The average cable TV customer gets (and pays for) 118 channels, yet watches only 17. Consumers may soon have alternatives to this inefficient, costly, and far-from-ideal situation.
The LA Times’ David Lazarus reports:
Cable insiders have been telling me for months that smaller packages are in the works. Now a senior industry figure has spoken publicly about the prospect.
“It would be a good thing if we could all figure out a way to have one or more smaller packages that would be attractive to people who can’t afford bigger ones, especially if we could do it in a way that the entertainment companies are still able to finance the product,” Glenn Britt, chief executive of Time Warner Cable, told Reuters during the Allen & Co. media conference last week in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Of course, an a la carte model, in which you paid only for the channels you wanted—not the ones bunched together by some cable TV executive—would be even more ideal. I’m sure this is how things will work at some point, but there’s no telling when.
Related:
TV A La Carte: One Man’s Dream