A la Carte TV: Good or bad?

The future of television is here. Not in the widespread state it will no doubt be in the coming months, but, it’s here.

Last week HBO announced it will launch a stand-alone streaming service in 2015 with no cable subscription required. CBS beat them to the punch and went ahead and launched a streaming service, called CBS All Access, for $5.99 a month.

The service will include the ability to watch live TV, new episodes of shows appearing the day after they air, more than 5,000 episodes of some of the network’s classic shows like Cheers and Star Trek, and full seasons of eight current shows.

Current cable packages force channels on the consumer that they don’t want or need. The ability to choose and stream only the channels they want is coming. As Alan Sepinwall points out, many of the great channels TV fans have come to love, FX, AMC, Sundance, wouldn’t have had a chance to grow and thrive if the a la carte model existed years ago. Shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Shield may have never existed. While that may have been true a few years ago it’s not the case now. Streaming outlets like Netflix, which has a subscriber base rivaling that of HBO, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime have been developing their own series for a few years now with great success. There are more outlets than ever for exciting, original programming. If a product is good it will get picked up somewhere and the critical buzz on social networking platforms will help draw viewers.

The a la carte model is great for every consumer who isn’t a sports fan. The NBA just signed a $2 billion deal with TNT through the 2024-25 season. ESPN will air MLB and NFL games until at least 2020 and 2021 respectively. Many teams have exclusive contracts with providers and some, like the Yankees, have their own cable networks which cannot be streamed independently.

This is happening sooner rather than later. But is it a good idea?

Would you drop your cable subscription and pick up the streaming services for only the channels you wanted?

This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2014.