target2019
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Same. COMCA$T is evil. Long history with them. Never a give back or enticement for 20+ years of payments.Thanks for your response. I'll stick with the consumer's POV.
Dropped Cable TV Today
- Thread starter ImThinkin2019
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Mulligan
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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That unfortunately is a very key point...Cable provider plays hard ball to contain cost, affected company then goes on airwaves telling consumer that cable company X is about to drop them and tell consumers to call and complain..Cable company caves from protests from consumer, then passes on increased costs and consumer then howls about that.
Its like health insurance to a certain degree. We (me included) complain about insurance bill when the escalating costs are coming from other sources that are just passed on through insurance carrier.
And yes, I admit I complain about both and always will I suppose. And yet, will still pay.
I hate my escalating cable bill...But then I divide it by 30 days and factor in the use and decide I will keep it because on a relative daily basis it still is cheap entertainment for me.
There are actually a string of parties involved: Cable company, broadcast network, distributor, production company, talent. However, what they all want is their piece of the pie, a pie who's size is dictated by how much it is worth to a typical viewer to have that X hours of entertainment rather than not having it.
You can go forward considering that you're only paying for the channels you want, and you're getting the rest included for free, because operationally that is your reality. It was well-established a decade or so ago, through comparisons to C-Band subscriptions, that when they are offered via retail a la carte, channels generally cost an order of magnitude higher than when bundled into a large basic package. You can get a good idea, today, how much a typical channel would cost by checking out the a la carte price for HBO. Figure TNT, USA and FX would cost about 5% less; Syfy, AMC, A&E, would cost about 10% less; etc. If you watch more than six channels within a month, then you're better off with bundle pricing. It is an eye-opener for folks to realize how many channels they casually watch without realizing it, and therefore how readily the trip over that six channels mark.
By the same token, if you really only watch three or four channels, then, just like my neighbor who uses the Internet for only reading textual email, you're subsidizing the cost of the service for heavier users of the service.
The core message - and folks are realizing this by looking at trends in the cost of streaming, and the proliferation of services one will need to subscribe to in order to replace what they get from cable - is that there is a certain amount of discretionary income available for the industry to earn, and it will structure itself, and adapt itself to changes, to earn that amount of income - to exact roughly that much money from consumers - regardless.
My point was that it generally does dictate how much typical consumers spend on cable.
Nothing equates to "wanting" to pay higher bills. That line of reasoning makes no sense to me. When do you want to pay higher bills for the sake of higher bills?
Meanwhile, I'll bet dollars to donuts that the experts who's job it is to determine whether it is a monopoly or not have determined instead that there is effective competition for subscription television service in that area that your DD lives. It may seem like a monopoly to consumers, but in reality, in accordance with the law that actually defines what is and is not a monopoly, it is not.
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ziggy29
Moderator Emeritus
We live in the Eagle Ford oil patch in South Texas. Given what the crash in oil prices did to the local economy and the jobs of a lot of people I know, yeah, I'd personally prefer to pay $2.50 for a gallon of gas than $1.50, at least if it means jobs and local business here aren't going away and some that have left would come back. I recognize that this isn't shared by most people (since most people don't live where oil and gas are critical industries), but even though I do not directly benefit from the oil business here, in our area, and in *my* specific situation, a higher bill at the pumps is worth paying.
REWahoo
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+1
I'm in the same boat as you - won't directly benefit from higher oil/gas prices but would be happy to pay more to see a better employment situation in the oil patch.
It isn't paying higher bills you want - it's the economic vitality that you want.
And we can be sure that the people who have family reliant on cable industry income probably feel the same way about paying higher cable bills that you feel about paying higher gasoline prices. I personally would prefer that you would feel that way about what my company does, which isn't either cable or gasoline.
Just because what I highlighted doesn't fit your personal preferences doesn't mean it isn't objective. The fact that it doesn't fit my personal preferences indicates that it is more likely that it is.
So let's stop with the nonsense. If you want to try to prove that I have a bias, then first establish why I would have a bias. The reality is that there is no reason for me to have a bias in favor of the industry. My only relevant bias is a fervent intention to keep discussions regarding this industry balanced rather than incurring the lack of clarity about why thing are the way they are consequent of a consumer-biased discussion.
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REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
So you plan on moving on to another subject, seeing as how absolutely no one is agreeing with your point of view?
Several posters have been very clear that this isn't a matter of disagreement but simply a matter that they are consumer-biased.
Regardless, why would other people's agreement matter one way or the other? The fact that everyone else is promoting a strictly-consumer-biased perspective makes my contributions all-the-more relevant. If anything, there's a lot of duplication being offered by other posters, because so many of them happen to share that same bias. It wouldn't really make sense to "move onto" another subject until everyone else does.
Thanks for your response. I'll stick with the consumer's POV.
Regardless, why would other people's agreement matter one way or the other? The fact that everyone else is promoting a strictly-consumer-biased perspective makes my contributions all-the-more relevant. If anything, there's a lot of duplication being offered by other posters, because so many of them happen to share that same bias. It wouldn't really make sense to "move onto" another subject until everyone else does.
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REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
To you, without a doubt.
aja8888
Moderator Emeritus
A who might these "experts" be that make a determination as to who gets service from whom? She lives in a residential area with hundreds of homes, all stuck with Comca$t.
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FCC commissioners and their staff.
And DirecTV and Dish Network.
Again: Not my preference. Just the way things actually are - the way these matters have been determined by the government agency charged with making the decision.
One of literally hundreds if not thousands of examples:
https://www.fcc.gov/document/comcast-effective-competition-md
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supernova72
Recycles dryer sheets
I don't want to drop cable now since we are in 1st place. Go M's!!
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