No Show
So it's happened. Time Warner Cable and CBS were feuding over how much the former should pay for the latter and they couldn't come to terms. The upshot for Time Warner customers in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles: no CBS. And no affiliated channels, such as Showtime, TMC (not TCM), FLIX and the Smithsonian. On Demand for these channels is canceled as well.
I'm one of those customers. I turn on CBS now and get a statement from Time Warner Cable about how outrageous CBS's demands were. (When CBS was on, they'd occasionally put up stuff about how outrageous Time Warner Cable is.)
There are Showtime series like Dexter (don't watch) and Ray Donovan (don't like--not yet, anyway). I do like Homeland, but it won't start until September. So this is nothing serious. It's not like I lost AMC just as it was about to start the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad.
Anyway, I hope they resolve this issue soon. And until then, my cable bill, already outrageous (so maybe CBS is right), better be lower.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
3 Comments:
The vicissitudes of capitalism.
This sort of Time Warner dispute happened to me last year right around when I was moving out of their service area. It was with great high dudgeon that when I went in to cancel my service, I gave the reason was that they couldn't manage their contracts and programming and was switching to just watching on the internet. Of course the fact that they are doing the same thing a year in larger markets shows that apparently no message was received.
I haven't been following this all closely, but I thought Congress passed a law that said cable (and satelite) providers had to carry local netwrok affiliates? So do you get the local CBS affiliate news programming? If there was an emergency, would emergency broadcasts broadcast on the CBS channel?
Personally, I hope this gives a boost to some sort of true ala- carte broadcast providers. I get basic basic cable because the vast majority of stations in the bundle from Comcast I don't want to watch. Given the choice, I would like to pay for just ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, AMC, a baseball station, and maybe CW. There are a few stations I would take if the price were right (ME-TV, THIS-TV, SciFI, Discover, History).
I'm not sure what that rule is regarding affiliates, but maybe it applies to keeping those channels available for people without cable?
Anyway, I don't get anything on CBS as far as I can tell (actually, some source is airing movies on that channel that was formerly CBS--odd, since the other channels I'm missing have nothing but a message from TWC), and there's even another local affiliate that must be owned by the same company because that's out.
Since you don't have to have a TV, and you don't have to have it on all the time, you can't guarantee people will get emergency messages there. However, when they have emergency tests, it works on absolutely every channel I have.
I don't quite understand why a la carte choice hasn't been available in cable? I'm not sure if it's a technical or commercial choice, but it's annoying--though perhaps some channels you might like you wouldn't know about if you didn't get a package. Perhaps all this will hasten the complete breakup of TV as something you watch with a definite schedule and distinct channels.
It'll be interesting to see what happens if this continues into the new TV season, since we're talking about a fairly major swathe of viewers. CBS is number one, but I could imagine this might cost them a percentage point or two.
Post a Comment
<< Home