THE END OF BASIC CABLE?

March 10, 2006

USA Today printed an interesting news article last week about how expanded-basic cable - the TV package most of us pay an absurd amount of money for every month to make sure we get all our favorite cable channels - may soon be a thing of the past. In it's place will be TV a la carte, a type of programming endorsed by the FCC that would allow you to individually purchase the channels you watch and only those channels.

According to the article, this would allow people to save roughly 13% on their monthly cable bill since they wouldn't have to pay for channels they don't want but are shoved down their throats anyway as part of ever-growing cable packages. Some cable companies and networks aren't big on the idea. After all, just think how much ad revenue would plummet if TV viewers could drop channels they don't want from their cable lineups. Still, USA Today makes it clear that the federal government is pushing the industry toward this type of system, and some telecommunications giants, such as AT&T and Verizon, are already building video networks that would allow them to sell TV a la carte.

In theory, this sounds like a great plan. I'd love to cut down my cable bill by keeping the channels I actually enjoy - the networks, FX, Comedy Central, all the ESPNs, the Travel Channel, IFC, etc. - while gutting from my television those I usually watch for about 0.3 seconds daily while I'm speeding through the channels. (I'd also take a perverse pleasure in not ordering MTV, thus letting them know personally what I think about the direction they've taken their network over the last 15 years.) I mean, I shouldn't have to pay for the Military Channel just because I enjoy The Travel Channel and Discovery owns them both, right?

But there's a part of me that wonders whether this could make it harder for quality new shows to find an audience, especially if they're on a channel that doesn't have a high subscriber rate. After all, I don't particularly care for E! Entertainment Television, but I've recently grown addicted to "The Soup," the channel's retooled version of the old "Talk Soup" that spends 30 minutes weekly skewering tabloid celebrity culture and bad TV. If I wasn't ordering E!, I probably wouldn't even know about the show. And, heck, even now that I do, do I want to pay whatever E! costs every month to watch "The Soup" and only "The Soup"? Will I find myself watching "True Hollywood Story" just to make sure I'm getting the full value of my dollar? (Shudder.) So I'm wondering exactly how this is going to work, how cable networks will lure viewers to their shows who may not even subscribe to their channel.

Honestly, if we're moving toward a-la-carte-style television, we might as well be able to buy the actual shows individually, similar to Apple's iTunes service, which allows you to download episodes from "Lost," "The Office" and others to your home PC and video iPod for $1.99 per episode. If I can pay for Comedy Central but not E!, why can't I just pay for "South Park" but not "Mad TV" reruns? On second thought, just beam "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" straight into my brain, but I want a discount on the jokes that aren't up to snuff.

See where this is going? Whatever happens, I just hope promising new shows of the future have a chance to build an audience, no matter how cable TV is beamed into our homes - in one basic-expanded glut or busted into little tiny pieces.