Monday, February 7, 2011
The recent announcement from Roku that it had signed its first live cable TV channel, WealthTV takes us back to circa 2005-2007 when U.S. pay TV a la carte programming packages were hotly debated in the industry and in Washington.
Back then the concept of getting TV shows and movies off the Internet and directly displaying them on the living room HDTV was only understood by a handful of IP jockeys and a few Silicon Valley VCs. But the implied promise of one of its by products, the ability to build your own TV package by purchasing only programs/channels you really want, is immediately grasped by anyone who’s ever subscribed to pay TV.
It’s such a compelling idea that former Bush administration FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin encouraged the U.S. Congress to pressure cable/satellite/telco companies to offer a la carte packages. In fact, the Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007, which would have allowed some cherry picking inside an expanded basic cable package, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in the summer of 2007. It didn’t get very far and is now only a faint memory.
For many reasons – some obvious and others best batted about in another post – it’s highly unlikely that the U.S. Congress will be taking up the pay TV a la carte charge anytime soon. Any strides there are likely to come from the private sector and in its own sweet, messy time.
It’s tempting to see a deal between an Internet TV provider and a cable TV network as a first step toward a programming nirvana where consumers can cherry-pick their own TV packages. A small pay network like WealthTV doesn’t have much to lose by experimenting with Roku. The success (or not) of the venture probably won’t tell us much about whether we’re heading toward a pay TV future where consumers can drop hand-picked niche program streams into a basket that also includes ESPN and the Lifetime picked from a more choice part of the orchard.
But, for now, the seed is planted.
