Unbundling Pay TV -- An Exercise in Game Design

Progressivism Comes To TV Bills

I looked at my satellite TV bill recently and was surprised to see it had climbed another few rungs on its way to $100-a-month.

Like everyone else who pays for TV (cable or satellite), I'm essentially offered three or four levels of programming, with the cheapest not including one particularly watched channel and the most expensive shoveling every last unwatchable offering at me.

Lately, there's been talk in Congress of forcing pay TV to offer customers a la carte programming where consumers pick and pay for only those channels they watch.  This has seemed like a sensible change to most, until they hear about the consequences.  Only a few sadsacks would pay for channels like the Home Shopping Network, for example, meaning less revenue for channel bundlers and so, higher rates.  In other words, we'd likely lose the smaller, less mainstream channels and end up paying about the same price, but for less content.

So, why is this an exercise in game design?  Because both sides to the question assume it's either / or; that there's no middle ground.

And yet additional alternatives are possible.  For example, if subscribers were offered either 3/6/9/12, 15 or 'all', channels of their choosing, let's say, and at those levels cable / satellite companies were able to add in, say, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 channels of their choosing (essentially, these extras would be "Look at what you're missing."), everyone would get most of what they wanted.

Most importantly, consumers would feel like they were picking and choosing.

Perhaps just as important, the basic rate for picking just three channels would likely be lower than it is now for a basic package.  This would be a great boon for families that can't afford to pay for more.

And the cable and satellite companies would be able to offer channel companies they bargain with access to what would become the much desired 10, 20, 30... temporary, free slots.  These would then be juggled periodically, giving providers bargaining chips.

Ideally, a bite would be taken out of corporate profits, while those who can afford all the channels would pay more and those who are economizing would pay less.

Update: A contrarian take from the Atlantic

2nd Book Read

2nd In A Series: Citizenville, by Gavin Newsom

Here's another book I ordered--this time new--and have read with some interest.

The author, former mayor of San Francisco and present Lt. Governor of California, identifies a desired transparency in government and the eventual public participation this will engender, as a new way forward for politics.

For example, if a city posts online all the information it gathers, citizens can then make use of the elements that interest them, and like app developers, the most popular compilations and uses rise to the top (a list of the oldest trees in the city, for instance, would be big with me).  All without a top-down approach that does the compilation and distribution on the taxpayer dime.

An approach that should appeal to Republicans (Newsom is a Democrat)!

The book's title is a reference to the online game Farmville that sees players caring for their imaginary rural spreads.  The author reasons that such a popular game suggests citizens would be happy to do something of the same thing in their own neighborhoods if given the chance at stewardship.

Excellent, except that if you've read my take on the eventual hook-up of public and polling, you'll know that rewarding the best new idea to be generated by a given neighborhood doesn't come close to the potential behind the thinking public mind, which is what I propose.

Looking Back at the Architect

I'm about to read The Jesus Discovery; Another Look at Christ's Missing Years by Dr. A.T. Bradford.

Bradford, according to the material I've read on the internet, finds that Christ was in fact a highly regarded, carefully groomed figure within Judaism's 1st century priesthood and not the son of a poor carpenter.  All very intriguing, and yet I expect the key to what happened in those times will be found in Christ's female companionship, or as seems entirely likely, the lack thereof.

Carefully examining many religious organizations, from the Vatican to the Muslim Brotherhood, one is struck by the lack of a female presence.  And that isn't accidental.  Males with a fully engaged, educated, and most important, free, female presence in their life have little need for the tendency to consult an outside authority, which often constitutes religion.

Not that there isn't a need for culture and a normative framework.

But, I've yet to read the book.

.............. update

Hey, I'm really enjoying this book.  Am about half-way through (it's little more than a long essay) and can't believe how other scholars haven't stumbled onto the author's path.

