A Cheaper Dish Service: Is This What 'A La Carte' Programming Might Look Like?

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Future over-the-top TV services will need a new marketing campaign: Something along the lines of, "All the TV you really want; cheap, but not like cable or satellite."

Trouble is that sounds like a quick rainstorm will put you into TV-snow land.

Dish Networks wants to glom on to over-the-top (OTT) trend, offering to sell the likes of Viacom networks, perhaps Univision, Scripps Networks Interactive and a few others, for a much lower price than  traditional muli-channel sellers -- through the internet. All this according to Bloomberg News.

But you need a good buying/marketing incentive -- and perhaps a higher perceived quality TV service. Dish might think it could be that service versus the likes of say, Aereo, the new, unproven Barry Diller- backed over-the-top service distributed by the Internet.

Aereo positions itself as a different sort of venture, a digital "antenna"- like service, one where it wouldn't have to pay TV networks much if anything in the way of retransmission fees or cost consumers very much (only $8 a month).

Aereo is also considering adding in some cable networks, which would add some bucks -- but still way less than those $80 to $120 TV channel packages that cable, satellite, or telco operators currently sell on average. (Aereo has said it might also offer "micro-packages" of cable TV networks in $2 to $4 a month increments.)

Why Viacom for the Dish program? Its mostly younger-skewing customers are more apt to give a internet-based TV service a chance -- also one that is way less expensive. In that regard, Dish would offer a lower wholesale rate to the likes of Viacom.

Is this the real long-time, long-sought vision of a cable networks' "a la carte" programming package?

Not quite. Still, at a low $20 per month package, for example, consumers won't be complaining much.

Why is all this happening? Because, perhaps soon, there won't much in the way of growth for some of the multichannel TV operators.

There is also this: Near-term projections are that there will be fewer middle class consumers -- especially young consumers -- coming online in the next few years

It's true disposable consumer spending on entertainment is one of the last things to go  in any household. Cord cutting isn't an issue yet. Then again growing health care costs were less of an issue a decade ago. Some TV companies are just looking to stay fit against aggressive new competitors --- while believing financial medical attention might also be needed.

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2 comments on "A Cheaper Dish Service: Is This What 'A La Carte' Programming Might Look Like? ".

1. Udo Dirkschlinger from TSD
   

   commented on: September 28, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.
   I think it would be prudent to send your rough drafts to someone with an English major before posting. Just a thought...
2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited
   

   commented on: September 28, 2012 at 7:24 p.m.
   Two of the most inflationary moves eating into average families' savings/investments, debt, daily expenses, the ability to afford to move for a better job is some cases are cable TV and mobile costs. $3600 + per year times 30 years to be conservative = $108,000 + that can be compounded. 70-80% of people are retiring without anything near that. These prices are only going to go up and something along the way will have to give. How it will happen exactly has yet to be determined.

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