Me too, I was my Dad's remote control.

Rob, change the channel to 7

This exactly . I have hundreds of channels of shit to get to about 10-12 decent ones

With my DISH package I got 7 ESPN channels and 3 other sports channels.  If they went away I wouldn''t care.

I just want my free KBS channel back in the package again.

Aloha, Mark

I watch college football on cable. Other than that, I very rarely watch anything at all.


Most of it is bullshit anyway, where producers try to slip in their political agenda everywhere that they can. Even the History Channel and Discovery Channel, which used to be great a decade or two ago, are now full of crap. Hell, if the History Channel ran some of the stuff that it ran 2 decades ago, the progressives would say, "that hits too close to home", so that's probably why they don't run much history there anymore.




The most hilarious one is ABC "Family", which shoves the progressive agenda down people's throats so much that now they're going to change the name, because it has nothing to do with family values anymore, and people have been mocking the name for just that reason... No, they're not going to change it to the "Harry Potter Channel", although it might as well be.




Screw cable. Soon enough, I'll be able to watch what I want through broadband, which is not bloody much outside of college football season, and dump it. Hell, for a couple hundred more a year, I could dump cable and go to every home game, with all of the associated parking, food, etc., charges thrown in. I've seriously considered doing that for quite some time, but unfortunately my girls are addicted to creepy, totally inaccurate, and unrealistic shows like CSI, Criminal Minds, and other garbage like that.


 

FPNI

This half-wit celebrity obsession is the downfall of modern society anyway, ESPN is just another version of E-entertainment
By all means, I aim to offend.
Your favorite player or sports team, is not the embodiment of America and how great this country was designed to be. Your 'sports heroes' suck and are not heroes, nor worth any lauding for their abilities to play a silly game they get paid too much to play.

Hardly people I care to emulate or learn about, and you know what they say about the music one likes. Same can be said for the shows/TV one likes to watch as well; this opiate for the masses doesn't enrich the spirit of goodness, virtue, or honor among Americans.

I'm so glad I ditched that shit years ago.

People are getting tired of EPSN's SJW status.

I can't stand the fact that you can only watch Hulu, Netflix, etc from INSIDE the USA, so that folks like me who currently live outside the USA have no real legal means to watch most shows I like to watch.



 

Still can be.

OTA transmission of network channels still happens. Most are in HD and have sidechannels like METV.
Will just get you your locals (and not all of them depending on area and antenna setup).

I had an antenna setup at my old house. Would get 3 out of the 6 networks, could get 5 from the next city if I turned the antenna around. Haven't bothered to set it up here.

If it were up to me I would get rid of satellite and just use streaming (we have 3 appletvs, 3 Roku, a Firetv and a Dragonbox along with 3 Samsung "smart" devices). But my girlfriend loves the polygamist midgets who lose a lot of weight shows. Yes she knows they are trash tv but she likes them anyway.
I watch the local news in the morning, Fox news on occasion and the Velocity channel (car/gearhead stuff). Otherwise I have no use for tv.

Any way to get the Hallmark channel without a cable/satellite subscription?

I love sports, always have. I watch sports and listen to sports radio, and it's usually ESPN because their sports content is almost always better.

But they add in liberal, SJW, race baiting bullshit All. The. Time.


And they've made changes to their regular pundit lineups that have only pushed things farther left.  Dan LaBatard is nothing but a racist agitator and drives me insane

I wish I could get the Outdoor Channel a la carts with uverse. But to get it, I have to jump up to the next tier digital package with even more shit I don't want. I'd want the Smithsonian channel, outdoor and sprout for my son. None of the rest of the dumb shit.

I have learned that network television I was entertaining as cable.  I find shows that aren't terrible on free television  and I watch them.  The shows that conflict with the ones I want to watch the most I check out on Netflix or amazon later one once it's free.    Sure I'm a season begins everyone but I don't gossip with friends about TV shows so who cares.  

I watch old movies on Netflix . rent new movies on amazon for a few dollars.  


You find shit to watch when you get rid of cable and satellite  

I was saying this in the 90's. We haven't had cable since ~1998. We've gotten by with an antenna on the roof all this time.

The rumor is this will happen within 3 years.

I remember when Cable Vision came out. There were no commercials. For about a week.

