Personalized programming: What channels would you choose?

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July 13, 2012

Personalized programming: What channels would you choose?

By MATT CHRISTIAN Princeton Times The Zope Gazette Fri Jul 13, 2012, 05:01 AM EDT

PRINCETON — — When my sister and I were growing up, we used to have a game that we played as if we were grown ups. One of the things that we would always do is pick out channels that we would like our televisions to have on them.

At the time, I wanted my dad to get rid of our cable provider and subscribe to DirecTV just so that we could get more sports stations. When we would go to the mall, I would snag one of the brochures advertising the packages that DirecTV had to offer. My sister and I would pick our channels from that.

I learned that being able to select channels from a list is called a la carte programming and that the channels themselves don't want this to come to our television sets. You see, most of the networks on your television are owned by one of five entities.

In order for cable or satellite providers to get more popular channels like MTV, the networks tell the carriers that they have to carry less popular channels like Logo. In so doing, the networks get to show advertisers numbers that have those smaller networks into more homes.

This lies in spite of the fact that most of us watch very few of the channels that we're subscribed to on a regular basis. To illustrate the point, I'm going to look through all of the channels available and select the ones that I would pay to watch on a regular basis.

For the purposes of this argument, let's assume that all of the major sports leagues offer their all of their regular season games as part of a package like the NFL does with Sunday Ticket. And this also includes any channels that the leagues own, like the NFL Network. We're also assuming that each major college conference has a similar package and its own network like the Big 10's.

With that caveat in mind, here's my list:

Sports Packages

• The SEC Network and the SEC package

• The NFL Network and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket

• NBA TV and NBA GameTime

• The PAC 12 Network and the PAC 12 package

General Television

• TBS (The Big Bang Theory and Family Guy reruns; the occasional college football game)

• The History Channel (Swamp People; Pawn Stars; Ice Road Truckers)

• TV Land (The Andy Griffith Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, and I Love Lucy reruns)

• TNT (Law and Order ReRuns; NBA playoffs)

• USA Network (Law and Order SVU reruns)

• FX (they occasionally have a football game or two on here)

• Cartoon Network and Boomerang (I like cartoons)

Sports Networks

• ESPN (In this scenario, ESPN and the other networks would show some of the more prominent regular season games from those conferences that you didn't buy a package from and the playoffs)

• CBS Sports Network

• NBC Sports Network

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Personalized programming: What channels would you choose?

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