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A couple of weeks ago, I got a friendly letter from Time Warner Cable (my ISP) letting me know that as a “valued customer” subscribing to Road Runner internet as a “stand alone service,” I was going to get charged an extra $5.04 a month. Being the nice guys that they are, they offered to let me bundle my phone and TV with them as well, in which case I could save the $5.04 (and then lose $50 a month overpaying for terrible service). Being the morons that they are, they also listed three levels of service, and the costs associated with the price increase. Lo and behold, there are Road Runner Lite and Basic packages available, which mysteriously did not exist when I first signed up. So, I downgraded to a perfectly decent 1.5Mbps connection, and now I’m paying $35 instead of $45, despite the rate increase.

But that’s not why Time Warner continues to suck. That, my friends, is because when I called to downgrade my service, the very helpful, very competent technician, Laurie, was unable to send me a written or email confirmation of the service change, or even issue a confirmation number in case i needed to follow up. She did mention that she wished she could though, and “wouldn’t it be a nice idea if we could do that.” So Time Warner executives, if you read this, listen to your employees, and please stop sucking.

The new DVR from DISH Network. It blows your cable box out of the water, dries it off, steps on it, and then sets it on fire.

I have satellite TV again. In other words, 120+ channels of tasty digital goodness, as well as interactive TV and a two-channel DVR system, for a whole $45 a month. That’s $10 less than ‘basic’ cable from the only cable company in town (isn’t it suspicious how there only ever seems to be one cable company in town? I’m starting to see a pattern, I think.), and you get about twice the channels. The picture quality is excellent, I get local channels, and, most importantly, NESN. Furthermore, with DISH Network you get something you can never get with cable: a company that actually acts grateful to have and keep your business. Why? Probably because, if you get fed up with DISH, you can go to DirecTV in a flash, or vice versa. This competition mysteriously remains absent from the world of cable TV.

The most popular objections I hear from my cable-burdened associates are as follows. I will try to do a little myth-busting along the way:

1) “But I won’t get all the local sports and stuff!” Yes, you will. Cable companies continue to run ads claiming you don’t get local channels, but they’re lying. They’ll also tell you it’s only in certain locations. Bullshit. I live in the middle of nowhere, I have local channels.

2) “But satellite goes out when the weather’s bad!” True, if the weather is amazingly crappy, your dish will lose reception. For a couple of minutes. Once, when I had the DISH back in Philadelphia, my satellite went out for 20 minutes during a storm. My friends lost cable for two days. It’s a pretty simple and obvious thing once you realize it: my satellite system consists of a dish and a receiver, connected by a wire. If one of those is broken, you can tell. There’s no miles of cable to be damaged by trees, far away from where you can see it.

3) “But cable has on-demand! I can’t possibly plan ahead and DVR my favorite stuff!” Ok, the answer here is two-fold. If you really can’t remember to DVR something (and DISH currently offers a DVR which will automatically tape only new episodes of any show), you’re a moron and don’t deserve to watch TV. And if you really need an on-demand event, here’s the kicker: satellite has it now too. By pre-downloading movies into your DVR, DISH is able to give you a selection of ‘on-demand’ pay-per-view movies that start playing as soon as you order them, not to mention they have movies starting every 30 minutes.

Oh, one more thing. If you need the perfect reason to switch, here it is: you get to call your cable company and tell them to go screw themselves. They seem so surprised and saddened to hear you have an alternative available. And there’s no better feeling in this world than that. Not even sex.

cable tv, cable, satellite, satellite TV, dish network, directv, dvr, on-demand, on demand, tv, nesn, local channel, sports, pay-per-view, why satellite is better than cable, time warner cable

Sports fans are a long-suffering crowd. We’ve endured rising ticket prices, wayward basketballs and players emerging from the fields of play, and even the ultimate ignominy of the $6 hot dog. But now we have to deal with being told we don’t matter.

Here’s what I’m talking about. ESPN, the sports channel and empire which proclaims itself to be a ‘leader’ in the sports world, recently debuted an online version of their TV service, called ESPN360.com. With ESPN 360.com, the lucky sports fans who subscribe to a limited list of cable providers (such as Adelphia) are automatically granted instant free access to this cornucopia of multimedia sports excitement. Everyone else gets a message suggesting they email their ISP to request that it add the ESPN360.com service to its list of offerings so that you, the sports fan, can get it for free.

Now, I understand that ESPN would not want just anyone to connect and start streaming video for free from a cable channel that normally requires a paid subscription. But I do have that subscription–I’ve been a loyal ESPN viewer through Comcast, DISH Network, and now Metrocast Cable of Belmont, NH. Hear that, ESPN? I pay just as much as the people 10 miles north of me who have Adelphia, but I simply can’t get access, because I need to petition my podunk provider to pay you guys.

And that’s what really gets me angry. The fact that I simply can’t get access to ESPN360.com, no matter what. There’s no option to create a subscription account for a standalone service, as in the case of Major League Baseball’s well-designed, well-executed, and fan-centric MLB.TV. Instead, I get a pithy request to petition my ISP. In other words, if ESPN can’t sell this service in huge contracts to large-scale ISPs, it’s not worth selling. ESPN, it appears, is above even selling a product to the fans themselves–they’re out for the big fish.

It wouldn’t be hard to correct this problem–many fans, I’m sure, would be willing to pay for the service on a monthly basis, so that they can watch it on the road in hotel rooms, at the workplace, and anywhere they might be that happens not to be on one of a few ISPs. If you let us buy it, we will come. MLB.TV proves that every day. But being forced to convince my cable provider to pay an extra cost to ESPN makes me feel about as unimportant as could be, and it sure doesn’t make me feel very good about what interests ESPN has at its corporate heart. I know money’s a huge part of sports, but so are fans, and you shouldn’t forget that.

NB:So please, if you agree with this standpoint, and you’re frustrated by ESPN’s attempt to use you as a marketing tool to cable providers and other ISPs, comment below or share this article with others. It seems pretty clear that ESPN will only respond to large groups with significant market shares, so let’s become a large group.