Don't Like Sports? Too Bad, Say Cable Companies

The L.A. Times has a few interesting editorials today. One calls for the end of the filibuster entirely in the Senate ("Nuke the Filibuster," 04/26/05) and another decries the increasing costs of cable television, driven mostly by sports. As the piece correctly points out, with the new NFL deals signed by ESPN and NBC, cable costs are certain to rise ("Players and Payers," 04/26/05).

Fueled largely by programming fee hikes demanded by sports networks, monthly cable bills have risen steadily in recent years, a trend likely to worsen. ESPN says it won't increase programming fees to pay for "Monday Night Football," but when its contracts with cable systems are renewed, the network undoubtedly will try to offset its higher costs with higher rates. So will NBC, which will want to raise prices for its cable channels, such as MSNBC, the USA Network and Bravo, to make up for the costs of its NFL deal. Ditto for the other networks that broadcast sports.

Cable operators have proposed a solution that makes sense: pushing sports networks out of basic cable packages and parking them in higher-cost tiers so customers could decide whether sports programming is worth the added cost.

But sports networks, leagues and advertisers are dead set against that idea because they want their broadcasts and commercials to run in front of the greatest possible number of eyeballs.

The cable industry is headed in the right direction, but it's not going far enough. Why not let the free market sort it all out? Let viewers pick programming on an a la carte basis — choosing their own packages from a menu in which each network has a set price. It's a revolutionary idea, but so was football under the lights on Monday nights.

I am in favor of 'a la carte' cable. Even though I would choose the more expensive ESPN, I would probably choose little else, meaning that I would still save on my cable bill. And this is exactly why cable television providers, most of whom have a monopoly in a given area, are not about to offer such a service. Most likely, it will take government regulation (and many rounds of litigation) to secure such a pricing plan. But if cable companies continue to raise their rates, at some point they will run afoul of legislators and the battle will begin.