Yes, I’m actually rooting for Verizon against the cable networks.

You see Verizon wants a new deal for its content.

It does not want to pay for each person who has access to a network, but rather it wants to pay only for the people who actually watch the shows:

Verizon wants to change how it pays television providers for their shows, according to a new report.

The company, which operates Fios TV, is currently in talks with several “midtier and smaller” television companies to pay them not for the number of subscribers their channels can reach, but by the number of people who actually watch their shows, according to the Wall Street Journal, which interviewed the company’s executives.

“We are paying for a customer who never goes to the channel,” Verizon Fios TV chief programming negotiator Terry Denson told the Wall Street Journal.

The payment structure would be passed on a “unique view” model in which one person who spends at least five minutes on the channel would count towards a fee, according to the Journal. Verizon would not need to pay for anyone who didn’t actually spend that time on the channel.

If they can apply this generally it makes it less economically viable to use things like ESPN to overload the cable networks, and our cable bills, with stuff that no one else watches.

This is a decent step toward à la carte content delivery.