I don’t tend to lean toward the wonky side of tech issues, but when I learned about HBO Go and Max Go, I felt a comment was necessary.  What HBO Go and Max Go are are ways to watch both HBO and Cinemax content on mobile devices.

Which is a really good idea, though the only problem is that to access either offering you have to subscribe to either network via cable.

That’s OK, but what executives at those networks seem to be take for granted is the increasingly mobile nature of many people’s lives.  For many people home is a place where we eat and sleep; in other words, it’s a rest stop between work, school and whatever else we need to do.

So why should people pay for an entire series of channels, when in some instances they aren’t going to spend little, if any time, actually watching them?  I am sure that cable providers won’t mind, but with the economic downturn people are likely to cut unnecessary expenses.

And I am willing to be that cable television for many will fall under the “unnecessary expense” category.

This is why HBO or Cinemax should consider offering access to their programming “a-la-carte,” and just for mobile devices, as opposed to a whole package of channels.  This way a viewer can watch either pay cable channel on whatever device they own, without a subscription to cable.

Such a plan would (probably) suck for cable providers, though I imagine that it would be very, very profitable for HBO.

And the key to this idea working would be charging no more than $10-15 dollars per month for the service.  Any more, than that, you’re approaching the cost of cable television, which would defeat the purpose of unbundling a premium channel in the first place.