In the middle of the 2011 US Open Tennis Tournament, cable television companies across the country, including Buckeye Cablesystem in northwest Ohio, are not broadcasting the Tennis Channel.
In the real world most of us inhabit, it makes no sense for cable companies and the Tennis Channel to eliminate one of their largest audiences on Labor Day weekend. However, if you inhabit the world of corporate greed, it makes perfect sense. According to the New York Times (9/5/11) the Tennis Channel and the National Cable Television Cooperative have a new contract which requires Cablevision to place Tennis Channel on a broad, basic subscriber package. Prior to this Cable companies were offering Tennis Channel on a more expensive level of service, for example, part of a sports package. The Tennis Channel wants broader availability; cable operators want to continue charging extra fees. The result: subscribers who paid extra to view the Tennis Channel are not being served! Great example of "Corporate Think."
All of which goes to the heart of cablevision's "all-or-nothing" marketing. For years subscribers have pleaded with Congress to require cable operators to allow customers to choose and then pay for the channels they actually want. Why do customers have to pay for channels they never watch and never wanted? Personally, I could do without SPROUT, MTV, OXYGEN, GOD TV, and a hundred other channels I will never watch.
If viewers had the freedom to pick and choose what they wanted, this present fiasco with Tennis Channel and N.C.T.C. would not exist. I would purchase the Tennis Channel and my neighbor would purchase the Bullfighting Channel.
1 comment:
Thanks for this posting Ron - as I said in my e-mail to Buckeye, there would be a great uproar if they were to discontinue carrying Golf Channel (a free basic service).
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