| Must Carries & Bad contract terms! With the risk of jumping up onto a soap box, the contracts forced on carriers now are real doozies! Not only is a carrier required to carry, say, The Hallmark Channel if they want to carry A&E, they are also required to show it on their cheapest tier, even if the costs don't warrant it.
Dish Network goes through this each year, and to their credit, they drop the channel instead of giving in to such heavy-handed tactics. And that even included dropping CBS network affiliates for a time.
Television shows will most likely soon be delivered on the internet. In that scenerio, we will have "a la carte" service, however I'll bet most customers will download many more channels than they really want to watch, "just because". But I bet HSC, QVS, etc, will not be part of most downloads. |
