>I went to an "exclusive" private co-ed high school on Manhattan's

>Upper East Side and that wasn't my experience at all.

 I think that is her point - at her school in the mid-late '70s, it was one way - not egalitarian, but at least a situation where the 'greatest generation' parents weren't hopelessly spoiling their boomer kids.  At yours in the mid-late '90s, it was another way, with boomer parents catering to their Gen-X+ kids' whims.  Now, it's even worse than in your time.  In the '80s, there was flaunting - those of us old enough knew who the 'preppies' were - but it was a relatively new thing in pop culture, hence the novelty of the 'preppy handbook' and such.

 I suppose Matt counts as a 'preppy', doesn't he?  Prep school grad, Harvard, clueless about how the 'other half' (in his case, red staters) live.  Yeah, a preppy.

Posted at October 28, 2005 11:45 AM in response to Class Denial

For the channels the cable company doesn't have to pay much for (IE, not HBO, Cinemax, and friends), the cost to the company of adding a channel is almost negligible.  It is the cost of delivering service in the first place - paying for the wires, the maintenance, keeping the data flowing - that is high.  So an "a la carte" system would look something like $45 fixed fee plus $0.50 per channel selected, if the current price is $50.  How many channels would YOU buy?  5?  10?  You can keep a second TV for broadcast channels, you have to pay for HBO anyway, so how many cable channels do you use often enough to pay for? 

 
The value of a bundled package is that you get a lot more stations than you would otherwise, and so have access to programming you might not have even realized you would want at sign-up time. (Some miniseries on Bravo, Fox kids tribute to world peace, Animal Planet's program on some animal your kids happen to be doing a report on for school, whatever.)  (What, you think the current 200 channel digital cable at $50 would become $0.25 per channel?  No way.  The cable companies would go bankrupt in months.)  Rule of thumb, a la carte pricing benefits those who watch very few channels, at the expense of those who want broader access.  Offering both packages and a la  carte is even less economic. It is a perfect adverse selection problem like those we see in health insurance, where only few channel users pick the a la carte, forcing the price up, causing even fewer people to pick it, etc. 

Maybe we should make internet suppliers offer the net a la carte.  Pick your websites, up front, $1 each.  Matt linked to some newspaper you didn't pick?   Sorry, outta luck. Or radios programmed to receive only a few stations, ignoring the others.  A friend is on 105.3 today?  Sorry, you didn't subscribe.

Posted at July 26, 2005 9:31 AM in response to Sense on Media Regulation