Canadians: Change the culture! Tell the CRTC what you think …
About the way cable companies operate.
I know most of you hate paying for channels that you don’t use. Tell them: Stop the packaging system and end cable monopolies!
This is something that affects almost everyone. If we could get this changed, that would be a huge improvement to popular culture.
Most people try to police popular media through censorship, but Suzanne at BBW is suggesting a market solution to the garbage on television by having the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission make easier for consumers to pick what channels they want. That will mean higher cable costs for consumers because presently cable providers bundle packages that are cheaper than letting customers handpick individual channels, but that’s the price of keeping unwanted channels out of our homes.
My own preference would be for the federal government to shut down the CRTC and let cable companies, content providers and consumers negotiate an outcome — let the market decide — but that is not going to happen any time soon. Best then to use the apparatus of government to advance the cause of consumer choice.
Oswald Clark is the economics reporter of The Interim and an Ottawa and Boston based economist.