Senator McCain maybe America’s most hated politician but looks like he’s trying to redeem himself by introducing a new bill to Congress that could help make TV cheaper and more affordable to everyone. McCain appears to be fed up with the high pricing of cable TV just as much as we are, and he wants to put a change to that. So he introduced a new bill to Congress called, “The Television Consumer Freedom Act”, a bill that allows the consumer to choose the channel in their subscriptions instead of the overpriced bundle thing.
While it’s a nice idea, and I actually like this bill a lot, it’s going to be kind of tough to get it passed through Congress for it to get handed to the President for consideration. Getting a bill signed into a law is not an easy process. It has to go through all of these things first before it’s handed to the President. First, it needs to get reviewed by the committees and subcommittees where it can be accepted, amended or rejected. If it’s accepted, then it’ll get passed to the full committee and if they like it, the bill will get passed to the Senate for consideration. Then the Senate will debate it, discuss it, and vote on it. It must be passed through both houses of Congress before it’s handed to the President, though. Even if the Senate agrees to the bill, and it’s handed to the President, that still doesn’t mean the bill went through. The President has the power to throw the bill out if he doesn’t agree with it and he has the right to sign it too. They have a long road to get up there.
The bill is a nice idea and will change American history if the bill actually gets signed by the President if it gets that far. I agree that cable TV is ridiculously high these days, and I wish they would cut down the prices of the sports PPVs too. While I do love watching wrestling, boxing, and UFC; I don’t watch any of their ppvs ’cause they’re so pricey.
McCain is doing a good thing and it’s a worth a try. Even though, he’s not everyone’s favorite politician, I’m sure he just got a little respect from the people for this one time. I hope this bill does go as far as getting to the President to get signed by him. Will Obama go for it, though? I think he would. Obama seems to be a big TV lover himself, and he might even agree with the bill.
More on the story, here.
Kev
K'Brocking 
The problem with what he proposes is that “bundling” channels keeps them lower per channel than what “a la carte” pricing (paying for channels individually.) It’s been discussed over and over. Right now, each channel costs a couple of dollars, with ESPN being the most expensive at about $4 or so on your cable bill (and not many other channels approach it.) Since all channels get paid whether the consumer watches them or not, the costs stay low because the income is guaranteed.
However, if you let consumers pick and choose, the channels would have to up their rates to match the loss of income that the loss of some viewers would inevitably bring. Say that 1/4 of customers in the new a la carte pricing chose to stick with ESPN. ESPN would then have to go from $4 to $16 to make up for the 3/4 loss (because now they only have 1/4 of the customers.) ESPN pays something like $1 billion to the NFL alone to air games, so they’re in no position to tolerate the loss of revenue.
And some channels, like BET, would go out of business because even if every African-American family signed up, they’d have to jack their rates up to something like $20 per month. That’s even higher than the premiums. Other lesser watched channels would be in similar positions. If we go a la carte, you’d see a drastic reduction in channels, with only the more popular channels surviving, with higher rates individually.
If you only watch one or two channels, a la carte pricing is attractive, but not many people watch only one or two channels. Better suggestion is to look at places like Netflix or Amazon or other online sources if you want alternatives to cable, because cable isn’t going to want to adopt this pricing, and not many consumers will like it once they think it through.
Okay, so according to the article, ESPN is $5 per month. That’s higher than I last heard. So a la carte for a 1/4 loss would be $20 per month. That’s HBO/Showtime territory.