As a rule, consumers don’t like paying for things they don’t enjoy. Even so, despite the widespread consumer desire for an a la carte model, in which pay TV customers could select (and be charged) only for the channels they want, the bundle remains standard. What this means is that pretty much all pay TV customers are paying for channels they don’t watch—and who wants to cough up money for a service they don’t use? The customers who get the rawest deal of all with the pay TV bundle are the folks who have no interest in sports.
You just bought an HDTV, an iPhone, and a Kindle, but now there’s 3-D TV, Google’s Nexus One, and the Kindle 2 (or the Nook) that all want you to take them home too. Can’t the marketers and innovators at least wait until we’ve gotten used to all the gizmos and features of our current [...]
After Little League baseball sponsors disappeared, communities are getting creative with ways to bring costs down and make sure every kid who wants to play can play.
