Everybody Loves a la Carte

Joseph Laszlo | December 01, 2005, 06:27 PM

Others at Jupiter have blogged about the FCC's about-face on the issue of a la carte offering of cable TV channels.

Today's USA Today brings a partial explanation for the FCC's move: AT&T, which is about to roll out a multichannel IPTV offering, likes the idea of a la carte. Makes sense, what AT&T likes, so likes the FCC.

This afternoon's Broadband Reports delivers the less expected news that Cablevision has broken ranks with the industry and said it TOO likes the idea of a la carte. Pretty bold, given that the last time the issue came up, pretty much the entire industry wasted no time pointing out all the ways a la carte was evil, would bankrupt them, and greatly increase consumers' bills at the same time. More or less.

I'm just finishing a draft of my piece on IPTV; in it I, too, say a la carte would be great, but probably infeasible given content owner opposition (consumers rank a la carte channel selection very highly in terms of things that would interest them in a new pay TV service). Perhaps it's less infeasible than I thought.

Not that I think we'll see true a la carte, picking channel by channel probably does screw up the economics. But more choice of channels is almost certainly a good thing. I'd point to Canada's SaskTel, which has an IPTV offering based around 30 basic channels, and then a selection of 12 or so "Theme Packs" of 6-8 channels each covering things like "sports" "learning" and "kids," which subscribers can add at will. It seems like a reasonable (and evidently workable) compromise.