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1. Comment by happyfeet on 6/6 @ 3:02 pm #

   This would be a lot consistent with freedom of speech I think. It’s uncomfortable to be forced pay for the speech of homosocialists like Jeff Immelt I think for example who prances onto his CNBC channel what his loser GE company owns and lisps about how the global warminth are thcary thcary and that we all needth to lithen to thuperthtar Rock God Barack Obama.

2. Comment by happyfeet on 6/6 @ 3:40 pm #

   oh. forced *to* pay I mean.

3. Comment by Swen Swenson on 6/6 @ 4:19 pm #

   ‘Cept nobody’s forcing you to pay for cable at all. You could always just not watch TV..

   But seriously, I understand hating the bundling. It sux to pay for a bunch of channels you don’t want in order to get the one you do, but there’s a reason for their BS. Basically, hardly anyone would buy those other channels if they weren’t bundled. Thus, if it weren’t for bundling you’d still pay the same for the one good channel. They’d either drop the unpopular channels or more likely subsidize them from your payments anyway — because you really didn’t think they’d drop BET*, did you?

   And somehow I don’t think we really want to get a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats even more involved in what’s on TV. Might not like the results.

   *Whatever! Pick your own ‘never watch it’ channel then.

4. Comment by Buffoon on 6/6 @ 4:23 pm #

   Methinks Swen has a good point… also, 100 million of us could flood the lines this second to our representative and it could easily be undone by one donation from one of those religious channels no one watches but pay for.

5. Comment by happyfeet on 6/6 @ 4:33 pm #

   oh. I will copy my comment from the link over here cause of it is a reply I think to Mr. Swenson. I added a little just now though.

   This is kinda if you really want to know what I think sort of too old school but I applaud where this is coming from.

   We has the technologies now to actually create a model where cable channels would get their carriage monies as a direct function of actual viewing.

   If I watched some stupid cable show, that channel could get a small slice of my fee for that month or actually more better they could get charge an a la carte micropayment to a credit card on file. That channel would also know which shows drive fees and which shows don’t.

   It’s that sort of feedback loop which will go much further to prevent your monies from going to douchebags.

   This would be very effective except for Jeff Immelt’s channels because he cares more about broadcasting propaganda than making money because his loser GE company mostly depends on sucking the teat of our dirty socialist government and exploiting Barack Obama’s global warming scam instead of actually creating for real value like non-loser companies do.

   It’s very sad.

   Realistically though Swen is right that canceling cable would a lot show that you love America unlike the dirty socialists like Jeffy Immelt what are pissing on our little country’s head.

6. Comment by happyfeet on 6/6 @ 4:35 pm #

   oh. *they could charge* not they could get charge…

7. Comment by Great Mencken's Ghost! on 6/6 @ 5:08 pm #

   Hell, I’m just tossing my crappy old TV when they convert to digital. The few things I want to see I can get online.

8. Comment by McGehee on 6/6 @ 6:47 pm #

   Okay, even assuming that my not having to pay for CNN, MSNBC and so on, won’t save me money, it will stop any of my money going to those content providers, while I still get to watch the channels I do enjoy.

   I’d even be willing to pay a little more for that privilege. Or do some more triage on the channels I watch only very rarely but could live without.

   What I would prefer above all is a metering system: bill me for the time I am either watching TV or receiving it to my DVR. Use what I pay to reimburse the channels I watched or recorded.

   When I go into a restaurant I don’t pay a few cents each for everything on the menu, I pay for what I order.

9. Comment by McGehee on 6/6 @ 6:49 pm #

   …and I see I am in agreement with happyfeet about the metering idea. I like it when that happens.

10. Comment by happyfeet on 6/6 @ 6:51 pm #

    You were a lot more succinct and coherent I thought.

11. Comment by geoffb on 6/6 @ 8:14 pm #

    I am in agreement with happyfeet about the metering idea.

    Me too. Now if we can just manage to figure out how to keep those dirty socialists from ever getting their smelly hands on the data and using it to see who needs to be fixed ’cause they don’t think right.

12. Comment by Swen Swenson on 6/6 @ 8:34 pm #

    If I watched some stupid cable show, that channel could get a small slice of my fee for that month or actually more better they could get charge an a la carte micropayment to a credit card on file. That channel would also know which shows drive fees and which shows don’t.

    It’s that sort of feedback loop which will go much further to prevent your monies from going to douchebags.

    That’s a good description of how it should work in a capitalistic system, but somehow I think the FCC would step in when BET ran out of monies. It’s the “fairness”, doncha know?

13. Comment by Ted Nugent's Soul Patch on 6/6 @ 9:34 pm #

    “‘Cept nobody’s forcing you to pay for cable at all. You could always just not watch TV..”

    Actually, Swen, I’ve pretty much decided that once my one-year deal with Comcast is up at the end of the summer, I’m getting the cable turned off. I’ve realized that I just don’t watch that much TV (most of my viewing is either movies or documentaries), and I don’t see the point of keeping cable before Comcast makes me play “Jack My Price Up”. Plus it will actually save me a few extra bucks, too.

14. Pingback by dustbury.com » The meter is running on 6/7 @ 12:15 pm #

    [...] McGehee proposes an alternative plan: What I would prefer above all is a metering system: bill me for the time I am either watching TV or receiving it to my DVR. Use what I pay to reimburse the channels I watched or recorded. [...]

15. Comment by MC on 6/8 @ 9:40 am #

    I’m about to cancel cable because it’s full of nothing but screaming news and reality tv shows; they’re incredibly stupid, and a waste of my money. Why do some channels have to be ‘premium’ and others not? I hate sports, so I don’t consider ESPN ‘premium.’

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