Posted on 04/30/2017 3:51:48 PM PDT by EveningStar
The television screen went dark a month ago as Daniel Fitzgerald watched “American Pickers” on the History Channel.
Perplexed, he grabbed the remote and surfed through CNN, Disney, Comedy Central and the rest of the standard cable lineup. Many of them were gone, too. In their place was a black background with a small block of text advising him that his subscription no longer provided those channels.
“I thought, ‘What the hell? I just paid the cable bill,’” Fitzgerald recalled last week in the tiny Lexington [Kentucky] apartment he shares with his disabled 16-year-old son.
Fitzgerald called Spectrum, the subsidiary created last year when Charter Communications of Stamford, Ct., acquired Time Warner Cable, which was then Lexington’s cable provider. A Spectrum representative told Fitzgerald that he hadn’t been paying Time Warner enough for the standard cable package. If he wanted those channels back, his monthly bill for cable and Internet would jump from $103 to $139, effective immediately.
(Excerpt) Read more at kentucky.com ...
Cut the cord! Cable users of America, you have nothing to lose but your cords!
Bkmk
Cable (and satellite) TV will be gone in a couple of years. I’m ready to leave with 500 channels of QVC and “four hour erections!” Content on TV today is simply awful.
139 bucks a month to watch TV? F ‘em.
For internet I have it through Metro PCS unlimited. I have ised 40 gigs a month and they don’t throttle down the speed.
I’ve been streaming for 4 years. I only pay for Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
Have ready any wireless services that can be refered to.
Maybe, as people more and more cease to bother with content that is vapid.
The internet has proven to be equally entertaining today (well thanks for at least something, You Tube, Facebook et al.) and it can be had at a far cheaper rate.
I have Netflix and prime. But Mrs. Principled still wants the cable.
What is Hulu good with?
>>The television screen went dark a month ago as Daniel Fitzgerald watched “American Pickers” on the History Channel.<<
How could he tell? AP is the WWE of those kinds of shows. Faker than a cnn broadcast.
“A Spectrum representative told Fitzgerald that he hadn’t been paying Time Warner enough for the standard cable package.”
Hey pay up the damn bill if you want the services. You cut the cord.
Anything else is just the moocher class wanting things for free.
“Cable users of America, you have nothing to lose but your cords!”
Now, now, there may be some people that will miss the outrageous cable bills they pay every month for stale reruns.
There is so much more content not on cable!
Content may be bad, but presentation is even worse. I was trying to watch some TV this afternoon (I usually spend time on the computer, but wanted to take a break), and it was almost all commercials.
One used to be able to flip between two or three channels and keep up with the stories, but now it’s just flipping from one commercial to another. TCM is the only one that seems to be still watchable.
I think I lasted about 10 minutes.
Advertisers are idiots for buying the time, and the programmers are idiots in how they structure the programming.
ESPN has had the (unwelcome) headlines this week but the real enemy is cable and satellite bundling.
Once upon a time it was (partially) a necessary evil as certain blocks of channels were tied to bandwidth and vice versa. In the purely digital era that is no longer the case, and bundling is like being forced to buy a dozen cans of spinach every time you buy a loaf of bread.
For obvious reasons the providers love bundling and, as usual, Congress and the FCC (including its GOP/conservative members) are happy to debate Net Neutrality but keep mostly quiet on bundling.
Bundling is an anachronism. It also borders on fraud when a provider claims they are delivering 100 channels but at a dozen of those are nothing but advertisements.
I cut the cord last December and now have only about 60-70 channels of QVC and “four hour erections!” but they're all FREE. I don't miss any of it, I set up an off-the air antenna for four TVs. Netflix and Hulu fill in the gaps for about $20 a month with no commercials.
I read an article a few weeks ago that claimed that phone wireless will over the next several years completely replace cable. The claim was that the average phone subscription will include unlimited wireless anyway so why get internet from cable? And the phone companies will apparently provide the same content as cable.
I don’t even have to pay them. :)
I'm able to DVR the programs I want, and skip forward past the commercials. I have a button which I can set to skip forward 30 seconds, and I have the "skip back" button set to 10 seconds. Knowing that commercial breaks are generally 3:30, I just hit the button 7 times when the commercials start.
I don’t pay for those three either.
.
Many years ago, when I had cable TV, I would get a letter from them a couple times per year that began with "GOOD NEWS!" It would then be followed by two points:
They're adding a couple of junk channels.
Huge price hike.
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