SKINNY CABLE MIGHT NOT BE ALL WE EXPECTED, BUT THERE IS A SILVER LINING,
FORCING CABLE COMPANIES TO OFFER AFFORDABLE PACKAGES HASN’T HAD THE DESIRED OUTCOME, BUT THERE MAY BE A SILVER LINING YET
Contrary to popular perturbed belief, we don’t actually know yet just how woefully short of consumer expectations the skinny basic cable package has fallen. We won’t actually know that until December or so, when cable companies are officially going to offer every individual channel as a pick-and-pay service.
Technically, cable companies have until December, but the general lesson of regulation is that everyone waits until the last minute. For instance, cable companies had until March 1st to offer cable packages for under $25, and that’s exactly the date that they made these options available. If you think you’re angry now, just wait until they get to put an individual premium on the exact channel they know you want — it will make bundles feel like a steal of a deal.
If there is a lesson to be taken from this completely predictable outcome, the main one should be that consumers should only get the government involved when they actually have something important to complain about, not when they are just mildly annoyed every time they open a bill.
As with the cellphone regulations that lead to shorter contracts but more expensive bills nearly across the board, this is a nice reminder that you don’t often beat capitalism — especially near-monopolistic capitalism — at its own game. You can change how you pay, if you want, but you’re always going to pay. Your choices are typically revolution or sucking it up.
For what it is worth, though, the abjectly horrible options that attend both skinny basic and pick-and-pay may actually hasten a process that has already largely begun, one that will forever be more concerning to the cable companies than any number of loopholeable government regulations. Both of these options are really only horrible if you actually still want to watch a decent number of things on cable. The great irony is that every time consumers scroll through the payment options online, they’re reminded of that a semi-infinite library of television is a mere click away.
As more and more streaming libraries come online, improving both delivery technology and available entertainment options, the only real advantage a cable package can offer is immediacy, the chance to watch shows as they are airing. Excepting things like news (which I hear you can get online now) and sports (cable’s last real trump card, until an internet company can afford broadcast rights), that’s an advantage that’s bleeding every day. For starters, as any accomplished cable kvetcher will tell you, they could care less about most of what’s available anyway.
Secondly, as both our understanding and the delivery of television changes, being immediately up to date loses social capital. Not knowing who got voted off Survivor used to mean you were out of the loop. Now, in the age of waiting and binge- watching, we feel comfortable getting mad at people for spoiling shows that are years old.
We are becoming more invested in the experience — and, frankly, the quality — of what we’re watching than when we see it. It’s fine to wait for a whole season of a show to become available through streaming before you touch it; or, for that matter, to drop out of contemporary entertainment entirely, and catch up on the entirety of a ‘90s sitcom.
Cable companies are aware of this, and are slowly pivoting, as the ( slow and occasionally backwards, but hey) roll-out of the likes of Shomi and Crave TV prove. They still want you to think of these as supplementary to your cable package, as opposed to a replacement, but that will not last — or has never started, if you’re one of those crazy kids who has never even had cable. It won’t expressly be because of skinny cable, but they’re going to start making less money.
This is unquestionably bad for cable providers — I’ ll try not to drown in your tears. But because the providers also own many of the channels they’re offering, it’s also generally thought to be bad for Canadian television producers, as well. Quieter but more insistent, production companies have been complaining about the new packages, because the cost uncertainty it created has stalled a lot of production: channels that got both package subsidies and higher ad rates because of reaching more homes suddenly aren’t even sure they’ll continue to get enough subscribers to justify their existence.
I’m not so sure it’s the death knell they imagine, though. An unfortunate majority of Canadian production tends to end up buried in the nether- regions of the cable dial, reaching niche audiences if any at all. A model where fewer shows get made, but they are put in far more prominent places — i.e. a streaming service that has as many subscribers as a cable company — could go a long way towards building an industry that Canadian audiences are both aware of and invested in, even as the bottom falls out of it.
The best example so far is Letterkenny, the absolutely hilarious comedy that recently debuted on Crave TV. Crave’s actively engaged audience likely isn’t close to Bell’s cable subscriber base yet, but in any case anyone who did log on would have been hard- pressed to miss it, especially if you’re remotely interested in comedy. It was an ideal streaming show — biting, rapid-fire jokes in easily digestible chunks — and Bell had far more direct and, frankly, invasive ways to get in front of audiences, doubly motivated given that it was an in- house production (see also: Netflix). Any subsequent show they produce will enjoy the same advantage.
This would undoubtedly translate to fewer shows, but ones that are far more likely to actually catch on with Canadian audiences. That is, in broad strokes, the plan, or at least the response, for the streaming age: part of the CRTC’s justification for skinny cable and its ripple effects was, after all, higher quality fare, even if that meant less of it. It’s not a perfect plan, not the least because quality is in some ways an emergent property — sometimes you need to fail a lot before you get a success. But given that the internet is also coming up and giving people far more ways to produce and distribute smaller-scale projects — like Letterkenny, which started as a series of brilliant and popular YouTube videos — it’s about as good of an option as there is.
That might be a small victory, but television production as we know it is not heading for a series of large ones. And as unintended consequences of dunderheaded regulation goes, it’s a lot better than false savings on your cable bill.
ONLY REAL ADVANTAGE A CABLE PACKAGE CAN OFFER IS IMMEDIACY.