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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me how much money sports is costing everyone that doesn't even care to watch it. The sad reality is that no-one would end up paying the prices outlined in this article- ESPN would realise that they were pricing themselves way out of many people's budgets and adjust their fees accordingly. As it is, the confusion over cable TV billing means that they don't have to.

As for AMC and the like, I can't help but feel like their future is in allowing people to buy individual seasons of TV - like you can on DVD, but at broadcast. I don't watch 90% of AMC's output, but I'm glued to Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

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Sports is just one part of overall package that explains why I no longer subscribe to satellite or cable: I don't feel I'm getting good value for my money. Summarizing what started out as a much longer paragraph, we were paying $80/month for a lot of crap, crap we would never care to watch. Buried in that $80/month somewhere was ESPN.

AMC, however, continues to get our money. _Breaking Bad_ and _Mad Men_ are two shows that I just pre-pay for the seasons as soon as iTunes makes them available. I don't even know how much a season costs because I don't care; take my money, damn it. And we get episodes the day after they air. (_Walking Dead_, OTOH...meh, two season of that was enough.) TNT and _Falling Skies_, same thing: take my money. _House of Cards_ and _Arrested Development_ were enough to get me to come back to Netflix. I've got money, and a fair amount of it; I'm willing to pay for good programming.

But what I won't do is pay a bunch of money for reality shows and ESPN. I don't want to hear sob stories about how it's just not financially feasible to do it any other way. Figure out a way, because I can live just fine with the TV I've got, or none at all. And if I'm just not the kind of TV customer anyone wants, I'm fine with that, too.

I'm the exact mirror of you; I couldn't care less about Breaking Bad or Mad Men, the only thing I ever watch on cable TV is sports. This is how the bundled model works -- you pay a % of your bill for ESPN, I pay a % of my bill for AMC, and we get both. The %s are determined by the providers and networks playing chicken with each other over how many subscribers would leave if a network weren't included in a package.

A la carte proponents seem to have a particular bee in their bonnets for sports, but it seems to me that that's the kind of content most likely to survive a cablepocalypse -- it has the most value in being viewed live. In your iTunes model for AMC, producing high-quality shows like Breaking Bad or Mad Men suddenly takes on movie-like risk.

In your iTunes model for AMC, producing high-quality shows like Breaking Bad or Mad Men suddenly takes on movie-like risk.

Undoubtedly. But sports are rarely going to be purchased after their live broadcast date, wheras high quality dramas will have a huge longtail of purchases- I just started watching The Wire, for example.

I think the reason that anyone has a bee in their bonnet about sports is that it commands far more money than other channels do. We are all subsidising sports fans far more than most other categories.

Why not cancel your cable? Watch shows once you can get them through iTunes or amazon?

I have. But I don't consider this the optimal solution to the problem.

Many shows are available on Amazon the day after broadcast. It's how I keep up with Breaking Bad and Walking Dead. In fact, that pricing currently beats $10 a month for AMC that the article claims.

As long as so many people are willing to pay for bundles they will likely continue. I applaud you for canceling

This is how the bundled model works -- you pay a % of your bill for ESPN, I pay a % of my bill for AMC, and we get both.

...and I have no interest in either, use Netflix & iTunes, watch exactly what I want, pay no more or less, and don't end up with the short side of your "bundled" stick.

AMC's a great example of why bundling "works" for content producers. They were a third or fourth tier network before Breaking Bad and Mad Men. But because they were on enough people's cable packages, they still had enough reach to bootstrap themselves to a point where they can charge the cable and satellite providers much more than they did before.

Imagine instead of letting almost anyone in America watch Mad Men for "free" after reading about it or hearing about it from a friend, AMC had to count on people calling up their cable company and tacking on their channel for a dollar a month. No way does that model make sense, and under it, Mad Men and Breaking Bad wouldn't have been made.

Obviously, there are alternative models that might work, but "paying for only the channels you watch" is a huge payoff to incumbents who already have shows you like.

Isn't this exactly HBO's business model? They seem to be doing just fine (and I don't think this is because they're an incumbent as much as they make good TV).

I can't speak for bootstrapping a TV network, but I think long-term if you have good content, consumers will jump through hoops to get it.

Especially when there's more than one way to get said content. I've been watching AMC's content I wish to see without having to have cable TV. I simply pay for what I wish to consume and the pricing has been much cheaper than the claimed $10 a month.

That was my thought. "How much of my cable bill is going to ESPN?"

What's really outrageous is with Comcast I have to get a whole host of channels I don't care about to get anything in HD, which I do care about. I only watch a few channels. If I could get the main networks, HBO, AMC, Comedy Central, and BBC America all in HD, that would be enough. I could accept about $60 per month for those.

Once the cable company builds the infrastructure to send 300 channels to houses in your neighborhood, their costs for you are the same whether you want 1 channel or all 300.

That's a prime recipe for bundling. You think you are "paying for all these channels you don't want" but that's not the reality. Just like I'm not paying for the tens of thousands of Netflix shows I will never ever watch but nonetheless get by paying one monthly fee.

I am paying for all these channels I don't want. I have to go up one pricing tier to get HD, which has its own fee on top of that.

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