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mrschwarz
join:2001-12-01
Flower Mound, TX

1 recommendation

mrschwarz to antdude

Member

to antdude

Re: Adelphia used ESPN360...

I really don't care what NBC does or doesn't do with the streaming video. What really gets my cork is that again I am paying for ESPN. I have absolutely no interest in watching ESPN on TV or the internet, but if I want any other form of pay TV, I have to pay a fairly large sum to get ESPN. Now, since I have Verizon FIOS, I am paying for ESPN there, too.

Here's a novel concept. If you want sports pay for it. If you don't want sports, don't pay for it. I bet if only sports fans paid for ESPN and the price was common knowledge because they had to elect to pay it, they might have a bigger problem with the price.

antdude
Matrix Ant
Premium Member
join:2001-03-25
US

antdude

Premium Member

Carte.
NoVaVoiper
join:2003-10-21
Arlington, VA

NoVaVoiper to mrschwarz

Member

to mrschwarz

Bundled Pricing

While I constantly read about the people who are concerned about how much they pay for ESPN when they don't watch sports, those people are clearly finding something of value in their cable TV package that justifies paying for more than the basic channels. So while for me, paying $50 a month is justified because I get ESPN, for you it is justified because you get NatGeo, Discovery, Food, SciFi, or something else.

It is hard to grasp, but there is a legitimate argument that bundled pricing is actually good for consumers. For example, if Discovery was an a la carte channel, a large majority of consumers would not place enough value on it to pay anything at all. Accordingly, for those who do value Discovery, the price would be upwards of $10. Eventually the price would exceed the value for most consumers and the business model would fail. The result would be less overall content.

Aggregation allows more choice for all consumers by spreading the cost of all channels. Since more consumers value ESPN and it would command more subscribers at higher prices in an a la carte world, it makes the most sense for that to command the highest aggregated price. But if you take ESPN out of the package, that is a large number of consumers who would no longer choose to subsidize channels that currently cost much less.

Racket
@usda.gov

Racket

Anon

Conversely, if I had access to a content aggregator like Netflix instead of a channel aggregator like cable TV, I could pay for shows I want to watch from Discovery who would get a kickback from my monthly Netflix fee and would eliminate the cost of running a "channel" like Discovery.
Racket

Racket to NoVaVoiper

Anon

to NoVaVoiper
I want to bundle content not bundle channels. If you eliminate the need for the Discovery Channel by allowing paid viewing on demand of the content, you save considerable amount of money to provide that content. In order to save on billing costs you can sell your content to content aggregators like Hulu or Netflix or whomever who then give you a kick back based on subscription fees and the number of people who watch your product. There is no reason for individual fees for something like Discovery or SciFi channel since collecting individual fees should be collected by an aggregator to reduce cost based on economies of scale.

I saw HBO Go was just launched, I am willing to bet within a year you will be able to pay netflix some monthly amount to have access to that.