TPM reported the other day that Glenn Beck and Eliot Spitzer appeared at a boxing-themed event promoting their upcoming debate, which will be hosted by the Dish satellite TV service. This is funny, and bizarre, and everything, but more interesting to me was the note that Dish is offering Current TV, which airs Spitzer's talk show, and Beck's new TheBlaze network as $5 add-ons to any of their programming packages.
If you want to see Current on AT&T's U-verse, in contrast, you need to subscribe to a package carrying at least 300 channels, according to the AT&T website. Tying niche programming to large and expensive programming packages is one of the advantages cable/video carriers have over consumers and one I'd expect them to cling desperately to.
Allowing subscribers to add on a single channel for a small fee is a great alternative for consumers. It's good to see that Dish is either able to make money off of this model or thinks that it will be able to.
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