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Image Source: VentureBeat
BY KERRY LEARY
So, here’s an idea. What if your cable provider tied the fees it pays to carry channels to
the number of people who watch them?
The Wall Street Journal reports Verizon simultaneously
wants to offer more channels on its FiOS TV service, but only pay for the shows its viewers
are actually watching. Right now, providers pay a per-subscriber fee based on how many
homes they’re delivered to.
But Verizon wants to change that. The company
proposes to pay for individual channels by how many unique views they get every month.
“But
wait, it gets more controversial! Because Verizon wants to use data from its own set-top
boxes—and not from the ratings body Nielsen—to calculate how much it owes each channel. Essentially,
this amounts to the a la carte utopia envisioned by Apple for a TV service—and it's going
to be raising plenty of eyebrows.”(Via Gizmodo)
A writer for VentureBeat says not so fast...
“That doesn’t necessarily mean the 4.7 million FiOS customers will be able to pick
and [choose] their channel line up (aka à la carte pricing), but it should decrease
the number of frivolous channels that no one cares about.”
Verizon’s FiOS TV is the sixth-biggest pay-TV provider in the nation. The company’s
chief programming negotiator Terry Denson says they’re in talks with several media
companies about the proposed idea.
A writer for UberGizmo says, “We cannot blame
Verizon for realizing that there are benefits associated with paying for TV based on an
a la carte premise, as that could very well be what we would be doing if we were in Verizon’s
shoes.”
But a writer for CNET says there’s an issue of how demographics would
be valued under the new plan... fees in the new model would probably be modified based
on the value of the audience.
“Currently, channels with viewers that fit within more
highly sought-after demographics, like ESPN, earn far more in fees from providers than
others. [Verizon] pays $5.04 a month per household to ESPN. USA Network, which has about 300,000
more unique viewers, only receives 68 cents per month.”
Verizon would have to
provide the necessary set-top box data to programmers to implement this idea in order
to report active viewers.