Cox Playing With Discount TV Tier

Looks like they yanked the ESPN channels. Bold move. I'd bet they snag a good chunk of subscribers with this.

ESPN & ESPN2 cost an arm and a leg from Disney for the cable companies. If you offer an economy tier, these channels can't be included.

I'd LOVE to see a DirecTV tier with none of the ESPN sports channels, or Disney for that matter. I'd like to drop another $10.00 a month off my monthly bill.

I'd say it would be closer to $20 off

I want to be able to make my own tier -- to pick two dozen channels of MY choosing (which are all I ever really watch) for $20 per month. I'm tired of paying another $40 per month for an extra 180 channels I don't care about.

nuff said

ABC Family, A&E, ESPN, ESPN2 are all Disney channels not included in the economy tier. That could easily amount to $10/mo.

Any package without ESPN would get me interested (but I'm not in a Cox area, so...).

Sounds like basic cable. I cant see the difference between this and basic cable.

I still like my idea of ala carte channels paid for on a usage basis. By default only free OTA channels are available. Pick any additional channel for a dollar (or more or less) per 30 days.
Maybe decide you want to watch ESPN that month, simply turn to that channel put in your pin to authorize and your account is dinged a buck or two. Nephews coming into town for the weekend, enable Disney or nickelodeon for 30 days for a couple bucks. Next month don't worry about it. If there are channels you want auto billed every month then you can add them or remove them from a web portal whenever you want.

Now as a cable company you want to connect EVERYONE, maybe even give them one of those free cheap cable boxes. If you have a customer that doesn't have credit, then put their box on credit card only. No more hard disconnects, no more soft disconnects, simply you have made your goods available in 100% of your footprint. They now all have the ability to pay you money easily. And they will. They are at work and hear someone talk about a new hbo series, they go home, enable that channel for 30 days for a few dollars and see if they like it.

Interesting idea that the content providers will NEVER agree to. You think Disney would ever sign a contract with a cable company that agreed to a plan like that. And as far as I know, no regulatory agency can make the content providers agree to such a plan. It would need the Congress to start regulating Hollywood thru new laws and the President to agree and sign the laws. Both are too beholden to Hollywood money to ever let it happen.

"Basic" generally refers to the bare minimum - locals + a few extras. Anything past that is generally "Expanded" or some other term.

This is in-between as it does not include a few notable channels that are usually included in the "expanded" list - namely, ESPN, Sci-fi (I refuse to call it what they do now...), and a couple others.

The price is therefore $10-$20 cheaper than "expanded" service, as ESPN etc. account for a good chunk of the cost for such a package.

Depending on the market, and how you look at it, you end up saving either that amount, or, paying a small bit more for a ton more channels, as long as you don't care about ESPN.

That's why I see this as a bold move. Pretty sure Dish has a couple similar plans (without ESPN), but they lack some other channels that are somewhat worthwhile...

If Cox pulls this off with any level of success, and I am betting they will, it might not be long before other TV providers follow suit and show that ESPN etc. is not something that *everyone* wants on their "standard" lineup of channels.

In the end, and I've said this before, it should balance out well enough for all parties - the customer, the provider, and the channel(s) as long as it's well executed.

This looks like a promising start. Cox stands to gain more customers on basic or zero TV service, ESPN will have its hardcore supporters, and the average customer wins a small victory in some amount of choice over their package deal/price.

Friend told me about it. He called to cancel and they offered it to him.

From what I can gather it costs 35 a month and it contains all but 3 channels I like. I'll have to keep an eye on this and it may be the first time I have had cable TV in over 3 years. But on the other hand simply the thought of having to deal with any people in sales/tech support gives me nightmares (I've never talked to a cox rep who knew what they were talking about besides the ones that reside on these forums).

Hence pretty useless. So this is non-news.

I'm in san diego and I'm a cox customer. I'll take it if they don't offer espn and it's cheaper. I get my sports news from the web anyway.