I’ve been meaning to write about all the recent news about “family-friendly” cable packages and a renewed push for “a la carte” pricing since I first saw a couple of articles on the subject in the Chron awhile back, but it turned into one of those things that I drafted and never got around to doing. With the news cycle on a bit of a break, and with this announcement by Comcast in today’s paper, I figured I’d finally get to it.
No. 1 U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp. Thursday said it would offer a package of “family-friendly” channels amid mounting pressure from regulators to help parents weed out racy shows.
The package will include 35 to 40 channels, most of them comprising the basic cable tier of national and local channels.
Another 16 channels include Disney and Nickelodeon, National Geographic, the Food Network, CNN Headline News and the Weather Channel.
Analysts said the move could appease regulators’ demands, but could not estimate potential demand for the package.
“It’s very unclear whether consumers are going to be interested,” said independent analyst Richard Greenfield. “It’s still a very limited basket of channels.”
Comcast’s “Family” tier will be available in early 2006 at an average monthly fee of $31.20, which includes the basic cable channels, the “family” channels and the cable box.
An article in Salon two weeks ago mentioned that this sort of thing had been tried unsuccessfully before:
Though violence and sex on television has long been a hot topic in Congress, consumers have shown little interest in taking advantage of available channel-blocking technology, like the V-chip. A few years ago, satellite provider DirecTV offered a family-choice tier of about 10 channels for just $5 each month. The program was folded after a short time because there was little consumer interest. “We didn’t hear anything from our subscribers that they missed in any way the stand-alone tier,” a DirecTV spokesman told the trade publication Satellite Business News. In fact, no one seemed to notice the change.
Time Warner’s recent offering was not warmly received.
The No. 2 operator said that in early 2006 it will introduce a Family Choice Tier of 15 largely sex-and-violence-free services. It will include Disney Channel, C-SPAN2, HGTV, CNN Headline News and the Weather Channel.
The package will be offered as a $13-a-month alternative to the expanded basic package that includes mature fare such as FX, MTV and Comedy Central.
“We selected channels that were G-rated in nature, did not include ‘live’ entertainment programming and which contained content that was generally perceived as acceptable for the entire family to view,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said in a statement. While prices and packages vary in different systems, Time Warner says the average Family Choice subscriber will pay $33 a month for about 35 channels. That includes the entry-level, basic service, which usually includes as many as 20 broadcast and public service channels, and $8 for a digital set-top decoder.
By contrast, people with cable-ready TVs typically pay about $42 a month for 95 basic and expanded basic channels.
Critics are unimpressed.
“It is perfectly obvious Time Warner is deliberately offering a product designed to fail,” Parents Television Council President L. Brent Bozell said in a statement. “According to Time Warner, no family should want to watch sports. According to Time Warner, no family should want to receive any news channel other than Time Warner’s CNN. According to Time Warner, classic movies are not appropriate for families. And neither is religious programming.”
Consumers Union’s Gene Kimmelman expects few customers to jump.
“It’s up to cable companies to survey their customers and see what fits their needs for a family-friendly tier,” he says. Because Time Warner pays very low license fees for the Family Choice channels, the $13 fee “represents an enormous markup.”
Personally, I don’t quite understand the need for this kind of offering from the providers. There’s plenty of existing, built-in technology to control the programming that you get. Time Warner advertises various parental control features on its website and in various spots on TV, which one can use to exclude particular shows or even entire channels. Comcast has them, too, as does DirecTV. So does TiVo, which includes the ability to tell the recorder to ignore certain channels; if you use your TiVo remote for your surfing, as I do, you can make it so you never see those channels.
And, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but one could always simply not get cable, or not have a TV, or at the very least not put a TV in the kids’ rooms, so whatever it is they’re watching you’ll be able to see, too. One can also ensure that one’s own taste in TV and movies has a positive effect on one’s children’s viewing habits.
