TOTM
The Efficiency of Cable Bundling
Truth on the Market
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As I noted in a post last month, the Ninth Circuit recently threw out an antitrust challenge to cable operators’ refusal to provide cable channels on an a la carte, rather than bundled, basis. (Josh also had some insightful comments on the Ninth Circuit’s Brantley decision.) In my post, I promised that I would later explain how channel bundling, which permits cable operators to price discriminate and extract greater consumer surplus, may nonetheless benefit consumers by expanding output. Having just finished incorporating a number of helpful comments Herbert Hovenkamp gave me on a forthcoming tying/bundling article (more about that later!), now seems like a swell time to return to the topic of cable bundling.
