My post yesterday reminded me of another conversation I had with Comcast soon after they acquired my business through their acquisition of AT&T. Their first action was to raise rates about $4.00 for my plan, Digital Silver. Rate increases have not been limited to my service area. Comcast has been raising rates all over the country, citing increasing programming costs by networks such as ESPN.
I don’t believe any of it. Comcast’s earnings were higher than ever last year, in no small part by charging me outrageous prices for channel packages that consist of at least 50% of channels I don’t want. I don’t need 5 home-shopping channels (I don’t need any), except for World Cup years I don’t need any Spanish-language channels, etc. What I do want is local channels, certain Discovery channels, BBC, and HBO. I don’t care about having 100 channels, especially when it takes 6 seconds to change the channel. So here is my proposal.
First, Comcast and Cox and other cable systems, you need to call ESPN’s bluff not to run on your systems at all if they aren’t included with ‘basic cable’ packages. Where else are they going to go? It’s not like there is any cable competition, you’ve already seen to that. If ESPN bails, you may lose some customers to satellite, but ESPN’s losses will be greater and they will be back within a year on their hands and knees begging to be back on your respective cable systems. Second, let me, the customer, choose exactly the channels I want. I know the technology exists for this. Forget about your packages and pre-selected channel groupings. Let me choose exactly which channels I want for $1 each per month. This includes HBO, Showtime, whatever. Obviously not PPV. My channel choices will be about 35 (I’ve already counted) and I will be a happy customer.
And while I’m at it, get rid of the ads on the TV Guide channel description overlay. I am paying you, remember?
Oh yeah, get off your butts and roll-out HDTV in all markets.
Digital Cable: the Six Second Flip. I, had a similar revelation up here in the Klondike regarding MyChannels. My cable company, GCI, was deadpan when I mentioned it. Facing the high cost of cable and the erratic nature of my income, I was forced to lose such greats as TCM and IFC because I wasn’t interested in paying $25 for the other 20 or so “special interest” channels that I never watch (oh, aside from the plastic surgery procedures). GCI wasn’t interested in working with me at the time to reduce my cable bill and still have the channels that I prefer. So, I slashed the packages to which I subscribed.
One month later, I get a call from GCI asking if I would like a 30 free trial of the “special interest” channels. After 30 days, I am able to keep them for a mere $3 per month this time.
It’s funny. Satellite TV isn’t much of an option up here for the average user: the dishes are far too big and expensive due to the tilt of the Earth and our proximity to the top of the world (so say the satellite providers). Some of the sports bars have them, and I see the occasional eye-sore on top of a garage or in a lawn, but GCI’s got it made up here for the time being. Still, they raise their rates considerably. I woke up one day and realized I was paying $110 for cable tv (not including my modem). I lost all premium packages, aside from HBO7, and everything above 99. The cost now? $63 (with 2 converters).
Not that I’m complaining. Since reacquiring TCM and IFC, I’m a happy tv consumer at a soon-to-be $66/mo rate.