In a sharp reversal, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday that the agency now thinks cable companies should stop forcing people to subscribe to bundles of channels and give them the option of choosing individual channels. (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-11-29-fcc-cable-freedom_x.htm)

Great! Now he wouldn't want toi immigrate to Canada, now would he?

FCC has just mandated "un-bundling" of channels.

Imagine if we had this in Canada. I would subscribe to about 20 channels at most and Sportsnet HD would not be one of them...at this time of the year. In fact, I would go further, I would rather pay for the programs that I want to watch either with or without commercials. I would gladly pay to see Canucks in HD, Juniors in HD and Golf in HD. I could not bother with the rest of "sports" programming.

Hmm...this is sounding like TV over the net.

Why do we need cable companies? Yes, we do want their pipes or someones else's pipes but will we still need the cable cos?

This is going to get very interesting if CRTC starts to serve consumers' (voters') interest rather than a few large corporations.

Moved. What does this have to do with Shaw?

and merged.

I think this is significant news, and the start of a new programming era, where the customer would really be able to pick what program she wants to see, at what time and how to pay (by watching commercials or by direct pay, commercial-free). The current cable companies will have to either provide the service or dissapear. We are currently forced to pay for what we never watch and often we are forced to pay twice for what we watch (with money and by watching commercials).

They would have to remove the 50% Canadian Content rule for this to work in Canada. That rule is well entrenched in Canada.

They would have to remove the 50% Canadian Content rule for this to work in Canada. That rule is well entrenched in Canada.
The rule is useless and from another era (like the CRTC bureaucrats). Except hockey, I don't watch anything Canadian. Even if there would be a 100% Canadian content rule, I wouldn't watch anything. I would download the shows from the Net.

They would have to remove the 50% Canadian Content rule for this to work in Canada. That rule is well entrenched in Canada.

No they wouldn't.

All they'd have to do is assign each channel a point value, based on their programming value. For instance, CNN would be 1, TBS 4, etc. Canadian channels would be weighted less. Newsworld .5, Showcase 2.
You would not be able to order foreign channels unless you have the equal or greater point value in Canadian channels.

The point system makes the whole ala cart system useless. What Canada desperatly needs is to let some of the channels that are never going to make a profit die. Country Canada comes to mind but there any others as well. Instead of spreading the available money around so thin that you are never going to get production budgets large enough to create quality programming, let some of the leaches die. Canadian broadcasters need to get back into the production buisness rather than being a giant make work project.

Funny. Country Canada has always been part of an a la carte system. It is a digital Tier 2 channel.

The point system makes the whole ala cart system useless. What Canada desperatly needs is to let some of the channels that are never going to make a profit die. Country Canada comes to mind but there any others as well. Instead of spreading the available money around so thin that you are never going to get production budgets large enough to create quality programming, let some of the leaches die. Canadian broadcasters need to get back into the production buisness rather than being a giant make work project.

It doesn't necessarily. If people have to subscribe to Canadian channels to purchase US channels, they would likely buy the more popular ones, unless they do a reverse skew by giving the less popular channels higher points.

You are thinking that there would be a " get 3 canadian channels and you can have an american channel" deal. It could happen but the more likely scenario is you take every possible Canadian channel and then we will talk about letting you pick some American channels.

Pop quiz: Name every national broadcaster that has been allowed to fail from any of the 3 tiers. Shouldn't take long. It probably cost $10,000 per viewer to put on Country Canada but there is no way in the world it will ever be allowed to fail.

Rogers and Videotron already allow digital customers to choose their channel line-up. I took the pick 20 with Illico. As for analog cable, it's on its way out anyway.

The cancon rule is simple, pick 20 channels you want, as long as you have a majority of canadian channels, meaning 10 or more canadian channels. You don't want to watch canadian television? Move to the US. Cancon is there to stay so get use to it people. But this is off topic. Personnally I can't stand the US crap there is out there. Bring on the HBO and Showtime programming!! (Which is available on TMN and Showcase at a fraction of what customers pay in the US by the way).

If your cable provider doesn't want to let you choose your channels, it's because they want more money out of you. Perhaps you should write to the CRTC and demand your cable provider stops this policy. The cable company lobby will always win if you don't take the time to go to the CRTC audiences or write to them to express your POV.

True about the pick 20 and pick 30 BUT you still have to buy the basic group of channels for $12 which includes mainly CANCON. Why can't these be counted towards your CANCON quota?

The article quoted is a bit mis-leading without some further background. This originates out of the good old USA where most areas have no bundling at all, ie if you subscribe to cable you get everything. If you don't want everything, then you don't subscribe and you get nothing. So if you think bubdling is a pain, imagine what it would be like if there was zero choice - this is still common in the states. Something of a reformation of the cable industry has been under way using our Canadian model where packages of channels can be subscribed to in subsets. While the FCC has been studying the issue (and initially pointed to the Canadian model as an ideal), some providers have moved to this bundling concept that we are familiar with voluntarily, though not all have done so. The FCC is just stepping in to say, hey wait a minute - if you can take some and bundle them, then darn it in America you should be able to do individual channel selection.

This issue is that this is usually an argument of oversimplification. You cannot just take say 10 channels bundled together for $10 and allocate a cost to subscribe of $1 ea and then turn around and say that you really only like 6 of them and that you would be saving $4 by not getting the 4 unwanted channels. If the cableco were forced to offer individual channel pricing then the 6 that you really wanted would be priced out at maybe $9.00 and not $6. So, your savings are marginal not proportional. Sure it would give you more control and sure a bunch of deadwood useless channels would die off, but really, it isn't going to save the average subscriber very much money.

follow-up article:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-03-01-ala-carte-cable_x.htm