Very unusually, I agree with the LA Times on this matter. This article deals with the high cost of cable TV, the high fees the cable companies are paying for sports broadcasting rights, and the author's championing a la cart pricing for cable TV channels.
The author does throw in a slam at the Clipper's Sterling (this is the LA Times after all). The rest of the article is about cable TV pricing.
This is true on a personal level for me. It was about 10 years ago I bundled together internet, TV, and phone services. The cost was just under $100.00 per month.
This year, for the same service, the fees have ballooned to $228.95 per month. The internet and phone portion of my bill combined is under $100.00 I do not have any premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. There isn't anything on TV worth $128.00 per month to me.
I am the only person in my household who watches any TV at all. I watch about half a dozen channels with any regularity. I can drop my TV service down to a more minimal channel lineup, but if I do so I will lose most of the few channels I do watch: History H1, HGTV, ABC Family, American Hero Channel, Hallmark channel. So there is no advantage to me to keep cable service at a less costly tier of service.
So our household will be joining the crowd of cord cutters. It has become financially unsustainable to mantain cable TV service.
I will also disconnect the "house phone". The house phone has just become a vehicle for telemarketers to call and harass. Anyone I want to talk to has my cell phone number. All of our household members have cell phones. The house phone has become an unneeded, expensive duplicate service.
The Roman ruling class manipulated the rabble by giving them bread and violent entertainment in the arenas. Things haven’t changed.
I don’t understand what’s so hard about treating baseball games like big boxing matches: Pay Per View.
Just charge $20 for a single game, and give discounts to folks who commit to buying more games. Buy the whole season? Less than $5 a game. Want to buy just a three-game series against the Giants? $50. Etc.
But no: They have to try to force EVERYONE to pay.
My house phone and Cable are OFF. Haven’t watched a sport all year, even when I had cable, and I was a fan of several sports.
Tom Rutledge, the CEO of cable TV company Charter Communications, told Wall Street this week he was "surprised" that 1.3 million of his 5.5 million customers don't want TV.
They just want broadband internet. They're actively NOT subscribing to TV in addition to the web.
"Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be," he added.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/charter-cable-ceo-surprised-that-customers-want-internet-not-tv-2013-11#ixzz30yHHoJEb
That's why EVERY THINKING PERSON IN THE WORLD is opposed to "Net Neutrality".
I checked out MLB.TV to see what their rates were last year. I am about 300 miles from the team that would be considered ‘local’ for the service.
I also noticed in the fine print that, if the stadium area was blacked out, so would my MLB feed be blacked out.
That sort of defeated the intent of using MLB.TV.
BFL
I had DirecTV with NFL Sunday Ticket for 12 years. Every year the cost escalated. Every year, I paid for it.
Until last year. I cut the cord February 2013 and haven’t missed TV for a minute. Besides stopping smoking it was the best decision I’ve ever made.
I can listen to the games on XM Sirius while doing projects around the house. I did that last year and enjoyed it.
DirecTV sends me flyers and emails, begging me to come back. But, I never will.
I rarely watch cable TV sports. I would cut out all sports channels to lower my cable TV bill.....absolutely! The NBA is on my never watch list.
Things are moving to on demand and Internet services, anyway. The cable companies will increasingly become Internet connection providers.
Then people will get apps for whatever channels they want, and just pay directly for access.
An HBO app, a Cinemax app, a Fox Movie Channel app, a Fox News app, etc, and pay monthly for whatever channels you like.
It will all come out in the wash, but I bet 1/2 the cable networks won’t make it, or have such cheap programming that they will have to give the channel away and sell advertising.
I only watch maybe a dozen channels regularly, but I can see subscribing to 20 channels and just having Netflix, Amazon Prime for movies.
Started gaming with a Christian-centered, no profanity group meeting lots of committed Christians, including a good number of stalwarts from GB and Europe.
TV is garbage.