As Talent Flees to Cable, Networks Fight Back

In an ideal world, television viewers would only pay for those shows and channels that they actually care about. The concept, known as TV a la carte, has been a pipe dream of cord cutters and disgruntled cable subscribers for years. Thursday the movement received a significant boost from an unlikely political ally: John McCain. The Arizona Senator introduced a new bill, the Television Consumer Freedom Act, that would present incentives to both cable operators and television networks to let consumers choose the channels in their subscription.

(tehusagent)

Zacks.com submits: With the expiry of the earlier contract at midnight Dec 31, Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) forged a new programming deal with News Corp.

The initial 6-week test will be available to anyone.

One of the funnier subplots in the media universe these days is the one about Aereo. Aereo is the kind of company which sounds like a thought experiment, but it’s very real: it takes free broadcast signals, uploads them to the cloud, and rents them out — at a fee — to people who want to watch broadcast TV on their computers.

Trefis submits: The recent deal between Fox (NWSA) and Time Warner Cable (TWC) is indicative of how the erosion in TV ad dollars has led to changes in the long-established broadcast TV revenue model. Sustaining a broadcast network solely on ad dollars is becoming more challenging leading networks like Fox to demand an additi