The wall street journal is reporting that verizon is going to go the route of trying to find a way to rid themselves of channels that no one is watching or has low viewership where it will allow verizon to actually maintain a tv lineup that will consist of channels that people actually want and are watching. How it would work is that verizon will be receiving feedback from their fios customer's set top boxes where if people are watching at least five minutes of a channel then that may be something that they would keep. With the rising costs of sports programming and the constant complaints by the customers of companies like directv who continues to raise their rates for no reason at all this plan could help verizon attract more customers who do not like their current tv provider. "We are paying for a customer who does not even go to the channel" said verizon's chief negotiator who is responsible for making deals for channels that verizon adds to their lineup. Under the new proposal each channel would be paid based on how many viewers it has and if no one is watching them then you say goodbye to those channels as they are simply not worth keeping because no viewer wants them. Verizon's proposal to go decide what channels they will carry based on viewership and not based on whether some of those channels are part of a larger package to try to secure a major network would drive down the cost of verizon fios customer's bills. If this proposal goes through then you can say adios to those byron allen channels, religious channels and those nonstop infomercial channels like wow tv. Some people do occasionally leave their tvs on certain channels accidentally so if someone leaves it on a channel for more than five minutes they are in their own way saying that they would like to keep that channel even if they were only flipping through the channels to find something to watch.
