Well screw you too, Shmeck-tv!

[Tama]

So I wake up to turn to a certain channel on the TV at my uncle's house.

What do I see? NEARLY ALL THE CHANNELS I EVER WANT TO WATCH GONE.

Even the basic channels. We have maybe 30 left right now. What the hell?

[EricKei]

Did he lower his subscription level and not say anything? o_O

On the other hand...if you're talking about Comedy Central and certain others which are normally packaged together, I may have an explanation for at least some of it.

Recently, in my area, the non-satellite cable provider (let's call them Line Single) recently lost a block of channels, including CC, BET, and some 20-30 others, because the company that provides that block of channels to Cable Co's decided to jack up its prices (by double or more). Natch, this would have resulted in a notable price increase for their consumers.

When the CableCo went back to them and said, "Hey, let's negotiate for just the 5 or so channels that are by far the most popular out of that group..." -- the channel provider said "Sure!" and offered to do so for over THREE times what the original cost was. Yes, you read that correctly, it would cost CableCo MORE to have just those five channels than the whole bunch.

End result: CableCo decided that they didn't wanna get skullf***ed that particular day, and they dropped the channel set. Because of this, some people dropped to the low-end basic cable (which really only exists so that CableCo's can offer dirt-cheap rates; they know almost nobody uses them), while others were enticed by SatelliteCo's ads that suddenly began cropping up ('Miss Comedy Central because your old CableCo left you out in the cold? Weeeeee still have it! Come talk to us for a deal!' etc)

[Tama]

I'm pretty sure he didn't...he would surely have said so...

I definitely remember waking up early this morning to the intro of Married with Children and that is only available on a channel we DID have last night. But during the intro, the service usually cuts to do updates, so it probably happened then.

[AccountingDrone]

We were visiting my brother over the weekend, and he has cancelled his cable and gone with something called rabbit - we are thinking of cancelling our cable as well because we basically only watch movies and documentaries, and the few programs we do follow - Warehouse 13, Eureka, Haven have been cancelled, and Mythbusters is on summer hiatus. We can't really figure out why we still have cable at all.

[AnaKhouri]

We don't have cable. We have an antenna to pick up the networks if we want to watch the news.

Whatever we want to see, we can wait until it hits Netflix/comes out on DVD. Sure it's behind the times. But we have so little time to watch anything anyway, it doesn't even matter.

[Sliceanddice]

we dont have cable anymore since we only had it cause our apartment provided it with rent. but i rathe watch stuff on netflix or hulu

[Tama]

Turns out they forgot to pay the bill this weekend. I didn't realize that some channels would stay up, I thought that all your access would be blocked.

[Trixie]

I don't have cable and rely on an antenna for my tv. I do kinda wish I had better reception and that would be the only reason I would get cable but I find enough to watch anyway even if it's just for news and weather. Now with all the digital channels there's a pretty decent selection of stuff out there.

[TheSHAD0W]

I'd actually kind of like to be able to get broadcast TV, unfortunately somebody put some mountains between me and the place they pout all the antennas in the city. I don't have satellite - yet - and will probably keep putting that off forever.

[Victory Sabre]

Got rid of cable 3 years ago, and can't get over the air, unless I have a big BLEEPING antenna. I don't miss it one bit.

[Kanalah]

We haven't had cable in 13 years. Get about 15 channels over the air with a digital TV. We have Netflix and watch Hulu on the computer. We also rent movies we want to watch when they come out on DVD.

But we mostly read books instead of watching TV anyways.

[Tama]

Well, it's not like I'm paying for it.

[Sapphire Silk]

Honestly, I'm thinking seriously about cutting the cord myself. I have satellite and I like my provider, but they are darned expensive. I negotiated a lower rate a while back, and eventually they'll jack it up again. At that point I'll try to renegotiate it back down and don't expect them to give me what I want.

In which case I'll say bye bye and not switch to cable. My internet is FiOS, so I can get Netflix and Hulu and still watch all my shows. I never watch them the date they air anyway. I just like getting the local news and some other channels from time to time.