Canadians To Get Unbundled Cable TV Channels 195
Jerry Rivers writes "The CRTC, Canada's communications regulator, has approved changes to the way cable companies bundle programming to allow the purchase of selected channels while dropping others they do not want. However, the customers won't necessarily be paying any less. 'The flipside is that the fewer channels that are subscribed to, the more expensive each will become, people familiar with the matter said, asking for anonymity because details of the decision are confidential. The decision is a small step toward an "à la carte" model long talked about by regulators — and longed for by consumers — but resisted by TV channel owners and distributors for fear of undermining the economics of cable television, which have come to rely on subscriber fees from those channels.'"
Re:The Downside .... (Score:5, Informative)
I look forward to the day when there are no channels at all, and you simply watch whatever the fuck you want to watch whenever the fuck you want to, regardless if it's made by some BIG STUDIO or by a couple of kids in their garage. Who the fuck should care about what "channel" anything is on. The future is channel-less.
Re:Content bundling (Score:5, Informative)
Amusingly, most of the channels mentioned (HBO, SyFy, Food Network, Nickelodeon) are not available directly in Canada. AMC is, assuming it's not a watered down Canadian version, but most Viacom channels (like Comedy Central) are not available.
The CRTC has "cancon" (Canadian Content) regulations that require:
1) Canadian channels to show Canadian productions for a certain percentage of their airtime
2) Cable providers to have Canadian channels as a certain percentage of channels offered
3) Consumers to subscribe to a certain percentage of Canadian channels
For cable companies in Canada that already have a-la-carte offerings (my provider, Videotron, will sell you basic cable and you can a-la-carte the rest) require that your a-la-carte selections adhere to the cancon restrictions.
Truth in a name (Score:4, Informative)
Remember when the SyFy channel actually showed SciFi programming?
Yes - that was when it was called the SciFi channel. Now it's called SyFy and shows iffy programming...so they only got a couple of letters wrong.
Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:4, Informative)
The only real upside is that, while you may get the same number of channels for the same price, you might be able to get more channels that you want by replacing the ones you don't want.
Re:Just wait (Score:4, Informative)
"When Cable TV started the big selling point was no commericals cause you were paying to the shows"
No, it was not. The only cable that ever said that was ON TV, and that wasn't for 'shows', that was for shows on their channel. Like if HBO has it's own box on your TV.
No other cable company every promised that because it makes no damn sense.
People who sold satellite, the big ones, would say things like that because the feeds weren't scrambles, so you could get shows before commercials were inserted.
Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:4, Informative)
Activate the Reality Beam! (Score:5, Informative)
Sure for a couple percent of people.
See the National Cable Television Association, top 25 [ncta.com] [Cable/Satellite companies] by subscribers.
The one at the top there, Comcast, has 22.2E6 paying cable TV subscribers. Netflix [wikipedia.org] passed that number over a year ago. As of the end of Q2 2012 Netflix subscribers amount to more than 25% of the sum (97.5E6) of all US cable TV and satellite subscribers.
We're waaay past a couple percent. Never mind Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.
Cable TV is losing [huffingtonpost.com] customers across the board. Comcast has been losing cable TV subscribers for over 40 consecutive months. Netflix predicts a total of 7 million new subscribers in 2012 [huffingtonpost.com], and they're on track to hit that. Do the math. Inside about 48 months Netflix will have a subscriber base equal to half of the all cable TV subscriptions. That is assuming no acceleration in Netflix subscriber growth and no acceleration in cable decline, both of which may be bad assumptions.
Re:Content bundling (Score:4, Informative)
HBO, Nick and Food Network are Canadian versions of those channels. They're not the US feeds. HBO is broadcasted by TMN with some canadian content. I believe Food Network Canada is owned by Rogers. I'm not sure who owns Nick. There's also no Canadian provider that carry SyFy. There is Space (Canadian channel, owned by Bell) which has a lot of the same programming, but again, it's not the US feed you're seeing.