Never a Lack of Ideas

Direct Response Cable Television Comcast is now selling products via a direct response advertising unit that appears at the bottom of a viewer's television screen. The advertisement pops up for a few seconds during a commercial and gives viewers an offer that they can accept or dismiss by using their remote control. (See the video above.) My wife and I were offered a free brochure about visiting Scottsdale, Arizona and we elected to have one shipped to us by following the prompts on the screen with our remote. My wife had seen a direct response ad for a bottle of lotion the previous day. In that ad, she could have chosen to receive a bottle for $5. I can only assume that the $5 charge would have been added to our monthly cable bill. We saw this new advertising unit at 7:45 p.m. on the SOAP network on a Wednesday and a Thursday. We have not seen it on any other channel or at any other time of day. We recorded the ad via our DVR, but when we played it back, the offer was not at the b...

How Much is Too Much? It’s expensive to have cable television. By the time I add up the charge for a DVR and a basic package that doesn’t include any movie channels, I’m out at least $70 per month. But I don’t even watch half the channels that I get. So what am I paying for? And how many people don’t have cable because of how expensive even a basic package can be? Pay-Per-Channel Cable companies need to offer a new pricing model to attract new price-conscious consumers. They need to offer a pay-per-channel (PPC) model. Think if the system was set up like iTunes. Each channel would cost $0.99 per month. High definition DVRs would come free with service. Installation would be free. There’d be no low initial fee that eventually balloons. No contracts to sign. Pay for what you want. People who don’t currently have cable because of its cost would flock to the new PPC model. In the PPC model, you could turn on the channels that you want and turn off the channels that you don’t want each mont...