I am less in favor of a new law enforcing choice (which will come at a cost, trust me), and more in favor of some sort of deregulation that lowers the barriers to entry for competition.
We have a Dish subscription. It mostly sucks. Couple of years ago we un-subscribed from the various movie channels because the quality of the offerings had declined to the point where I would flip through the channels yelling, "we PAY for this crap!?"
We're almost at the point of just returning their equipment to them and telling them to have a nice day. Or something.
They (a network or networks) canceled two of wife's favorite shows ("Vegas" and something else), which were a couple of the only reasons she even turns the TV on.
The quality of content has gotten really squishy and unfortunately predictable (season enders follow a template that has evolved into a kind of "tune in next season and see if we still even have a show!" gimmick) and I find myself waiting for weekend or holiday "marathons" of some show or other -- from back when there was decent content -- and set to record a whole day (or two) of whatever, and then watch them at my convenience instead of the live broadcast crap.
As has been mentioned above, there are alternatives like Roku and Web viewing, with a lot of decent stuff available on Hulu or Netflix, and you can plunk down a couple of bucks on Amazon if you really want to grab a movie when the live stuff sux. And if you have a new smart TV (like the Samsung, fer instance) it can suck signal off the Interwebz via the streaming services.
I work in technology. I see the cool stuff that can be done with gadgets and I look at the quality of the offerings from Direct TV, Dish, and the cable providers and wanna gag.
Let's say someone suddenly put me in charge of Dish.
I would immediately begin development of a Roku-style device a) to complement our old DVR gear, and b) build that functionality into our new gear, and start looking for ways to partner with streaming content providers.
I would restructure the rate tables to encourage more a la carte style content delivery, and I would find a way to build a minimum number of VOD (video on demand) deliveries into each tier of the rate table, so that even if you have the most basic rudimentary subscription, you still get to select up to [n] movies on VOD every month.
My thinking here is that I don't want to know "what I can get away with" in terms of selling subscriptions, I want to know "how can I capture every viewer in America" with improved features and delivery.
For example, basic subscription package: channels X, Y, Z, Q, and R. Additionally, you get two more channels of your choice, a la carte added at no charge.
I can also conceive of a service (for an extra charge) where commercials are simply dropped from the stream. Don't want commercials on some content? No problem. For a "small fee" we make that available for you via our streaming delivery system (the Roku clone thing) without commercial interruptions. Oh, and because it's our gadget, you can record that content on your DVR.
Now, being a savvy businessman, I also get feedback from the box (via my Roku clone thing) that tells me what channels actually get watched, what programs are being viewed, without having to pay a ratings agency to survey that for me.
This, of course, opens the door for targeted advertising, targeted content offerings, and other stuff that makes business sense.
In the end, I don't want my customers to come to us because we're the "best of the worst" but rather because we actually make them happy they're buying our product.
Hey, a guy can dream.
