• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 28, 2012

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.