Verizon CEO: Try a la Carte to Protect Cable

Verizon Chairman-CEO Lowell McAdam said that, in answer to cord-cutting and consumer pressure, the television industry should be open to the idea of a-la-carte cable subscriptions.

Speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters’ confab, McAdam said a move to a-la-carte would answer market pressures and customer feedback. Through its FiOS TV service, he said, Verizon can monitor how many of its 5 million TV subscribers are watching any channel at a given moment. “It might be in the hundreds,” he said. “I think there’s a pressure now from customers about why do I have to have 300 channels?” He called a-la-carte “a novel way that could help protect subscriptions in the long run. … This isn’t a cause celebre for us but I think it’s an early warning that we should pay attention to.” He compared cable bundles to bundled services on cell phone plans. “As more and more smartphones were out there, (customers) said why are you making me buy a text bundle, why are you making me buy a voice bundle? We said, you know, you’re right, so we did away with that.