An alternative to the a-la-cart channel selection recommended by "smell" would be to meter television. That way, I have the option of viewing all available channels, but I only pay for what I watch.
-- cljudge, Dec 19 2003

I doubt television advertisers would like this idea that much.
-- krelnik, Dec 19 2003


Certain channels could cost more per minute than others that way. (And less cost if MUTE is on, to satisfy the advertisers)
-- phundug, Dec 19 2003


This is a great idea, esp. if you completely eliminate commercials. For us millisecond channel surfers, it would be important that the minimum chargeable interval was seconds not minutes.

Krelnik, phundug exactly! Fuck the advertisers! Who needs them1 Nobody buys shit they see on TV anyway. What a total waste of human potential.
-- mystic2311, Dec 23 2003


There's the small issue that they pay to produce the shows you are watching.
-- krelnik, Dec 23 2003


i'd like to live where [mystic2311] lives. zero-reality land.
-- jonthegeologist, Dec 23 2003


You only pay for anything over thirty seconds per channel per half-hour.

Category: [Culture: Television], or [Business: Media Service]
-- friendlyfire, Dec 23 2003


Krelnik, you obviously still don't get it. Rather than have advertisers pay for TV shows, I would rather pay for the TV shows on a pro-rated basis of course, rather than be force-fed a bunch of corporate lies. Jon and Beelzebubba, once again the puerile sniping devoid of any substantive contribution to the issue at hand. Grow up!
-- mystic2311, Dec 23 2003


Mystic, no need to be a pretentious asshole here.

Even if you were to buy 'pro-rated' TV, the costs would be rediculously high. Believe it or not, you're already being charged for all the channels you watch by paying your cable bill. Should you be able to buy only select channels, all the channels would have to maintain the revenue streams they have and now that every person is paying for only 3 to 10 channels instead of all 50-80, the price is going to be jacked up to astronomoical amounts. Plus you have to account for all the anti-competetive behaviour that is likely to happen, given the strong brand identification with channels, people would be very unlikely to switch and companies have no incentive to compete.
-- crunkindonuts, Dec 24 2003


you still don't get it donut, its the perfect free market solution, you pay by the second as you flip through the channels and any channel which doesn't get watched withers away like all that christian crap that nobody watches....its beautifully darwinian....and i think that pretentious asshole remark was meant for beelzebubba...
-- mystic2311, Dec 24 2003


On a practical note, the lack of advertising might pose a tricky problem for schedulers. When they show popular programmes such as e.g. Friends or The Simpsons which were made before the pioneering new pay-per-view-only service, they will find that the programme lengths were timed to allow for adverts etc to round up their overall running times to multiples of half-an-hour (or so). Without the adverts the timings would be more difficult to manage.
It would be important to me that they didn't simply substitute the advertising with those terrible adverts for their own channel - they are even worse than product adverts. They would however have to allow me time to go and make a cup of tea every 30 mins or so.
I suspect that with the likes of sky+ and tivo, our viewing habits will change substantially anyway and people will regularly be skipping over the adverts while watching recorded programmes. This might have an influence on the advertisers who might focus more on advertising during live events such as sports - where viewers often prefer not to watch it at their convenience having recorded it, but rather to share in a common, live, experience.
Finally, whichever way you look at it, the suppliers will want to make the same overall profit and will simply structure their pricing system to produce the same revenue. If you switch from a model where advertisers are contributing a given amount you can guarantee that the suppliers will simply recover that amount from us directly instead. The way I look at it is that I am being paid to watch adverts, that makes them much more palatable.
Hope this counts as a // substantive contribution to the issue at hand // mystic2311 :-) but you really shouldn't complain about people joking around. I think demonizing somebody does you no favours.
-- dobtabulous, Dec 24 2003


I recently read an article which suggested that the compnies which sponsor shows, rather than merely buying ad time, may actually benefit from the TiVo revolution, because when you whizz through the ads, you don't want to miss the first thirty seconds of Part 2, so you hit play when you see the sponsor's bit. You can't buy that kind of brand awareness (or rather, you can, and that's the point).
-- friendlyfire, Dec 24 2003


Mystic, I completely understand what you're saying, but I have to disagree. Every channel has its market, (Even the Catholic fundamentalists that watch EWTN), no matter how small it is. The problem comes when EWTN (or any other small channel you like, say, TechTV) loses its 25 cents from every customer and now has to get 20 dollars per month from the few viewers it has. As much as I like TechTV, I'm not going to shell out $20/month to watch, as I still have to pay for my ESPN, CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN 2, ESPNNews, etc. A perfectly good channel goes under for all the wrong reasons.

Not to mention, ESPN know that I'm going to be watching them no matter what, so they have no reason to try and stay competetive no matter what because enough people will pay $5/month to watch it that they dont have to charge $3/month like SportsChannels X, Y and Z do.

[Yes, I know we're talking about buying channels by the second here, but Im going by month to use more solid figures]
-- crunkindonuts, Dec 24 2003


I have a pay-per-view service on my cable TV box. It functions about the same way as a video rental - for $3.95, I have 24 hours access to the movie in question, with pause, stop, reverse, fast forward, etc. options. They don't always have a movie I want to see, but I've used it a number of times, and I'd certainly consider using the system for shows other than cinematic movies. The price would have to be right, of course.
-- DrCurry, Dec 24 2003


Hey, bubba, if you didn't generate so much hot air, I wouldn't have to keep moving it around!

I hope you noticed that my propaganda is strictly lengua- in-cheeky, if you know what I mean. If I believed my propaganda as much as you believe your own bullshit, I would be a carcinogenic carcass by now.
-- mystic2311, Dec 25 2003



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