntary commitments and other conditions” that sealed the deal, one natural question that has arisen is “If satellite radio can do a la carte, why can’t cable providers do it?” The answer, of course, is buried in the details.

Well, that’s the way it’s being positioned anyway… The Emmy nominations came out today and the historical part was that, for the first time, two basic cable programs (Mad Men & Damages) were nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, along with Showtime’s Dexter.

It’s worth revisiting a topic that never goes off the radar: Concern about content. Everybody can agree that cable transformed the television landscape by vastly expanding viewing choices, but not every viewing option is to everybody’s taste.

The issue of mandatory “a la carte” for cable television service continues to be a hot topic. This is actually a pretty broad and complex topic, so I’d like to break it down a bit.

There are any number of issues that come up all the time in the cable business. And one of them is the pay-per-channel scheme known as “a la carte.” Sure, it sounds attractive.

Today, there was a SuperSession run by CNET entitled “Next Big Thing,” in which CNET editors set out to reveal what’s coming in three key areas: automobiles, personal handhelds and television.