Angry Robot

A Couple Decent TV Articles in the Globe

… if you haven’t run into their paywall (what a pain in the ass). There’s one about changing TV viewing habits that probably isn’t news to you if you read this site regularly, but is still interesting to see fleshed out. And there is this article about the fight for mandatory carriage. TV channel owners want the CRTC to make a bunch of channels mandatory for cable distributors to carry in their basic cable package.

Subscriber growth has slowed but hasn’t yet gone negative, so cord cutting isn’t as rampant as one might think. But I’d wager that TV subscription prices are also going up, and that’s the issue with mandatory carriage. The BDUs (broadcast distribution units – Bell, Rogers, Shaw etc.) will want to pass any mandatory carriage costs on to their subscribers.

Let’s just say it. What everyone wants is a cheap, all-platform, on-demand net-TV package with a-la-carte channel add-ons. Make it $20-30 for the base, or free if you have cable already. Like Netflix, except with new shows. Simple.