All that said, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the argument that one shouldn’t have to pay for channels that one doesn’t want and would exclude if given the option to do so. Which is where the idea of “a la carte” pricing comes in. Basically, under that scheme, you pick the channels you want and pay a price based on what you’ve chosen, instead of picking a tiered service that includes what you want plus a bunch of other stuff. There’s support for this notion on both the right and the left, but it’s more complicated than that, with nontraditional supporters and rivals on each side. Slacktivist notes that the issue could drive a wedge between religious conservatives who deliver their message via radio and those whose primary vehicle is television (scroll down to “Dobson versus Robertson”), while Dwight casts it as telcos versus cable companies. Indeed, today’s article sums up the angst for the current providers:
The cable industry fears a wider push for “a la carte pricing,” allowing consumers to choose individual channels, would threaten its business model in which the costs of carrying more expensive programming are offset by smaller channels also paid for by consumers.
Maybe their business model is being obsoleted by technology and consumer demand, and it needs to be rethought. This way protectionism lies, and the end result of that is seldom good for customers.
What I really want to know is how the vaunted promise of real competition for cable television is going to affect this debate. I can’t help but think that as was the case with ISPs and then with cellphone services, the eventual trend is going to be towards packages that provide truly unlimited access. I expect – no, I demand – that some day, when we can choose between a half-dozen or more different providers, that if some UHF station in New Jersey is running reruns of The Uncle Floyd Show that I’ll be able to program my DVR to get a season pass for it. It doesn’t actually matter to me if I receive anything else from that channel – I say the technology should be there so that my receiver knows where to look for that show, and can deliver it to me when I ask for it. Maybe that should be the model for all television delivery – individual shows, instead of channels, are what you subscribe to. If you can get Rocketboom on your TiVo, you should be able to get anything else that’s out there. I’d go so far as to extend this concept to the premium channels. Why should I pay for a whole month of HBO if all I want to do is watch “The Sopranos”? Let me get just those shows on my TiVo, and charge me a prorated fee for it. Who knows? Maybe you’d get more subscribers that way.
If we really had this kind of freedom of choice, which is what that awful telecom bill from the last Legislative session is supposed to bring us, then you could satisfy the needs of the “family friendly” crowd as well as the TV junkies and the frugal viewers. More control, more choice; more choice, more control. What are the odds we’ll get that any time soon?
I don’t quite understand the need for this kind of offering from the providers. There’s plenty of existing, built-in technology to control the programming that you get.
Exactly. Every modern TV comes with a V-chip, and even if you’re like me and still use older TV’s, the satellite (and, I assume, digital cable) boxes have equivalent technology.
Some consumer advocates have joined with the Prudish Squad in calling for a la carte pricing, and at first glance it makes some sense. If I find a station so offensive I never watch it (like, say, Trinity Broadcasting or Faux News – it cuts both ways, prudes), why should I have to pay for it?
But that’s just not practical with the old analog cable systems. “A la carte” would require every channel to be scrambled, so you’d need a “box” for every TV (just as you now do for satellite or digital cable) even if you just took the basic offerings. Your “181-channel cable compatible” TV might as well be one of the old 68-channel, VHF and UHF-only models. And I’m sure the cable companies will make sure the cost of renting those extra boxes outweighs any savings from a la carte pricing for most consumers.
Much as I would love a la carte pricing, so I could dump all of the family channels, religious channels and country music channels, there are 2 important things to remember. One, no matter what format it takes the media companies will make more money at it, which translates into consumers paying more for it; and, two, the US Congress, which is funded by wealthy media giants, among others, will never enact legislation that in any way curtails the ability of these media companies to make record profits.
Even someone like myself, who only needs the sports channels and CNN and the Comedy Channel, would find my bill increasing. So, I don’t get excited about it.
I like the idea simply because it’d be nice not to have to pay for things I don’t use. When I watch TV, I watch about three or four stations (mostly AMC and CSPAN); why should I have to shell out money for the eighty-odd other stations piped into my apartment that I never watch?
Sure, it’s a good idea too as a compromise for various sides of the culture wars. Additionally, it’s honest public policy, because it recognizes that most homes have cable and most parents don’t have the time, skill or inclination to program a v-chip or other channel blocking technology, and that if a household has multiple TVs, all of them are going to have a cable hook-up.
