Digital Rights

Thanks for all the great comments both here and on Slashdot about the Subscription Television article. Some people noted things that I missed in the original article, others had excellent points that should be taken into account, and some just had some great things to say. It seems that we at DRC are not the only ones dissatisfied with cable television and all it brings to the table.

First, I’ll break a couple of assumptions some of you made regarding the original article. A number of people claimed that my interest in a “current reality show” made me somehow stupid with regards to everything else. Not so. I just happen to really like Grease, and I wanted to see who would end up playing the lead roles in the new Broadway production of it. I also watched the first seasons of both Survivor and Big Brother, and since a friend of mine was on the first season of Canadian Idol (Billy Klippert), I watched that too - and I even voted! Some people didn’t like Billy, but he did sing Plush on the show, and if Alice in Chains is ever looking for a singer, he can do every vocal Layne Staley ever did and then some. Don’t hold it against us.

Some other questioned my maths in the original article, and while most of them were wrong, a few made a good point - I wasn’t taking reruns into account. Those who claimed that I would have to watch TV 24/7 along with a few of my closest friends in order to get the price I claimed per show were missing the point. I was speaking of availability, not of what I would actually watch. It is impossible to compare scheduled programming and on-demand programming on the grounds of availability. For the second point (regarding reruns), even if we assume that reruns make up 50% of scheduled programming (an amount that I suspect, most days, is low), the cost per show is still astronomically low. And cable companies and networks still pay for the syndication rights of the reruns, rendering the point moot.

In any case, the point I was making is this: through our cable, satellite or digital subscriptions, our cost per show is amazingly low (roughly $0.0014 per show on cable) whether you watch that show or not. This isn’t a question of value for the consumer, it’s the amount the cable company gets per show on their cable packages. I’m still paying $50 for that month’s worth of cable even if I’m on vacation and don’t watch anything at all. The cable company has that $50, and it works out to $0.0014 per hour of programming. Every single one of those shows has commercials, and that $0.0014 pays for that advertising as well.

So why are online a la carte services such as iTunes charging $1.99 per show without the commercials? Doesn’t that seem unbelievably high? Is the convenience of on-demand worth the massive increase in price? It’s not even the ultimate convenience, due to the DRM crippling, so where does the extra cost come from?

If you want to do the math yourself, just to see what you’re paying, it’s simple. You can estimate that any given channel will broadcast on average 24 shows in a 24-hour period. Just take the amount you pay for cable each month, divide that by the number of channels you receive, then divide by the number of days in the month (I used 30), and divide by 24. If that number is lower than $1.99, then iTunes (and services like it) are seriously ripping you off.

Just to reiterate: the $0.0014 per episode per month that I would pay my cable company includes no on-demand convenience, it includes between 30 and 40 untargetted ads (spam) that interfere with the entertainment factor of what I’m watching every single hour, and it includes no guarantees of service or availability. Even the accuracy of the program guide is not guaranteed.

I guess when I put it that way, $0.0014 per program is actually about worth it - but only if I can pay just for what I actually watch.

Filed under: Editorial