I believe that tiered pricing has hurt .tv, not helped it.

Outside of the industry, not many people have even heard of .tv, and those who have don’t use it and view it as an oddity.

Unless a TLD develops traction and goes “viral,” it just goes stale. I think that’s what happen with .tv and some gTLDs (It doesn’t help that .tv is a really ccTLD, which makes it more difficult to index outside of Tuvalu).

Unless ICANN polices itself better, the U.S. government WILL jump in and start regulating, just like it is starting to do with banks and Wall Street.

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[...] such as domainers. For example, Verizon wants price caps on TLD operators, and cites the equitable treatment clause in Verisign’s registry agreement as reason for concern. Surprisingly few companies have [...]

[...] receiving a number of comments about lack of pricing limits in new TLD registry agreements, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has [...]

[...] written before on Domain Name Wire along with several other domain news sites, the new agreement includes a ticking time bomb that [...]

[...] Will .Com Domain Name Fees Soar? Upset about VeriSign increasing your .com registration fees 7% a year? Imagine if they could raise them by whatever they want. There’s a little time bomb in the new draft gTLD registry agreement, part of the new top level domain rollout process, that could make this happen. Essentially, the new registry agreement wouldn’t place any pricing restrictions on registries as they introduce new domains, such as .cars. They can price them however they want, including variable pricing as is done for the .tv country code. This can apply to new registrations or renewals. (For example, for .tv you’ll currently pay a higher registration and renewal fee for money.tv than somelamekeyword.tv.) The only requirement is that these prices be made transparent. More… [...]