‘What the hell?’: TV screens go dark as Spectrum cuts channels, raises prices

Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky) ^ | April 28, 2017 | John Cheves

[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.

[Mr. K]

WHAT IS THE BEST INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER?

I AM TIRED OF SPECTRUM (OLD TIME-WARNER CABLE)

[VanShuyten]

The problem is that most places have a cable monopoly. We can choose between FIOS and Cox, and both of them are running continuous sales to draw customers away from the other.

End cable monopolies!

[cableguymn]

Yup. Basically what happens here

[wally_bert]

Thanks for the advice.

I forgot about the local logs. Thanks for the reminder. I’ll call TWC and complain again.

In looking at the logs, I found a lot of 1014 Event IDs/1033 Locale IDs.

Naturally this failure never happens when I can call TWC fast enough.

I’ll consult Dr. Google of course. After a day of dealing with other people’s technology problems, fixing my own unless it’s critical on a weeknight doesn’t happen much.

The drops are sporadic.

[Clearly Right]

bookmark

[Keyhopper]

We only had 3 black and white channels when I was a child. In Florida, with no a/c, we didn’t want to be inside anyway. I still remember seeing the wizard of oz in color when I was 5. That was amazing!