Patent ID: 8015583

Claim:
A method for determining a price of a program transmitted by a programming provider to subscribers, comprising: receiving, via a network connection, a purchase order for a program from a subscriber belonging to a subscriber group defined by two or more subscribers, wherein each subscriber belonging to the subscriber group maintains an independent account with the programming provider whereby the subscriber pays the programming provider in order to receive paid for programming, wherein each subscriber belonging to the subscriber group may elect to purchase or not purchase the program, and wherein the programming provider maintains a plurality of subscriber groups, wherein each group includes a subset of subscribers and wherein members of each subscriber group are determined prior to an offer to purchase the program; offering, to a first subscriber group of the plurality of subscriber groups, the program to purchase at a predetermined price; determining a first price for the purchase order if the program has been purchased by a threshold number of subscribers belonging to the first subscriber group; and determining a second price, higher than the first price, if the program has not been purchased by the threshold number of subscribers belonging to the first subscriber group, wherein the threshold number of subscribers belonging to the first subscriber group purchasing the program is all the subscribers of the first subscriber group.