Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt says it is a “good idea” for pay TV providers to begin selling smaller, less expensive TV bundles, instead of constantly pushing bigger packages with dozens or even hundreds of channels customers don’t watch and don’t want to pay for.
His words, in a recent Q&A session:
What we see is a segmented economy and some people clearly would like to be able to buy smaller video packages … and I think it would be a good idea for the broader industry and multi-channel providers and programmers to meet that need.
But, Britt said, pay TV providers have a long history of adding more and more channels and selling larger, more expensive packages, and there’s a strong reluctance to reverse that trend because “they think that their interest is having the big packages.” He also said:
So, not surprisingly, we don’t see a lot of people signing up for the small packages, but I do think there’s a consumer need there.
One reason few people are signing up for small, inexpensive TV packages may be that there are no small, inexpensive packages offered at all.