Jamie Gaines, one of the few, the proud readers of MT.net, alerted me to this story of how John McCain (why isn’t he president?) is prodding the cable industry to quit masking the price of cable channels through their tier packages. He’s drafting a bill to force cable and satellite providers to offer a la carte pricing.
Says McCain:
“When I go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk, I don’t have to buy a package of celery and a bunch of broccoli,” McCain said. “I don’t like broccoli.”
This is long overdue, of course. To the point that it may not go far enough. Now that Tivo has made a la carte shows a reality, I’d like to see this being offered. Then, we could cut out the middlemen and buy our shows straight from the production companies.
Cable beats broadcast. Satellite beats cable. The duo of DVR and a-la carte shows will beat them all.
The television channel is now redundant.