15 Years - 1.5 Billion Dollars

[Guest rochester]

While I'm very much opposed to paying for stuff I don't use/watch, I am concerned that all those channels you just mentioned will thrive under an a la carte plan and more obscure channels that I watch will go away or have a hefty premium. My kids may watch some versions of some Disney channel sometimes, and I watch Mythbusters on Discovery, and occasionally a Virginia Tech game on ESPN... but otherwise those channels are what you watch when you're stuck in a hotel or a waiting room with basic cable. I don't know what Directv might do with $billion satellites and bandwidth for hundreds of now-bundled stations, most of which draw tens of viewers, if a la carte comes in and forces each channel to stand on its own. It's not just MASN and other RSNs that might lose 80% of their revenues.

The cable folks are losing much more than is reported.... they purposefully bundle cable with internet - for example, the monopoly in my area is Comcast that, for recurring customers, charge more for internet only v. internet/cable. This, and all of the bundle programming are based on data for maximizing subscriptions and inflating actual "usage". Streaming is killing cable overall and they still won't change. It would take long-term thinking to remain relevant by self chosen ala carte programming. They could actually charge more per channel and lose less customers who can't understand why they pay $100+/mo when they will never watch 90% of programming - culture has changed... and Netflix is 1/10th of the cost.

[Fan4Life]

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Chormecast, Google TV ect are all taking market share. If consumers ever get a la carte pricing then the whole current cable model falls apart. How many folks in AZ would pay to watch the DBacks?

More writing on the wall.... here