A better way to watch TV

Most people around the country, including those of us in Southwest Nebraska, have three television delivery systems; cable, Direct TV and Dish and each of them delivers their programming essentially the same way through a concept called packaging.

They bundle a group of television stations together into different packages, put a price on each of them and the customer chooses the one he wants. Obviously the more stations there are in a package, the higher the monthly charge. This may be a good thing for the cable and satellite companies but it's not a good thing for the consumer. In fact, it doesn't even make any sense for the consumer.

These different delivery systems certainly have the technology to do things differently than the current setup allows and one thing they don't do seems to me to be something they should do and that's to allow the purchase of individual stations. Regardless of the package you have, there are stations in that package you never watch; sometimes a lot of stations.

If you buy a sports package it's the same thing; you pay an exorbitant fee for games across the country but you don't watch all those games. In fact, you don't watch most of those games. Except for the occasional national headline game that's probably going to be carried on network television anyway, most of us have a favorite team or teams we follow and most of the time we would be interested in watching those teams only.

But we're not able to do that. Why can't the delivery systems offer a la carte options too, either in addition to or as a substitute for the packages they currently peddle to us? They could set a price for each station and the subscriber would pay that price. That would allow us to subscribe to only the stations we wanted to watch rather than being required to buy a package that included a lot of stations we don't want to watch. Charge a fee for watching a particular athletic team or teams rather than the package fee that includes a lot of games you don't want to watch.

They should be able to do the same thing with movies. Each station has access to a host of movies they have paid fees to access but the consumer isn't presented with all the movie options at the same time; only the ones the station chooses to give us access to. If you want to watch the 1951 classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still," you should be able to pay a fee and do that, whether it's a part of anyone's current programming or not. But you can't.

Since the technology is available to do all these things and yet no one does, there must be a reason and I'm pretty sure that reason is all wrapped up in perceived profits and they obviously believe the current package structure gives them the best profit potential. But I don't think the delivery systems have this one figured correctly. It seems to me they're missing out on a possible goldmine by not allowing their customers to access only the programming they want to see. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if their profit margins soared if they ever decide to do this. At the very least, they could continue to offer their packaged programming and offer the a la carte options too, the same way restaurants do.

This just makes sense to me and if there's a reason why it can't be done, I would sure like to know what the reason is.