I've always suspected there is no à la carte cable because it is not revenue maximizing.
My argument: with bundled cable you can segment the market by selling the same product at different prices. If I offer a bundle of sports + movies for $100, I can sell to a subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for sports and $10 for movies, and also to the subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for movies and $10 for sports. I get $100 from both in this scenario.
If I wanted to sell sports à la carte and movies à la carte, both the avid watcher and the casual fan would have to pay the same price for the same content. In my simplified case above, each product would have to be priced at either $90 or $10, and I either lose the casual viewer or leave money on the table from the diehards.
If this is true, then regulation effectively decimates the profitability of content, meaning less good quality content (though you would be paying less for it). I think the best way to get à la carte is to preserve market segmentation by adopting some kind of tiered pricing structure--maybe time delayed releases, maybe different quality levels, or maybe Priceline-style auctions. But none of that may work as well as bundling.
My argument: with bundled cable you can segment the market by selling the same product at different prices. If I offer a bundle of sports + movies for $100, I can sell to a subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for sports and $10 for movies, and also to the subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for movies and $10 for sports. I get $100 from both in this scenario.
If I wanted to sell sports à la carte and movies à la carte, both the avid watcher and the casual fan would have to pay the same price for the same content. In my simplified case above, each product would have to be priced at either $90 or $10, and I either lose the casual viewer or leave money on the table from the diehards.
If this is true, then regulation effectively decimates the profitability of content, meaning less good quality content (though you would be paying less for it). I think the best way to get à la carte is to preserve market segmentation by adopting some kind of tiered pricing structure--maybe time delayed releases, maybe different quality levels, or maybe Priceline-style auctions. But none of that may work as well as bundling.