Sucker: How Cable Companies Make You Pay For Channels You'll Never Watch

[Lakhota]

By Stephen Pizzo

Even though anti-trust laws say cable companies can't coordinate their business plans, they do.

If you have cable or satellite TV you are captive behind a virtual iron curtain. That's right. You're a prisoner in an electronic gulag. You can leave, but only if you move to another electronic gulag. There is no escape. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

With all the fussing and moaning from Tea Party types about the American government going all socialist on us, it's amazing how the same people can go home, turn on their cable TV box and not notice the cable-commie shackles snapping closed around them.

I have Comcast. Poor me. But the other cable and satellite providers are cut of the same commie cloth. While they tout their companies on Wall Street as models of capitalist profitability, they are, in fact, as authoritarian and anti-freedom as any latter day Stalinist.

I turn on my TV and there they are... five hundred channels of this and that. I am supposed to be bowled over by this entertainment Horn of Plenty - for which I am charged over $1500 a year. But start clicking through them and you see what a gulag it really is:

More: Sucker: How Cable Companies Make You Pay For Channels You'll Never Watch | | AlterNet

 

[Lakhota]

I love TV, but I have nothing but contempt for cable/satellite providers.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I have about 4 of every channel. They just call them different names or numbers. But since I enjoy watching TV on occasion I am going to keep paying.

 

[Douger]

I have satellite TV.....in my rental cabins. murkins can't live without it.

 

[whitehall]

Maybe reading is something left wingers don't worry about but ...gasp...magazines sell you copies and you don't read the whole subscription.

 

[blastoff]

Better than half of my Sunday paper ends up in the trash without a glance other than during the separation process.

 

[California Girl]

No one 'makes' you pay for them. Nope. They do not.

 

[konradv]

No one 'makes' you pay for them. Nope. They do not.

Not really the point now, is it?

 

[Truthmatters]

yeah fuck the consumer hes just there for profits anyway

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Don't have TV. Don't have cable. I do have Hulu. Which is where I watch Castle and Big Bang Theory.

This person never saw Soviet opression in action. Two newspapers, virtually identical printed by the same folks and boring as hell. A national newspaper of six pages, the pages about 60% the size of your standard metro daily.

Here you get 500 choices and you are complaining? You can go to MSNBC if you like them. Or if you are really into moonbattery there is Current TV. Or you can go to Fox. Randi Rhodes has his radio program and so does Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Intense]

yeah fuck the consumer hes just there for profits anyway

Beats Slavery Any day, TM.

 

[hortysir]

I have about 4 of every channel. They just call them different names or numbers. But since I enjoy watching TV on occasion I am going to keep paying.

Just got an e-mail from DirecTV that my Feb. bill will see a 4% increase

 

[liason82]

ESPN charges the highest per user fee. Right now they have on alot of college basketball which I dont watch. I only tune in for college football in the fall.

 

[Intense]

I love TV, but I have nothing but contempt for cable/satellite providers.

So what does that leave you? Snow. How Interesting.

Are you related to Baby Gonzo?

 

[Intense]

ESPN charges the highest per user fee. Right now they have on alot of college basketball which I dont watch. I only tune in for college football in the fall.

Sports is big money. Big Greed. Maybe we should Tax all addictions. Look at it as an Idiot Tax.

 

[Intense]

yeah fuck the consumer hes just there for profits anyway

Is that how you promote the Economy? Haven't you done enough harm?