It’s easy to carp at “those parents” who don’t monitor their children’s television watching very closely, but carping about it doesn’t change the fact that millions of young kids still can and are watching programs that might not be entirely suitable for them. If parents were angels, there’d be no need for government (or debates like this).
But back to my original point: outside of debates about the impact of popular culture on young people, policy like this seem like a real example of government working to benefit the public good (I’m not sure I’m with him on the specifics, but Mark Schmitt made a similar point in a post from a few months ago). Liberalism gets a bad rap nowadays; wouldn’t be nice to take a small step like this to show folks that government can be so much more than this abstract force that takes your guns away?
Mathwiz: I don’t know too much about how televisions work, but does the phase-in of digital television have any effect on this? I just ask because my understanding is that in a few years all analog sets will be obsolete.
“mathwiz”, Redscare:
“(like, say, Trinity Broadcasting or Faux News – it cuts both ways, prudes) ” —
Well, not exactly, “progressive” prigs!
For example, why would you think available bandwidth ought to be allocated to the Playboy channels, Howard Stern, etc etc.
You seem to believe the rest of us are going to continue to allow high-rent pimps like Hefner to use our public airways to stay filthy stinking rich, and not only that but continue to make the rest of us pay for it in our satellite or cable bills.
If you think it’s gonna cost ***the rest of us*** extra, you’ve got it backwards.
We’re going to relegate the whole little pack of you off to Howard Sternville, and ***YOU*** can pay ***EXTRA*** — Lotsa Extra! — to get the trash pumped in to YOUR home — along of course with a vast array of fees, taxes and surcharges to pay for things like the Fund for the Rehab of Crack Whores, the Al Gore Fund for Inventing The Internet and the John Kerry Fund for the Victims of U. S. Atrocities.
And how can you complain?
You’ll just be putting your money (instead of other people’s money!) where your “values” really are: you know, Free Speech as the God-Given Rights (oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to use such outmoded terms like “God-Given Rights” in front of you, let’s try “State-Granted Rights”, that’s more in tune with your ideology!) of a psychotic drug addict comedian to spout obscenities over the airwaves.
So, bend over and open your wallets!
We’re going to relegate the whole little pack of you off to Howard Sternville, and ***YOU*** can pay ***EXTRA*** — Lotsa Extra! — to get the trash pumped in to YOUR home — along of course with a vast array of fees, taxes and surcharges to pay for things like the Fund for the Rehab of Crack Whores, the Al Gore Fund for Inventing The Internet and the John Kerry Fund for the Victims of U. S. Atrocities.
We already pay extra, genius. Stern et. al. aren’t available on regular broadcast TV, same as Fox News, MTV, Lifetime, or CMT. I have no doubts that a la carte programming will, eventually, become more of a financially viable option than what Chuck writes about, but your major complaint seems to be that the stuff exists at all. Worse, the satellite (or networks, or radio stations) have the temerity to broadcast it into your home. Do you have a similar conniption fit anytime a local adult video store dares to hove into your line of sight when you’re driving on the freeway?
You bitch about the Playboy Channel when you know (or should) that “adult” programming is where cable companies make the vast majority of their money. I find it hilarious that you think the morals crowd, who go out of their way to boycott anything remotely associated with vice, is going to sway the heads of TimeWarner or Comcast.
Here’s the thing: none of that stuff costs you anything if you don’t want to pay for it. Either don’t buy cable or DirecTV, or use the existing technology to block that which is unclean.
You’ll just be putting your money (instead of other people’s money!) where your “values” really are: you know, Free Speech as the God-Given Rights (oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to use such outmoded terms like “God-Given Rights” in front of you, let’s try “State-Granted Rights”, that’s more in tune with your ideology!)
Close: try “Constitutionally granted right.”
of a psychotic drug addict comedian to spout obscenities over the airwaves.
I wouldn’t characterize Rush Limbaugh as a “comedian,” but to each their own.