Saturday, August 3, 2013

Cable Wars Again?


Every so often we (in the USA) seem to have to go down the rabbit hole above. Our cable television companies get into fights with their content providers over how much one is going to pay the other, and when they can't agree the cable delivery company simply pulls the plug. Channels like HBO, or networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, etc, just disappear from the lineup along with all their content for a while.

The cable delivery monopoly, be they Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Fox's Murdock, or others always have the upper hand because they get the signal into your house, and they get to frame the argument. Until the contract issues are settled your local news and/or favorite shows are simply yanked off the air. It's not like it used to be when everything showed up via air waves and antennae. Pay TV is here to stay. (My dad swore he'd never pay for TV. He did however.)

To quote Dennis Miller's, "I don't mean to go off on a rant here", line, I read the news about this the other day on the interweb. Then last night when I got home experienced it personally when Showtime (SHO) and a few other stations were AWOL from my channels listing along with a message about it in the onscreen guide. And today the local cable company, Oceanic Time Warner Cable (OTWC), sent me the email above. What caught my attention in particular was how that message itself was formatted! It's not very easy to read, is it?! The entire message isn't shown but trust me, it gets far more confusing further down. Yet this is on OTWC's own internet website email system!

Now you would think that if they can deliver HBO into our homes they would also be able to format an email on their own website correctly. But you'd be wrong. They can't. Their profit margins don't allow it apparently.

Meanwhile we wait for this to be resolved. I sure hope there weren't any good boxing cards on SHO this weekend because I'm missing them. And boxing is about all I watch SHO for anyway. Meanwhile, OTWC... when you get your big pay raise, hire a couple summer interns to fix your email system.

It stay broke.

Update:

Now CBS is blocking Time Warner Cable! Yes... we just read that correctly. CBS is blocking TWC. Apparently if TWC is your cable provider (mine too) all CBS content that might have been delivered to you over the interweb is now going to be withheld by CBS until the contract dispute is settled. So you can't watch them on television or on your computer. Great. Stay off long enough and I might not even care.

But will someone please tell me how this isn't CBS shooting themselves in the feet. I must be missing something.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry Dave, I tried hitting the "Report Spam" button above but as usual with large companies, nothing happens! :-) So far, with DirecTV we haven't had any problems as Dish did a year or so ago with CBS. I'm wondering if maybe CBS isn't the problem, not caring enough for the little guy and just trying to get more powerful! We watch a lot of news on CBS and maybe I'll try NBC, we like ABC for the 10 PM slot so we want something different for the 5 PM and then national stuff. Hit them in the numbers, enough folks go to a different station they could get the message! Play well with others CBS and OTWC!

    Rant all you want, this is as good a place as any and most anybody that reads this has had the same or a similar problem! Sometimes it helps to get it off your chest!

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