The cable companies have been chomping at the bit for unbundled channels for years, so have consumers. The content providers will never let it happen. Their claim is the popular channels support the diversity of not-so-popular channels. Apparently, production costs are high all around (not surprising) and most channels do not support themselves entirely.

The MSOs have had a la carte on their Santa wish list for years and the content providers do not believe in Santa Claus. :-) They believe in Benjamin Franklin...lots and lots of Benjamin Franklin.

Gian Anthony Constantine
Senior Network Design Engineer
Earthlink, Inc.

On Jan 13, 2007, at 7:14 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

In the USA at least, the cable companies make you pay for "bundles" to get channels you want. I have to pay for

3 bundles to get 2 channels we actually want to watch. (One of these bundle is apparently only sold if you are already getting another, which we don't actually care about.) So, it actually costs us $ 40 + / month to get the two channels we want (plus a bunch we don't.) So, it occurs to me that there is a business selling solo channels on the Internet, as is, with the ads, for order $ 5 - $ 10 per subscriber per month, which should leave a substantial profit after the payments to the networks and bandwidth costs.