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Failures

by Mike Masnick

Sun, Sep 18th 2005 11:18pm





Great News! We're Taking Away Some Service! At No Extra Charge!

from the such-friendly-service... dept

What is it with cable companies to take some bit of news and try to spin it as if it's much more positive than it really is? The latest is that Comcast apparently sent around letters to certain customers telling them they had "great news!" Apparently Comcast was "simplifying [their] channel lineup... at no additional charge." Of course, by "simplifying," they really meant taking away channels you might watch and putting them in a more expensive premium package. Just imagine what sort of "upgrade" people would have gotten if there had been an additional charge? Anyway, when asked to explain the "good news" that resulted in two fewer channels, Comcast explained that, because of the removal of TBS and the Discovery Channel, basic cable customers now have their channels better grouped by genre. No, seriously. The big "upgrade" is that now all your news channels are grouped together. Your music channels. Your sports channels. All together now. It seems that TBS and the Discovery Channel were mucking up all of that order and just getting in the way for channel flippers who didn't want their flipping between SportsCenter and The Best Damn Sports Show, Period interrupted by a glimpse of Monster Garage. Great news, indeed.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Discovery?

    identicon
    fuzzmanmatt, Sep 18th, 2005 @ 11:58pm

    Wow. Yet another reason I love bittorrent. I'll take my DSL and my bittorrent and just go around Comcast. I'm served by Comcast, but I don't see the need to pay for ads to be delivered in top quality analog signals. I'll stick to my broadband, it makes an experience that I'm happy with.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Greg Andrew, Sep 19th, 2005 @ 11:29am

    While there is no defending the letter sent to this customer, from my understanding they are only pulling those channels from cheap basic service. Basic service around here doesn't even have any cable networks; just over-the-air stations. Discovery and TBS remain on expanded basic. So for most subscribers sent this letter - most subscribers get expanded basic - this letter is not inaccurate. And personally, I like the idea of channels grouped by genre.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Ivan Sick, Sep 19th, 2005 @ 12:13pm

    Yeah, grouping channels is great. You could put Discovery in "educational" (with PBS, History, TLC, TechTV, etc) and TBS could go under "movies" or "miscellaneous" or something...they don't need to be moved up a tier.
    Also there's a difference between "basic" and "basic cable"--I don't think anybody was getting only ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Telemundo, Fox, WB, UPN, and then TBS and Discovery.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 19th, 2005 @ 4:45pm

    Great, so when they pull ESPN and RedNeckLiving from your line up, without charging you extra, but charge you extra to get them back, you will be perfectly happy, and say "I should have to pay more for what I used to get at this price?"

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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