Posted on 05/24/2008 11:43:54 AM PDT by kingattax
Americans discouraged by higher gas prices and airline fares may decide to spend more vacation time at home, perhaps watching television.
But that, too, will cost them more than ever.
Cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the rate of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month.
Cable customers, who typically pay at least $60 a month, watch only a fraction of what they pay for — on average, a mere 13 percent of the 118 channels available to them. And the number of subscribers keeps growing.
The resiliency of cable is all the more remarkable because the Internet was supposed to change all things digital. Technology has led to more choices and lower prices for news and music as well as cellphone and landline minutes — not to mention computers, cameras, music players and phones themselves.
Yet here is a rare instance where Silicon Valley has failed to break a traditional media juggernaut. And not for lack of trying.
Technology companies keep insisting they will provide new low-cost ways to get video into the home, but so far their efforts have created more black boxes to stash under the TV, not real competition for cable that could bring prices down.
“A couple of years ago, there was a thesis that we were at the twilight of Comcast as the gatekeeper,” said Craig Moffett, a cable industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “That thesis still titillates some. But technologically and economically, it’s probably not going to happen.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I can.
The wife and I haven’t had a television for years.
Except for football sundays and superbowl we don’t watch.
Reading and listening to the internet has better pictures.
I have an aunt who lives in an area where the market has 3 different cable carriers, plus they've got the new fiber service from AT&T and I believe Verizon as well. In my area, while I can deal with AOL, Earthlink, or RoadRunner as my ISP (interestingly enough, all three charge EXACTLY the same monthly fees) but it all goes through Time Warner Cable. I have basic cable and high speed Internet, and pay $72.00 a month. She has the same cable and HSI service, plus telephone service for $38.00 a month. Her deal IS an introductory deal that she had to contract for an entire year. However, after that year is over, she can decide to move to a different provider if they jack up her rates. I had to sign a 2 year agreement to ensure that my rate wouldn't increase by more than $2 a year. If I back out early, there's a $275 fee. But it doesn't really matter, since I have nowhere else to go.
Mark
Netflix and then Blockbuster Total Access have completely replaced cable TV for me. I’d rather watch movies than most TV shows, anyway. And if there’s a TV show I want to watch, that’s what the season DVDs are for.
As for the price of cable, it is a bit ridiuclous. But probably not any moreso than internet access. By the time all the service fees and taxes are added on to things, cable almost seems like a good—though wholly unnecessary—expense relative to internet access.
Even my bottom of the barrel DSL line ends up costing me $40 per month when it’s all said and done.
you should write a book titled “survival is possible without bill o’reilly” :)
They nickel and dime ya to death. It *seems* like every few months the bill goes up by a buck and change, after a little while you notice it's $10.00 - $15.00 more.
Be careful what you wish for. In my experience, Time-Warner cable was better than Comcast by leaps and bounds. The service was better (it took them 6 trips, and they never got our cable exactly right), the prices were better, and there are a lot more features to Time-Warner.
For instance, if you use Newsgroups, at all, ComCast limits you to 1 GB per month where Time Warner gives you unlimited access. Actually Comcast has lots of limits it has been imposing on customers.
This is one of the few areas in life that government could be doing a whole lot more.
Overall, prices for technology are always getting cheaper. Even cell phone rates are cheap compared to times past, but cable just keeps on truckin. Go figure.
Have never purchased cable. I would run through the channels on cable when I stayed in hundreds of hotels over the years and could never see the point for paying for that crap. Maybe ESPN but that’s about it. Now we get many new channels in digital and high def off the antenna on the roof. I guess I’m cheap but then we retired early in life too. :)
How much has the NY Times price risen since 1996? I don't know I'm just asking. What I do know is that when I started to drive in 1963, gas was a quarter and so to were five daily copies of the NY Times. Now gas is four bucks and those five daily copies of the Times are six and a quarter. I wonder which increase the Times editors moan about.
ML/NJ
bump
I dont have cable either, I seldom watch the local channels, I can watch all I am interested in on the internet. and save my 80 dollars a month or so for other things..
I got along very well without cable for a number of years, until I volunteered for Duncan Hunter and needed to have a broader view of how the campaigns were doing.
I signed back on to cable at that point. I now pay more for less than basic cable for networks plus HGTV and Hallmark, both of which repeat often than I did back in the nineties. So I will soon go back to my faithful rabbit ears because I really don’t have the set on that much (I do enjoy Glen Beck very much on HN, however.)
Fortunately, I have many interests outside of sitting, though I do spend some time at my computer, and actually get most of my more reliable news there.
As I stated, service and price gets better when you have competition. My aunt has a choice between Comcast, TWC, and Everest for cable service, and AT&T and VERIZON for fiber optic broadband services.
Her service from Everest if far superior to mine, and as I stated, her monthly bill, with extra services is just a bit more than 1/2 of what I’m paying...
I wish for competition in my market.
Mark
in spite of being on CNN, glen beck’s show has done very well
I’ve had DirecTV and Dish, and recently went back to cable.
I am amazed that the image quality on cable is better than DirecTV, which was better than Dish. That’s my professional opinion; I’ve been shooting and editing corporate and broadcast video for more than 20 years, and I’m picky about video image quality.
So, I’m willing to pay a little more for my cable package (also got cable phone service and 8Mbps Internet from them.)
And to top it off, the comcast monopoly wants to restrict torrents.
Internet is 30 bucks instead of 50. Outages that were daily with Comcast have vanished. So far, we are very happy with it.
You would not believe the number of folks switching.
Comcast does not seem concerned..
Right..
I remember back in 1972, when the cable company in my town raised the monthly fee from $5.00 to $7.50 a month for 12 channels. We could get everything on cable with our new antenna, except the “weather channel” which was a just camera pointed at a thermometer. When I told some cable subscribers about the coming 50% rate hike, they said it was “just a rumor”. Of course, that cable company was bought out by Comcast.
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