What cable companies get away with

Where do you think the money for the huge contracts to broadcast the NFL, Olympics, NCAA football, NCAA basketball, the "Longhorn Network," etc. come from? Where do most of the huge salaries for Nick Saban, A-Rod, Ryan Braun, etc. ultimately come from? A big part of it is from inflated cable TV costs.

Gouge the consumer? Lol you're not entitled to cable. It's not a basic need for life. Its a business. They can charge whatever they want.

I cannot see either my local MLB team or NBA team due to a dispute between my satellite provider and the new cable channel that carries both teams. If I want Universal Sports, I have to pay an extra $40 a month to either get some insane sports package or the everything channel-channel.

Amen brother. It amazes me that people continuously whine about defunding Obamacare but then let issues such as these slide.

The only cable provider in my area is Comcast and after the recent rate increases I'm paying $100 for BASIC cable and internet. I watch maybe 5 channels at most, and would say that outside of my local sports teams playing I rarely watch it at all. What gets me is that there arent even any other options. My cable provider has me by the balls right now as its either no TV at all or a $100 bill.

I'm also amazed at how they can sneak in hidden fees every few months that require me to call to have removed from my bill. You would think the 50 installation fee for them to give me a cable box would be enough money but I guess not.

Gouge the consumer? Lol you're not entitled to cable. It's not a basic need for life. Its a business. They can charge whatever they want.

Do you even know the meaning of the phrase 'Price gouging" ?

It has nothing to do with whether I am entitled to cable. It has to do with overcharging for an item that is in demand.

Secondly did you even bother reading my post ?

I have no problem with a business charging what they want. I do have a problem with the cartel like behavior that inhibits competition. I also have a problem with the fact that big business has lobbied congress to set rules that favor them. People ought to be able to pay

..........People ought to be able to pay only for the channels they want. I for one would never pay for ESPN.

First, I got rid of cable about 3 years ago.

Sports is the easiest way for the cable companies and networks to rip people off. They are not ripping off the people who live to watch sports, they are ripping off the people who have no or little interest in it.

All of these sports networks were formed with the intent to buy up all the rights to games that had been traditionally shown on ad based network tv. Once all the rights had been bought up, they could then hold these games hostage from the consumer by staging a contract fight with the cable or satellite provider. As has been said before, an "agreement" is reached and rates go up making more money for everybody at the expense of the consumer.

The networks also force the cable companies to put them on the regular package so EVERYBODY has to pay a portion every month. Forget winning the POWERBALL. This is like winning the powerball every month for these companies as virtually everybody in America pays in a dollar and they always win. The money these companies make and are worth is staggering.

Paul Dolan (owner of the Cleveland Indians started a network just a few years ago to show all the Indians games. He recently sold it to Fox for 230 MILLION DOLLARS. Then Fox will give the Indians 40 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR for the next 10 years for the right to show the games. The Indians also will get 24-25 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR from the MLB tv contracts. Add another 80 MILLION DOLLARS in game tickets and this "small market" team has boatloads of money they can give away to .240 hitters and guys they get rid of midway through the year. Can you imagine how much cash the Yankees have coming in?

I don't have a problem with teams making money from the fans, but on average only about 1 in 20 people even watch the games in Cleveland let alone the rest of the state. Those other 19 have to pay every month so a major leaguer can make 7 MILLION DOLLARS a year instead of 3 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

- Amazes me wrote:

..........People ought to be able to pay only for the channels they want. I for one would never pay for ESPN.

Ought is another entitlement word. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There's nothing wrong with charging a lot for an in demand item. That's called good business.

- Amazes me wrote:

..........People ought to be able to pay only for the channels they want. I for one would never pay for ESPN.

The Endless Sports Propagandist Network will be the ruination of sports watching enjoyment on tv. They are already well past halfway there.

Gotta go check out which college espn is suing this week to get more info to get them in trouble so they can get another job for one of the washed up coaches they have doing their games.

jsjsj wrote:

- Amazes me wrote:

..........People ought to be able to pay only for the channels they want. I for one would never pay for ESPN.

. There's nothing wrong with charging a lot for an in demand item. That's called good business.

Or extortion.

I guess we will be seeing you in every Competitor event this year since that is the model they have used to buy up and gut some long time races.

Just get netflix. I pay 7.99 a month and watch all the tv programming I can handle. I get my sports from espn3 online and firstrowsports.eu I never miss anything and my tv bill went down over 142 dollars a month. My only regret is not doing this earlier.

Where do you guys live????

I've had the same cable package for 8 years and it only costs $99 with internet include and home phone. It has not gone up one cent since I started.

Ought is another entitlement word. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There's nothing wrong with charging a lot for an in demand item. That's called good business.

I see that you insist on exposing your sheer ignorance for the whole world to see.

In case you did not know, there are laws in various states against price gouging. Such laws have been found to be constitutional.

There are also laws against cartels and monopolies.

And finally, states have regulations to control how much business can charge even for non essential items.

The bit about entitlement is so funny. Its typical talking point of ignorant right wingers who spend all watching Faux news and listening to right wing radio then they go to the web to regurgitate the nonsense they hear on radio.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Where do you guys live????

I've had the same cable package for 8 years and it only costs $99 with internet include and home phone. It has not gone up one cent since I started.

Not in a big city. My brother just canceled Time Warner and was paying $164/month for that package. They refused to give him anything close to that $99 rate even though it is advertised in the BIG CITY 50 miles away

I have read that ~50% of the average cable bill goes to sports focused programming. They are indeed a ripoff for the nonsports fan.

I only get the ~12 channel package for ~$12 a month. I have little interest in TV but it is actually cheaper to get that bundled with my internet than to get the internet without the cable.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Where do you guys live????

I've had the same cable package for 8 years and it only costs $99 with internet include and home phone. It has not gone up one cent since I started.

I'm mostly happy with my Comcast service (surprising, given their reputation). Cable + internet is about $125/month after all the taxes and fees for their digital starter package which IMO gets a surprising number of channels. In fact they just added about 25 new channels at no extra cost about 6 months ago including a few that are pretty decent by my standards. Around here we do have one other provider so there is technically "competition", but they're not a major player so I wonder if it really has much effect.

The only thing that gets me annoyed and researching cutting the cord are the price increases, which seem to happen too often and at too high a rate. I'm sure that's largely perception (vs reality). I think when I started cable + internet about 10 years ago it was only about $80/month, it seems to jump $5-$7/month every year to 18 months. But I'm lazy so I doubt I'll cut the cord anytime soon.

The digital signals that you can receive with an antennae are pretty decent. You can probably get about 25 channels and many of the channels have extra "channels", so you get a bunch for nothing.

Cut the cord and go Netflix/Hulu.

adse wrote:

Cut the cord and go Netflix/Hulu.

Add Amazon Prime as well. Those three(I would only pay for Netflix and Prime's annual membership) plus an antennae, and you're set to watch most anything (besides non-local sports) that you want.

Late 20's, haven't paid for cable in three years, no TV for the last 1.5 years.