Verizon Aims to Allow Customers to Pay for Just the Cable Channels They Want

From DailyTech: It's not just you that's irritated that you're paying for television channels you don't want due to bundling. Cable service providers are also paying a similar price. And while some -- like Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) -- are affiliated with those who profit off bundling themselves, many of the cable market's new players are purely on the losing end of the equation.

Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), co-owner of America's largest wireless mobile device service network and the FiOS fiber-optic cable service, is looking to put its foot down and reshape a consumer's cable-shopping experience to a "buffet" of sorts. Chief programming negotiator at Verizon Terry Denson comments, "We are paying for a customer who never goes to the channel."

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal he explains that Verizon is in negotiations to give customers access to the entire spectrum of cable channels (besides a handful of premium channels).

Whenever Verizon's set-top box documents a customer watching a particular channel for more than 5 minutes, Verizon would pay the bundler for that channel, and charge the customer for that channel. Mr. Denson says the deal would cover a "significant number of channels". He comments, "If you are willing to give a channel five minutes of your time, the cash register would ring in favor of the programmer"

While the idea of paying based on viewership is relatively old, the mechanism for doing so -- the internet connected set-top box -- is relatively new. In the past there was no way to collect this kind of real-time viewership information, making viewership based pricing more problematic.

Verizon's initial talks have focused on "midtier and smaller" companies. The executive said the negotiated deals/service pricing scheme could extend to on-demand viewing and mobile device viewing, as well.

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