A La Carte Cable Antitrust Suit Dismissed → I could care less about the antitrust aspect

What bothers me is that I am paying for channels I have no use for, and will never watch. The sports channels are a big issue, I do not watch sports, its not that I hate sports, I just hate watching sports on TV, end of story. Why should I pay (and lets be honest here, my guess is that the sports channels make up a significant chunk of the content costs that your cable company is passing onto the customer).

The real issue, is that is cable went to a la carte, I would have maybe 20 to 30 channels. I do not watch the rest of the crap.

I'd have HBO & Showtime. Nothing else. But I have neither because Comcast wants to charge me $55/mo. for content I don't want to get those two channels. So Comcast gets $0 from me. And those channels get nothing either - they refuse to sell their current shows online.

The cable guys around here say that carrying ESPN accounts for 60% of their channel cost, which i'm sure is passed on to the customer, as we're forced to have ESPN.

We only ever watched 3 channels. The cost from Cablevision is $54 per month, and will go up to $80 per month when they go all-digital.

So I canceled my Cablevision service and they get nothing from me. I guess they'd prefer to get nothing instead of, say, $10 per month for 3 channels.

I agree. I just dropped my cable box because of all the headaches with it. Back to regular POCS (plain old cable service) that still comes with ~70 channels... most of which I do not watch. I notice that many of the shows I watch are online on services like Hulu or the network's website. When I get an apartment I do not plan on getting cable. Internet is just fine for me. I would even be willing to pay a premium to get more content online, but the companies seem to just want to push back on that. These companies need to face the facts: cable is slowly on it's way out and revenues are shifting to the internet. They either need to capitalize on it, step aside, or fail.

Yea I don't even watch any TV. Don't have or need one at home. I have my computer for all the entertainment needs. I see enough TV at work already with all the negative news and useless channels.

There is only a few channels I watch which is history, discovery, and travel chanel.

How so?

Sort of. Its ESPN, and all of its affiliates (espn2, espn classic, espn deportes, espnnews, etc). They account for about 30% of the programming costs. Sports channels in general (local sports networks, in my case, FSN; VS, big ten network, speed channel, espnu, etc) make up another 20% or so. So, basically, sports costs us a lot.

I'd need 3 boxes @ $6.75/mo each, plus Cablevision's hidden "iO Navigation" fee of $5.95/mo.

$54 + $5.95 + 3*$6.75 = $80.20.

I elected to cancel my service entirely, so now I pay Cablevision $0. Dolan can put that in his pipe and smoke it!

I'd love to have an 'a la carte' tv system. i wouldn't hesitate to drop every damn sports channel, music channel, or any other channel i don't care for. i turn the tv off (assuming i'm controling the remote) before i tune into some sports show/channel/whatever.

You do not need cable boxes for digital service. All you need is a TV with a digital tuner that supports QAM.

If that's the case, I'm paying a lot of money for nothing since I don't watch any sports except the superbowl and that's at a friend's house not mine.

Oh, his bad. Maybe he should go out and buy 3 new TV's to support this?

By him saying he "needs" 3, I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to his hardware.

Wrong. With Cablevision, that only gets you the basic cable channels. No CNN, Cartoon Network, Nick, etc, etc.

How much would you be willing to pay for just the channels you want to watch? Lets say a local cable company to you carries the History channel and that cable company pays a $100 dollars a month to carry that channel. If you are the only one watching it your saing your willing to pay $100 for just that channel? NO? Well then you must think that every one else who has cable should subsidise the cost of that channel so you could watch it?
This may seem like a silly comparison, but thats how channels are aquired by a cable provider. They pay a price for a channel or group of channels sometimes dependant on the number of viewers sometimes a set price. The cable company cannot absorb this whole cost, it would still just drive up rates for everyone overall. Cable companies have risked dropping channels before in order to avoid paying channel providers a higher fee for the content. Charter just earlier this year almost lost a whole series of channels from (Viacom?) in order to prevent a rate increase.

In order to go to a true a la carte system, two thing would have to happen.
1) the Cable provider would have to be an all digital system. Which would require a box for every tv. You cant use a series of filters stacked up on each other to chop out the channels. Too much signal degradation would occour. What if a sub only wanted 5 channels, how many filters are you going to stack up to make that happen. With a box, you could just teir mask the device to authorize certain channels.

2) Instead of going after the service providers ( Comcast, Dish, verizon) the focus should be the content providers. Force them to provide the channels a an a la carte price as apposed to a set price based on the number of subscribers in a system. Make ESPN charge the service provides say 1.25 or so per month for every person that actually wants to view it.

A la carte while feasable is not going to just happen with out driving up costs for someone and that tyipcally going to be the one who only wants a few channels

That's what happens now. I don't ever watch the History Channel, so I'm subsidizing you!!

I have to disagree there. In order to get both hbo or showtime would require limited basic and a box. So depending where you are $7.88-$12 for basic service, $15.99 for either premium channel and $1 box fee. Basically $30 to $45 for what you're talking about.

Not here. Trust me, I woud have done it a long time ago.

not quite, cable companies have to offer a basic(local) package and can ala carte premiums without any requirements other then basic and equipment. on comcast that would be $10-15 for basic, 3 boxes would be about $16 2 premiums $40 if alacarte or $35 if premier/w2prem so around $60-$70.

And do you think the rest of us want to watch the crap you want to? Come on people why not complain and try to effect something far greater. Like I don't know gas prices?

If you have a TV with a cablecard slot, you can use that to unlock the additional channels.

Nah, I call BS on this one. I was an ex CV subscriber myself and I hooked up additional TVs with no problem and no additional boxes needed.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but CV's Family Cable is down to 45 analog channels (for $54 per month), and it's only a matter of time before they all go away. A digital TV only gets you digital versions of the analog channels (and only some of them), so there are no additional channels to be gained.