In my post yesterday I touched on why I don’t think a la carte cable pricing is a terribly good option for consumers. Some people were quite upset with my having failed to explain fully why I’m not a fan, so allow me to explain my objections in slightly greater detail.

If you’ll recall, I said that the Parents Television Council’s push for legislation requiring cable providers to provide consumers the ability to pick and choose which channels they want rather than buying “bundles” or “tiers” of programming was “semi-reasonable.” It’s the sort of argument that you can market to average voters on a moral level (“We shouldn’t be forced to subsidize these channels we hate!”) and an economic level (“Viewers will save money by not being forced to pay for channels they hate!”).

The reason I say this is a “semi-reasonable” argument is that I’m, frankly, not terribly impressed by either of these lines of attack.