John McCain and others are actively questioning why cable prices have risen 50% since deregulation in 1996. The answer from cable companies is sports programming. The programmers claim cable companies are using small increases as an excuse to raise prices. McCain says why can't consumers order channels a-la-carte rather than buying packages. He has a point that every year they add more channels to the "basic" bundle and raise the price but there is no option. I like the concept but given the power of the media and cable companies, I am very skeptical I would end up paying less.

The key question is, would splitting ESPN and Fox Sports into a separate tier for $10/month really lower the average price for all consumers? And taken to the extreme if the 10% of the population that wanted the ABC Family channel had to pay for it, how much would we end up paying for the channels we each want. The problem I see personally is that I only want 90% of the channels on cable 10% of the time. I believe I would end up paying a lot more for the amount of programming I actually use now even if 10% of the channels I never watch and didn't have to pay for them in McCain's plan. This probably benefits the segment of consumers that really only watches 20% of the current channels and non of most popular/expensive channels like ESPN/Fox Sports and MTV/VH1.