Re:Dead channels (Score 1)

Why does Viacom bundle channels? What is really in it for them?

Surely they would be better served by killing the underperformers, thus reducing their TCO for the "corporation" as a whole and making more profit on the channels that they did send...

As it stands, the market rules work in favor of a provider being able to pipe as much crap into someone's home as they can extort the carrier into... er... carrying.

If a big content provider has the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and can manage to plop 24 hours of ichthyoid-related programming for X-dollars, and can sell advertising of X-dollars plus one, then it's a winner for them. If they can get the carriers to plop it on the "basic" tier, then they can claim that "80 million households receive the Goldfish Lovers Channel" and demand rates from advertisers commensurate with that number (after all, your TiVo might "suggest" something on it for you one day).

Likewise, a company like Viacom can sell advertising across all of its channels, telling a potential sponsor that for a fee of X, they will run their spot on 12 low-end channels. If those 12 channels are being forced upon all the cable/sat viewers, then their rates can be justified.

If, however, you go to a more market-oriented ala carte model, the underperformers would in fact get weeded out, as the public is notoriously cheap. That would spell the end of the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and all the ad space associated with it. Thus, the current model is more profitable for the provider that can bring leverage to bear and a losing situation for the carrier, who could be using the bandwidth for something else.

Whether or not this would winnow out innovation, increase or decrease quality, or be good for the consumer in general is debatable.