WALT DISNEY - DISNEY EXEC SAYS A LA CARTE CABLE PRICING "DOESN'T WORK"

The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it learned early on that à la carte pricing for cable channels doesn't work. Noting that the Disney Channel originally was sold as a premium channel, Preston Padden, executive vice president for Disney, commented that it was not successful until cable operators began bundling it with other channels. "We've been to à la carte," Padden said. "We know it doesn't work." Padden made his comments at a Washington briefing, where he described as "fundamentally flawed" a recent FCC study concluding that consumers would be able to reduce the costs of their cable bills by paying only for cable channels they want.

16/03/2006