Why are cable companies ruining the internet? OK so maybe they are not ruining the internet but they are definitely ruining what I want the internet to be. I have cable at my house, I think I get about a million channels but I would not really know since I only watch maybe 12 of them. This brings me to the a la cart dream. I know I am not the only one who who would be happy to pay for just the channels they actually want to watch. From what I understand these networks get a lot of money from the cable companies to run on there service.  Then they get even more money from the advertising they run during their programming. So if Time Warner pays Fox 50 cents per subscriber they when not all subscribers even watch their channel and then charge advertising rates for number of viewers when there is no way they can actually substantiate how many people actually watch. This seems like a great deal for the networks so no wonder they are fighting so hard not to lose this cash cow.

But what about the user?

So where does this leave us the lowly subscriber. The current system leaves us with ever increasing cable bills mostly for shit we will never watch, well that sounds like a great deal. I personally would be willing to pay these networks, I don’t know maybe 3-5 dollars a month for access to all of their shows online for me to watch when I want and I would be glad to site through a couple of commercials for the privilege. Under this a la cart plan networks would have to make good content because the numbers would be much more difficult to fudge. Sure some of the networks would die off as they should but the good ones would have no problem. So I envision a site where I could go and sign up, once there I could pick the networks I want to watch and it would all be bundled together. Then they could even do package deals like 3 networks are 5 dollars a piece, 10 are 4 dollars a piece and 15 are 3 dollars a piece. I would happily pay 40 dollars a month for the shows I want and to be able to watch them when I want. I would think that the advertisers would be much happier as they would know exactly what kind of viewership they are getting and only paying for what they get.

So I guess what all of my thinking has figured out is either the users and the advertisers win or the networks win. So I guess a la cart is still just a dream but I for one cannot wait for this dream to come true.