for W3c validation
I just read a post by Charlie about the free cable he was getting from his cable company, which I found interesting. You can check it out here — The Reign of Free Cable in My House Comes to an End… Should I just stop watching TV?
Of course, what blogger doesn’t have opinions about topics other bloggers write about? So, here’s the piece of the post I wanted to comment on —
Was it unfair that I was getting the free cable? Illegal, perhaps, but to be honest, I hardly watch any TV at all. I’m never home. I don’t care about half the stations. If I could just get ESPN, SportsNet New York, Comedy Central and SpikeTV, I think I’d be all set, but you can’t buy that way. The cable company forces these bundles of crap on me. Even if I just wanted basic, it would cost me $57 a month. TV should not cost more than the internet. I get way more value out of the internet than I do out of TV. If I watch 10 hours of television a month, that’s a lot for me.
So what should I do now? I need to get my Met games… and ESPN, maybe a bit of Comedy Central. I can’t even go all internet, because MLB.tv doesn’t allow me to watch local games… Only my cable provider can get me access to local games… web video from local teams is blacked out.
I don’t pay for cable television — partly because I don’t watch that much tv, but mainly due to their flawed payment model. The cable company should let me pay for what I want to watch — the discovery channel, CNN, ESPN, Fox Sports Northwest, the History Channel — and not the other couple dozen stations that are of no interest to me.
I was stupid enough to pay the$120 for the MLB.tv without checking the fine print. I knew there were blackout restrictions, but had no idea it applied to away games as well. So, I can pretty much never watch the Mariners on MLB.com (but hey, at least I can listen to audio). Sweet, $120 down the drain — I’ll be sure not to do that next year.
With that said, I’ll end with this — CNN, ESPN, History Channel, and Discovery should stream their television programming live online and MLB.com should fix their damn blackout rules so I can actually watch the team (Mariners) I want to watch. Then there would be absolutely no need for cable (at least for me).