At this point in the book the author has laid out his Golden-Boy-of-the-Jewish-Establishment theory and Jesus has now come under the influence of John-the-Baptist (his cousin--Mary's mother and John's mother, Elizabeth, were of the same family), which begs the question, what might have transpired if Jesus had had a female friend whose mind could have lead him towards a more realistic accomplishment than "God, why hast thou foresaken me?"

America's First Published Poet

Many thanks, Heather, for the inspirational bio-sketches that led me down this morning's path.  The link

I began by clicking on Anne Hutchinson and ended with insight into the female experience in earliest, historical America.

Initially, my curiosity asked: What was Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson getting at with her theological emphasis on Grace, rather than Works?  The one hint I came upon was this biographical detail: "...(she believed) that God had given her the power of clairvoyance, and that she had known in advance of the exact day of (her ship's) arrival in the colony".  

Simply put, she was applying Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 ("To everything there is a season...") to her daily life--or perhaps doing so subconsciously.  Being educated and unencumbered by dogma, she realized she could devine the meaning in events, and history more broadly, in a more crystaline manner than could her male 'superiors'.  In a virgin land where everything was beginning anew, there must have been an overwhelming, compelling need to witness.

This led to my reading about Mary Dyer, Anne's friend.  Each resisted the male oppression in 1630s New England in her own way, and each died a violent death.  One, from abandonment, one could argue, and the other from martyrdom.

And finally, the pearl found, unexpectedly: America's first published poet, Anne Dudley Bradstreet, 1612-1672, who came to the same colony as Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer (in 1630) and left, arguably, an even greater legacy, her inner-most thoughts.

Here are parts of three of her poems, each a jewel, that speak to me over nearly 400 years:

  * From "In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth"  

"....

Now say, have women worth? or have they none? 

Or had they some, but with our queen is't gone? 

Nay Masculines, you have thus taxt us long, 

But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong, 

Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason, 

Know tis a Slander now, but once was Treason."

[Note: Queen Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 to 1603]

   * From "Another"

"...

He that can tell the stars or ocean sand,
Or all the grass that in the meads do stand,
The leaves in th' woods, the hail, or drops of rain,
Or in a corn-field number every grain,
Or every mote that in the sunshine hops,
May count my sighs, and number all my drops.
Tell him the countless steps that thou dost trace,
That once a day thy spouse thou may'st embrace;
And when thou canst not treat by loving mouth,
Thy rays afar salute her from the south.

..."

[Note: her husband, who she loved passionately, was away on government business for long stretches of time.

Also, note the emphasis on God's ability to 'tell' or count.]

  * From "The Author To Her Book"

[Note: this is the self-aware poem of an author who was published without a chance to edit.  It describes how she wishes she could improve on her "Ill-formed off-spring...".  Note the piercing, many-storied allusions.]

"...
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array 'mongst Vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands beware thou dost not come,
..."

Is this genius? I think so.

Is it 'clairvoyance', akin to what Anne Hutchinson experienced?  Perhaps the answer can be read in the final lines of her "High and Mighty..." poem:

"...

No more shall rise or set such glorious Sun,
Until the heaven's great revolution:
If then new things, their old form must retain,
Eliza shall rule Albian once again."

Sunlight's Secret Sauce

Today On The BBC's Webpage

I opened an article on the BBC's website today and remembered with relish my childhood days in California and Asia playing outside in the sun.

It seems that young children need sunlight in order to develop healthy eyes. Keep children indoors studying for hours on end without adequate exposure to sunlight and they'll all end up needing glasses by the time they're adults--seriously, nearly 90% will.

This, by the way, seems to be happening in many Asian societies where studying hard is job #1 and eye-strain is common.

When I was in high school I worked up a little garden plot where I raised vegetables. I also built an irrigated terrace below our house. Neither project was particularly successful or well-thought-out, but just finding fun things to do outside was perhaps all that mattered.

In grade school, when living in Dhaka, some friends and I had a small rowboat made in the carpenter's bazaar. We rowed up and down the small lake in our neighborhood; 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds all out on the water in a large city in a foreign country without adult supervision. Hard to believe.

