Hello again from Texas,
I just got back from the local cable company, that until relatively recently, had a pretty much monopoly on television shows. There is of course has been satellite options for a number of years, but for most folks the cable was the way to go. With the advent of the internet and increasing bandwidth speeds, I grew up with 300baud modems on a C64 and was stupifed when 1200baud modems became available, more and more people are turning to the internet to stream and download movies and TV shows.
I'm an "annualized" kind of guy. I look at the big picture of how much something is going to cost me on a yearly basis. My cable bill had been growing by leaps and bounds. The cable company had no problem raising the rates by as much as $30/month. The problem I have with cable is that there are probably only twenty channels I'm really interested in, out of about 300 or more. Why should I be paying for "stuff" I don't watch and careless about? So, I went to the cable company and just slashed my cable bill by about $840/year. I may "miss" some of the channels, but I'll live w/o them. This is just step 1. The next step will be to decrease it even further and go to the basic of basics. I'm a TIVO kinda guy as well. I rarely watch "LIVE TV", relying on TIVO to find and record the shows that I want. I've got about a TB of shows stored up right now. Overall, I rarely watch TV at all. Gave my really fancy huge flat screen to my mom not long ago, I just didn't watch it. It was in the living room and I am rarely in the living room, opting to watch TV in the guest bedroom. She loves it as TV is her evening entertainment.
Why cable companies don't offer "ala carte" channel selection is beyond me. Pick the channels you want and we will bill you only for those. Of course, the reason is that they can do profit maximization by charging for all of the channels as there will be some that "must have this channel" and the cable companies are smart enough to know that. Plus, they would probably have to get rid of a lot of channels that are not "self supporting". I noticed that SIRIUS/XM satellite radio has recently introduced "ala carte" options and the next time I renew, I will go that route as there are only about 8-10 channels that I listen to.
The world is littered with companies that do not adjust to changing market conditions and demographics. I saw yesterday that several "teen" clothing companies like AF are in the dumps, they haven't adopted to changes. Some leading Australian clothing manufacture has a zero market capitalization. Video rental stores didn't adapt to changing marketing conditions and Blockbuster and others are pretty much gone. People still rent videos, but do it from REDBOX. REDBOX can do movie rentals much cheaper than big box outlets. By the time Blockbuster woke up, it was too late. Blockbuster attempted to get into the video on the corner concept out of a vending machine, but by then, it was tooooo late as REDBOX had the corner on the market.
So, the cable companies of the world had better start adapting to changing marketing conditions...
Until next time, see you on down the road...
Shane Allen
Head of Synchro ERP North American Operations...
