Oct 21, 2013 3 min read

Since most of us now receive television programming through cable or satellite connections, a common lament is that we have access to a couple hundred channels, only watch just a handful, but have to pony up for the whole kit and caboodle.

And it indeed can be frustrating, as your monthly bill creeps inexorably skyward, to ponder the sheer profusion of stuff you wouldn’t consider wasting a millisecond of your limited lifespan on, whether it’s long-winded congressional hearings, English soccer matches, professional wrestling or pointless reality TV shenanigans.

In an initiative that’s being billed as consumer-friendly, the Canadian government has unveiled a plan that would undo the bundles cable and satellite providers foist on consumers and allow them to pick and choose what channels they want a la carte style.

“We don’t think it’s right for Canadians to have to pay for bundled television channels that they don’t watch,” Industry Minister James Moore said. “We should have a pick-and-pay model when it comes to television channels.”

Some would argue Canadians clearly have a much too placid society on their hands if they’re having fierce debates over cable and satellite TV.

And there would also be a sizable contingent who say our neighbors to the north have a knack for getting it right, whether it’s reasonable gun laws or a national health care system that, from all reports, delivers excellent results.

But some caution might be in order before we follow in the footsteps of the people who brought the world Neil Young and Jim Carrey.

The most commonly employed argument in favor of bundling – and it’s a powerful one – is by paying for all the channels, we’re helping to subsidize channels that might be worthwhile, but only have small audiences.

Also, if bundles were undone, the price per channel would increase considerably. So consumers would be left in a world where their bills remain about the same, but there are fewer choices. Some industry observers believe only 20 or so marquee channels would be able to survive if channels were not bundled.

It’s not unlike paying for street repairs – you might not travel all that much on a road your taxes are paying to fix, but your street gets repaired in the bargain. If everyone who lived on a street had to pay for repairs just on their chunk of boulevard, it would be a pretty costly (and inefficient) proposition.

“The prices for individual channels would soar,” business reporter James Surowiecki wrote in The New Yorker in 2010, “and the providers, who wouldn’t be facing any more competition than before, would tweak prices, perhaps on a customer-by-customer basis, to maintain their revenue…there’s little evidence to suggest that a la carte packages would be generally cheaper than the current bundles.”

He also noted that “many cable networks wouldn’t get enough subscribers to survive.”

Perhaps that Canadian propensity for common sense will prevail and the drive to break the cable and satellite bundles will stall on Parliament Hill, Canada’s equivalent of Capitol Hill.

If not, you can count us among those who believe this is one Canadian innovation that should not make it across our now, unfortunately, well-fortified border.