The sunlight was pure, though, and in that latitude, intense.

Halloween Special: Death and Taxes

Boo To The Unthinking Toadies!

This Sunday's paper (the Quincy Herald-Whig, 10/30/11) carries our local Ag columnist's opinion on the logic of the Estate Tax.

We learn that "Agriculture" is pushing a plan to completely do away with a tax which brings in tens of billions of dollars a year. Tax chop enthusiasts speak the language of the Bush Tax Cuts of ten years ago; that tax cutting will spur so much growth in the economy that just taxing that new bonanza will outstrip foresaken revenues.

Except..., this time supply-side economics will really work!

Not only is our friendly Ag columnist spouting the party line, one that we tried and found wanting (Did the Bush Tax Cuts spur the economy? No. Instead, they piled debt up to the ceiling--just look at how our economy flat-lined after those enormous cuts), but if most farmers knew the facts, they'd likely think twice.

Take a look at who pays the tax and you come away with little sympathy for whoever it is behind the movement to change the law. From Mother Jones magazine we learn:

"According to the Tax Policy Center, even under the rather generous 2009 estate tax parameters, only" 1 in every 500 deaths "will incur the estate tax. In fact, only 100 farms in the entire country" were likely "slapped with an estate tax, and family-owned farms already receive special considerations. For example, they're allowed to evaluate their property at its "current-use value, rather than its fair market value," a reduction allowed up to $1 million.... The few farms that do have to pay the estate tax only have to pay interest for the first five years, then can pay the rest in 10 yearly installments. The exemptions are so extensive that only a quarter of the farms that qualify for the tax actually have to pay it."

Uh, sorry, but I really don't think owners of the 100 largest farms in the country are in need of our sympathy.

Think of it this way. Contrary to the language used by our local Ag columnist, eliminating the tax will not do much of anything for local economies. Most likely, it would instead hurt rural America. That's because the current trend is toward Ag consolidation. That means that instead of a dozen farmers and their families living on the land, we're talking about fewer still. Fewer families and fewer churches, schools, shops, pretty soon small villages wither away and die. And meanwhile, huge farms take their place. Are these larger farms run by good people? Probably no different from smaller farms.

The estate tax, though, is one of the few tools we have to put the brakes on big farms. And whether big farm organizations have the money to throw around in the political arena shouldn't mean we have to say 'Amen' to their arguments.

Working On A Dream

Dedication

There is nothing more certain than a lover's enthusiasm; every waking hour spent focused in on fulfillment.

The same can be said for artists, drinking the heady fruit of their craft, the transformative energy that makes a task the most delightful activity imaginable.

But what about dedication driven by need? One sees images of farm workers picking vegetables, for example. Their skills seem effortless, fluid, dance-like.

As someone who used to be a farm worker, I've followed the recent news about 'regular' Americans trying to fill in on Alabama farms now without their regular farm workers thanks to a new crack-down on the undocumented. What surprises me is how no one seems to understand what it's like to do physical labor, all day, day after day. Of course new workers don't last, they aren't being given a fair chance. Nobody, be they Hispanic from Mexico or native-born without experience in a farm field, is going to be able to take physical punishment without a gradual introduction. It's not a matter of lazy, rich city-dwellers who, even when receiving Unemployment Benefits, won't do work below their station. It's a matter of allowing the body to gradually build the muscle sets needed to hoist 20-pound buckets all day, let alone bend over for hours on end.

What's likely is that the stereotypes are too easy to avoid. Lazy Americans. Mexicans who will do anything to support their families. And so the farmers say they 'need' cheap labor, and it has to be Hispanic, because only they are willing to dedicate themselves sufficiently to the task.

Exactly how one could arrange the work so that new hires are given at least a week or so to grow accustomed to it, I don't know. But crops rotting in the field, which seems to be what happened at the end of this year's growing season, points to a problem that has cost growers much more than taking a few steps towards accommodating green farmhands would have.