One more reason to cut the cord

Get away from horrible customer service.


http://www.wired.com/2015/01/comcast-renames-man-asshole-brown-tries-cancel-cable/

Hilarious but sad.

I wonder though, if everyone was a cord cutter would we still enjoy the same content on TV?

I’m sure the cable companies pay the channel networks additonal funds which are used for funding shows. Do you all think ad revenue is enough or do we need those cable subscriptions to fund good TV shows?

Well…we’re already seeing a move.  Shows get cut by network, set picked up by the (new) cord cutting revenue companies like Neflix and Amazon Prime.  So… .yes it may destroy vintage style old world (evil… kill Aereo and anyone else we don’t like) broadcasters… but things will move on the new world.  The people that will lose, broadcaster, cable companies, etc… and we need to be like elephants… don’t forget the “evil”… don’t reward the cable companies who suddenly think cord cutting is important.  Reward the ones that saw it coming and tried to help.  Just saying.


I think all you need to do is look at the music industry.  They got pulled kicking and screaming into a new age.  It was hugely disruptive, and I think there is less money flying around then there used to be there, but music didn’t just go away.  Companies learn to get by with smaller (less giant) profits.

CBS is charging 5.99 for their streaming service, which is ridiculous if you ask me. But if you added up all the channels you want at that kind of cost it would be more than cable…


So things are a changing


@jbanks25 - Agreed. Music still exists but musicians make money from live shows and merch now vs. music sales. Music is the way to hook people as a fan. 


If TV goes the same way, the content will be free (as it was in the beginning days of TV) and they’ll recoup costs on streaming revenue, ad sales and merch. 

Regardless, even if it does cost a gazillion dollars if I were to get the hundreds of channels I never watched…etc…etc… the point is that I can pay a premium for content interesting to me and probably still save a bundle.    The RIAA got killed.  They did not recover.  If they went away tomorrow, music would go on… except artists would make twice as much.

if you added up all the channels you want at that kind of cost it would be more than cable...


You realize this is by design on purpose… they are horrified at the idea of “a la carte” …

@cjcox I agree.  For me it is as much about choice and value as it is saving money.  I don’t really need to save the money, I just don’t believe in paying $120 a month for a service that wasn’t worth anywhere near that to me.  Meanwhile I will pay for a subscription to The Walking Dead so I can be up to date on the current season.

@jbanks25, yep… and we do similar things for specific content, but would be ok for 24x7 channel content as well (if it were available… ).

One side effect of the changes is the crap they play on shows now jacking up the sound of the recordings so they can sell music and you can’t hear the dialog or the last 3 minutes of a show is pure loud music and not show like it used to be. Maybe some of you don’t mind but I’d rather not have some bands music blaring at me in the last minutes of a show, especially when most of it I don’t care for at all.They are selling music in their TV shows now. It might not be bad if it was background sound but it’s almost always FOREGROUND sound.

The $4/month sports surcharge on Verizon helped push me over the edge. To much money going into sports.

A lot of content (hundreds of channels)gets bundled that couldn’t survive on its own. That is what will go away. Good riddance.

Habits are changing. Other than sports, we hardly ever watch something “when it is on”. Everything is either dvr’d or watched on demand. 500 channel cable is a dead model. Like the roadrunner’s coyote, they haven’t looked down yet after running off the cliff.

This is long

%TLDR% You don’t watch 90% of the channels in your package, so a lot of the money you spend is basically wasted.

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I think one of the key costs people forget to include is the “Extras” that don’t go to the networks at all. Channeling my inner Carlin, that ‘Bundle’ you get from the Cable/Satellite TV company sounds so compelling…until you really think about what you get, and what you really watch.

I figured out the other day that we basically pay about $20/mo for each channel we actually watch that we can’t get another way. I’m not kidding :wink:

Direct TV charge me $129.05 a month
$84.98 for the channels
$12 for two additional TVs
$10 for HD
$10 for DVR
$3 for whole home DVR
$8 for coverage in case something goes wrong (I have the dish realigned every year…it works out cheaper !)
Tax and surcharges.

So $43 of the bill is purely ‘fluff’ that I don’t need, DirecTV don’t really do anything for, I just pay it because I don’t really have a choice. $18 is for HBO…which if they go A La Carte, will probably cost me less.

The remaining $67 package has “Over 150 Digital Channels”. I counted 152. Digital <> HD !!
I don’t watch any that are SD now (horrible on a 60" flat screen). That makes that 152 into 74.

Of those 74, 8 are news channels, 2 more are weather. I never watch them. If I watch any news, it’s NBC or Fox local news. National weather channels are useless frankly, Snow in Colorado or a hurricane in Florida doesn’t really bother me much…plus I can go to Weather.com, or look out the window. So, 74 becomes 64.


Of those 64,  4 are Music channels (MTV etc) which I never watch, and 8 more are sports networks that I pretty much don’t watch either. ESPN is probably the only one I look at, and even then, only for Monday night football. I can live without these without any issues. 64 is now 52.

Movie channels aren’t really a big draw. I have 1000 movies on my media server. With Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu, I probably have 250,000 more available. I also have HBO, so scratch Hallmark, Lifetime and a few more ‘family movie’ type channels, 10 more gone. 52 is now 42.

The 42 that are left, I probably do watch (or someone in the family does) occasionally. Three Disney channels, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet, TBS,TNT, TLC, truTV, SyFy, Spike, Cooking Channel, Food Network, Velocity, USA Network, A&E, Bravo, BET, BTN, FX, History, USA Network  - nothing that we really sit up and say “omg, I have to watch xxxxx on channel yyyyy” tho. If they fell off the list, probably noone would notice. Thats 22 more that can go - 42 is 20.

Of those, 5 are in spanish. Thats great…but I don’t speak spanish and nor does anyone in my family. I speak French, my daughter-in-law German… 20 is 15.

9 of the 15 are local channels I get anyway. 15 is now 6.

The 6 that are left are REALLY the ones I am paying to watch…
BBC America, Comedy Central, Discovery,HGTV,  Science Channel, Travel Channel

Comedy Central is just John Stewart and Futurama - Larry Wilmore is still growing on me. Both are available next day online via my Plex box or the web anyway…lose another one.

So in reality, I pay $67 a month to watch 5 channels. That’s not including the ‘fluff’. In reality, I am paying close to $110/mo for those 5. Thats $1320 a year. Thats $22/mo per channel that I actually watch that I can’t get for free some other way. And 90% of the time, I watch the shows on these channels after recording them anyway…

If I buy Amazon ($100), Netflix (110), Hulu Plus ($96) SlingTV (240) that leaves me about 800 a year…I could buy all the major channels at $10 a month, and still come out ahead.

DirecTV made almost $3bn profit in 2013. Comcast made $8.5bn. CBS was close to a billion.
Bundling isn’t helping you the customer…but you can see why the industry is soooo keen to keep it.

oh… I can certainly “live without”… have been after all… again, if Hallmark Channel could be had, my wife would make us buy it instantly!

I can live without ESPN, just a few games I can’t see… and professional sports is getting ridiculous anyhow…  sort hope to bankrupt that whole ecosystem… 

Back in the 80’s you could watch an NFL game for less than $20 (I’m talking at the stadium).  It all needs to collapse in on itself and get redone.


what gets me is most of the deals you get are “limited time” or some other kind of non-permanent arrangement … so after the time period is over they go back to their sleazy overcharging ways,

Major players will continue to sponsor major events and quality programming. I don’t think they feel they can do without the mass exposure the media provides.
I think cable TV providers will continue to hemmorage customers and deservingly so.
Anyone remember when cable TV was virtually commercial free?