An article in today’s NY Times called “Next Up on Cable TV, Higher Bill for Consumers” does a very good job of explaining just why your cable bill is so high, and why it’s only going to get higher. For people who’ve been following the economic meltdown of the television industry, it’s nothing new – but for me it was interesting to see just how much I pay for channels I rarely, if ever, watch. For example, ESPN costs an average of $4.10 and the Fox Sports Network gets about $2.37 a month. I’m not an ardent sports fan – in fact, I’m not a sports fan of any kind – and yet these channels (and their costs) are bundled into my cable package. Even if I wanted to remove them, I couldn’t. I think at most I watch about 20 channels, and yet I’m paying for hundreds. If I paid for the channels I actually watched, my bill would be something like $20 a month.
Says the Times: “In Washington, where proposals for “à la carte” cable pricing were popular in recent years, some lawmakers and regulators now look to the Web as a more attractive, market-driven solution. Viewers will increasingly be able to bypass pay TV service and watch whatever they like online.”
Sounds good to me. The real question is, without television channels, who is going to fund the production of our favorite TV shows? As Fox has recently demonstrated, advertising alone cannot bring in enough cash to cover costs. Financial support from viewers is needed as well. Right now, this support comes in the guise of the cable bill. But if we were to lose cable, and just pay per show, would viewers be willing to kick in the money to watch?
You’d think that since we already pay for cable, the answer would be yes. And yet, I wager that most people think of their cable cost as an access fee to a world of free content. They would tell you that television should be, and is, free. And they would argue that the networks agree with them, because even without a cable subscription, most of a channel’s shows can be streamed free online.
But as Fox has most recently demonstrated, the status quo is just not sustainable.
My point: the coming revolution in television production (yes, the revolution will be televised) is going to require a complete mental reorganization on behalf on the viewer. If we want to see something, we’re going to have to pitch in to make it. If the audience for a particular show isn’t extremely large, we may have to deal with lesser production values in order to keep it “on the air”. But in this approaching sea change, we might just become more committed to watching shows that really make a difference to us – because hey, this time we’re paying for them.