Verizon FiOS TV → Re: Regional Sports Network fees coming for Midatlantic region..

You make good points. I also have the option of petitioning my elected officials and the regulatory agency to enforce change. As it is now, I could leave Verizon but Comcast realistically only offers similar options as Verizon. I actually applaud Verizon for creating the Select tier to give their customers an option.

What I would really like to see is a separation of delivery from content. Imagine if Comcast owned NBC (oh, wait, they do) and Verizon owned CBS (not yet). They could each refuse to offer the content to each others subscribers. So, I would have to have both Comcast and Verizon to get NBC and CBS.

You're right, and this is all a relatively new phenomenon. It used to be that only premium channels had significant carriage fees, and they were offered fully a la carte. The rest of the cable channels were not charging a significant amount, and the cable companies were basically making their profits minus the infrastructure costs. Now that the sports channels are charging per subscriber rates in line with premium channels, they should be treated the same as premium channels. At least force a la carte to the providers, and let the providers determine how to charge and bundle and not bundle their channels. Then you could see some real competition in pricing and more custom bundles.

As it stands now, it is pretty close to a case where the ranchers bought up the full supply of cows and chickens, and are forcing every grocery store to bundle eggs and milk with a filet mignon.