À la carte Hits North America
Colin Dixon, Senior Partner, Advisory
February 12, 2010
Bell TV, a PayTV provider in the Quebec province of Canada, just gave their customers a whole lot more flexibility with how they subscribe to TV channels. In a first for the North American continent, you can now subscribe to exactly the channels you want for $2 a channel. Given that the average person only watches 15 to 17 channels of the 300 or so they have access to, this is quite a deal.
I know what you’re thinking: this is just a bunch of French niche channels that only someone from Quebec would want. Think again. Channels in the Bell TV “À la carte" block include Animal Planet, HGTV, Fox Sports, ESPN Classic, Bravo and many more. So the big question for me is how come the Canadians get a better deal on our TV stations than we do?
There are also whole bunch of smart bundles. Here’s a sampling from the Bell TV press release:
- Top Franco: 29 of the most popular French channels such as RDS, Canal D and Teletoon for just $16 per month.
- Top Anglo: 54 English channels including A, TSN, Showcase and Spike for $20 per month.
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Top Bilingual: 57 English and French channels including French HD channels, MusiquePlus, LCN, CNN and Family Channel for $20 per month.
So, it looks like with Bell TV you get the best of both worlds: money saving bundles of content and the ability to supplement them with just the channels you need. We can only hope that one day we’ll be able to do the same thing here in the US!
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