We do not have a competitive market for television channels in most of the US. Most consumers have four ways to obtain content if they want to watch TV. The simplest way is to just watch free TV that consumers can pick up from their antenna. About 15% of the US Market does this. The other 85% subscribe to cable, satellite, or both. The second way, and the most popular way, is to subscribe to cable. Most consumers do not have a choice about their cable subscribers as most cable operators have effective monopolies. A few places have options, but this is not the general rule. There are also two major satellite alternatives. Directv, which in my experience has much better service, but costs a few dollars more and DISH Network (the cheaper alternative with correspondingly bad service).

For these few subscription options, most content is sold in packages. You get so many channels with the basic offering and more and more content with more expensive packaging. A few offerings are sold on an individual basis (pay per view games, a few premium channels), but offerings are usually packaged in a way that you pay for a bunch of stuff you don’t watch in order to get what you really want. For instance, I only watch about 5 channels even though we get about 80. My wife and kids watch another 15 or so in total. So we are paying for 80 channels in order to get the 20 channels we want. This is not efficient nor is it fair. When we move (whenever Casa Quixote is completed), we’re thinking about dropping TV altogether because we feel like we are wasting money.

Some consumer advocates have been promoting another option, Cable Choice, that would legislate that consumers would have the option to only pay for the channels they want on a channel-by-channel basis. This movement has taken on new momentum as the subsidized channels continue to race to the bottom. Some consumer advocates are especially outraged that the FX network has been showing indecent material. I’m not going to quote this material, but if people want to be aware of what is freely available on most cable networks, click here for the offensive details.

It is one thing if people deliberately subscribe, and thus deliberately support, this type of material. It is another thing altogether when people are forced to subsidize unwholesome fare with their basic subscription (The perverted material on FX is subsidized by most consumers since FX is usually packaged with the basic subscription). Hopefully FX’s race to the bottom will motivate our legislatures to create a more competitive marketplace by mandating the option to subscribe to television on a channel-by-channel basis.

The Parents Television Council is asking that concerned people use their website to send an email or letter to the appropriate legislators and regulators. I encourage you to click on the link, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and send such a message.

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