[washingtonismoney]

It's real easy for a business to thrive when it's getting paid by people who are forced to be their customers.  But as soon as you let the market truly decide, there will be dozens of channels that won't have the support to exist.  Is that such a bad thing?

"Let the market decide" is such an odd, fungible standard. Why is "the market deciding" only properly done at the channel level? When I buy a book I don't only buy certain chapters; no one would say "let the market decide" ... [to read only the third chapter of the Great Gatsby]. When I buy a magazine I buy the whole thing, not just the feature articles.

So it strikes me that the current cable bundle is a perfectly valid way of offering access to TV. Should the market move to offering subscriptions to channels, that, too, would be perfectly plausible at the sloganeering level as well. (It would probably be worse for consumers, but that's life.)

[washingtonismoney]

It's real easy for a business to thrive when it's getting paid by people who are forced to be their customers.  But as soon as you let the market truly decide, there will be dozens of channels that won't have the support to exist.  Is that such a bad thing?

"Let the market decide" is such an odd, fungible standard. Why is "the market deciding" only properly done at the channel level? When I buy a book I don't only buy certain chapters; no one would say "let the market decide" ... [to read only the third chapter of the Great Gatsby]. When I buy a magazine I buy the whole thing, not just the feature articles.

So it strikes me that the current cable bundle is a perfectly valid way of offering access to TV. Should the market move to offering subscriptions to channels, that, too, would be perfectly plausible at the sloganeering level as well. (It would probably be worse for consumers, but that's life.)