Skip to main content

WHY YOUR PAY-TV CAN'T BE PAY AS YOU GO, But Instead Your Subscription Keeps Running Even While You Not Watching.


You wish, very earnestly, that your pay-TV subscription would not run while you are not watching. You are not alone. Almost every pay-TV subscriber would want it that way. That would make us use our subscription in a way similar to how we use the airtime on our phones when we are on the pay-as-you-go platform.

It would be terrific to subscribe for one month and have the subscription stretched over three or four months by being billed only when we watch. If we do not watch for a cumulative of 10 days in a month, perhaps because we leave for work very early to return very late, attend many social engagements or travel out of town, we would have gained 10 days in the next month because we would not have been billed for the time we were not watching.

In very simple terms, you would want to be billed only when you watch-for an hour, two hours or more.

It is just terrific. No other way to describe it. But it is an eminently unrealisable wish. It is also technologically unworkable.

First and foremost, the technology used in satellite television broadcast is one that works by the satellite feeding the decoder with signals that are converted into the audio-visual content on your screen. The technology is not such that the decoder sends feedback to the satellite, making the communication a one-way affair. It is called satellite downlink (DL). It strictly sends the link from the satellite to the ground station.

With the way it works, the television service provider has no way of knowing whether or not you are watching and what you are watching.
This means that in the event of a protracted power outage or long absence from home, the pay-TV provider cannot and will not know if you are watching. It is a situation imposed by technology, nothing else.

Apart from the technological impracticability of having your subscription frozen while not watching, pay-TV providers are also restrained by contractual obligations to content owners.

Permission for content distribution (pay-TV companies are usually distributors) are only granted after certain contractual agreements have been reached.

Television content is sold and bought as an aggregate and contracts for such usually specify that it be broadcast over a monthly cycle. This condition makes it impossible for a distributor (pay-TV company) to distribute content on any basis other than what the contract stipulates. The alternative, albeit injurious, is litigation and/or a ruptured relationship with the content owner.

Even the freezing of subscription was a technological possibility, what about its business viability? A distributor has made full payment for a certain content, say a movie, which it hopes to sell for a profit. A subscriber watches for 30 minutes, decides to visit a friend or there is power outage. Would the pay-TV company get a refund from the content owner, which must have been fully paid, on the excuse that power outage or some other situation forced the subscriber to discontinue watching? Of course, not. When we pay to watch a movie at a cinema, we do not get refunded if we find it uninteresting or we are distracted after 40 minutes. Same goes for a football match that goes against our team after 20 minutes. Can we leave the arena, stop by the ticket office and ask for a part refund?

Contracts are contracts and must be honoured. Monthly or weekly Blackberry and internet contracts do not extend beyond the period for which they are valid whether or not we use them. We do not get refunds for not using or carry a subscription over. That is the way it goes.

Culled from PM News.


Comments

  1. Thus our hopes lies on technological advancements in this area. Until then.....am sorry!

    But Startimes?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The answer is not technological advancement. Because though it's a challenge, it's not the main issue here. Rather, its business viability. It just won't make business sense in the part of the PayTV providers to run a pay-as-you-go plan.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That (il)legal Tender.

"A huge number of humans have their Truth-Reserve/account either fat or static. We rarely withdraw nor spend from it, and will rather run life's transactions with that (il)legal tender, LIES". -TW™ Its not so amazing today how accepted, tolerated, and infact enjoyed (in the actual sense) lies are. Little wonder I chose to coin it as "(il)legal Tender". Illegal tender in every sense of it, yet legal tender judging by the widespread acceptance and employment of it. Why Account? Account owing to the fact that we know the truth, identify it, gather it, but yet fail to employ it, resulting to a mere build up (Account/Reserve) in our hearts, while refusing to spend/transact with it. Note: Truth spent yields even more dividends that truth stored. Why Lie? The "cover my/your arse" mentality/syndrome has taken the good-life over from us, I wonder why on God's earth we left our arses open in the first place, and who told us lies truly covers anyone'

"Meanings Make The Man, His Definitions Define Him"

"Its difficult, if not impossible to respond beyond your heart". How do I mean? "Your conceived, derived and/or imbibed idea of thing, defines your attitude towards it"-TW™ You've always wondered why you act the way you do, react the way you do, or respond to things the way you do. Hey, am not talking temperaments here, the boss (Tim Lahaye) already did, and he "took it to the cleaners'. Even in deceit, its a hard thing to behave/respond to a thing beyond what you think about it, know about it, and the values you have placed on it. Catching a golden mug falling directly towards your head for example is a scenario that captures correctly an aspect of my discourse. There exist a couple of options to this, and believe me, every man could respond differently to this situation. One of the responses to expect, which I know you know already is; Catching the mug, preventing it from hitting your head or even the fall. Another response would be; completely do

You Didn't Deserve To Die, I Didn't Deserve Your Life.

"Though you knew the world won't receive you, you still gave your life to try. Wonderful Jesus, how can I fathom you!" -TW™ What a burden you chose to carry, what a load of Sin. Without my burden, you rode on a donkey, with mine and the whole world's upon you, you decided walking on your feet was better. What manner of man are you? You saw us kill you, yet you allowed it, for you, anything will do, just as long as it'll please the Father. The bruises and the stripes alone was good enough, if it was just about the shedding of blood, you gave it in good quantity through the torture suffered in the hands of the Roman soldiers, you really did not need to die. This was more, this was great, in fact, "Greater love than this no man can give". You paid it all, you laid your life, you paid the ultimate price that I might live. Rejected and abandoned, yet all you saw was me. Disgraced, crucified and killed for a crime you had no hand in, yet all you saw w