Same for Sat TV. Exactly why do we have to pay for programs and then pay for them to play fookin commercials to us also ? If we have to pay for the programs, we should have the choice to shit can the commercials, after all, those commercials USED to pay for the programming and the airing of said programs. Now, the customer actually is screwed to the point of having to pay for some ad monkey to sell them ass cream  or hoochie cleaner.

the cable industry is about 15 years behind the record industry, but they're playing the exact same game.

good.

Fuck ESPN.  It isn't even included in most basic cable packages anymore.

This.

"I cut muh cord!"

Then they are going to turn up the dial on your internet pricing to 11.

"But, but, but......."

I would START with the ability to exclude channels 3/4 of the junk out there.

As an example, I allegedly have the ability to access over 50 different styles of music should I choose to.  I barely can stand to listen to 5 of them.

I'm 30. over the past decade or o I have cared less and less about Sports.

The endless analysis of the games with people discussing it like the outcome is life or death drove me over the top.

yup..they wanted to go from 200 to 270 at the end of October...that was my wakeup call right there (should have done it along time ago) now we have firesticks, netflix, digital antennas and $60 a month for their fastest internet

Still over 92 million, that's MMMMEEEEEELLLLLIIIOOOOOOONNN subscribers.

I doubt they will be going broke or out of business any time soon.







Some of the anchors and "analysts" may have to take a pay cut shortly though.

We still have cable but have blocked their channels on all receivers after the Bruce Jenner shiz

I don't do sports and they don't interest me at all.

I could get by with a dozen channels tops. Fuck having 87 ESPNs to pay for that I never watch,

Same here.  I'd pay $5.00 extra a month for a real conservative news station.

Yep. espn has soared left the past few years. And they update everytime lebron james takes a shit it seems like

What is "SJW"??

Social Justice Warrior - stuff like the BLM people, the he looked at me wrong it's rape people etc...



 

Yup.

"Cable" is obsolete anyway - even the term is obsolete, when the best cable is fiber-optic, and the same data connection your other internet comes from.

Their model would be like paying for website packages - it's absurd.

Get the interwebs piped into your house, get free service feee, and pay for pay services.

Clinging to an old yet lucrative model is almost sad.

And now Youtube has taken over that niche. Anyone can be a star or a TV producer, and draw an audience.

If it wasn't for my wife and kids, I would have gotten rid of cable years ago.  I have DirecTV, and its probably my biggest waste of cash every month.  I will admit, though, the DVR feature is nice...but none of it is worth $80/month.

As long as I can't click between three football games at one time,it isn't obsolete. Can't do that on a roku.

Yea, can't say I care.

 
This


People are sick of paying $150+/mo to watch 6-7 channels.

Not really.  Just put to a different use.      


I dropped Direct TV over a year ago.  I really don't miss it.  Saving $900 a year.  Since most programs are now 40% commercials and 60% content I see no reason to pay someone to deliver that amount of commercials to me.  I am an old fart and remember when cable TV first came out.  The lure was that the programs would be commercial free.  Local and network news is just painful to watch with all the commercial breaks.  

I can get at least 20 over the air channels now. For news, I have gone back to newspapers.  Trying to read an article on the internet is just downright annoying.  Waiting for all the ads to download.  Stuff popping up or flashing on the borders etc.  It is simply easier and quicker to open a newspaper and read what I want.  

TV - over the air and Netflix
News-  Newspapers and magazines.  Or the non commercial news delivered over PBS stations.  The BBC is still 87 times better than any American based network news.

To hell with ESPN and the grossly overpriced media sports scam.  I cancelled cable last summer and the best part is ESPN no longer stealing $6 from me for a channel I never watch.

The only reason I have a cable package is because Comcast makes you get a 10 channel one with basic internet.  Otherwise its Apple TV for us.  If I could get an al a carte package with BBC America I'd be happy.  (Fiancée is a big Dr. Who fan.)

I see lots of this statement but its fundamentally wrong. Allow me to explain how package pricing works since I work for a mid size cable company on the east coast.

As a cable company we HAVE to buy packages from the content owners

We HAVE to take all of ESPNs channels (ESPNU, ESPN College, ESPN Desportes) and offer them to our customers, WHY, because ESPN says we should, they dictate where in the channel line up they must go and what tier of service we have to offer them to our customers. AND they charge us 6.00 per customer for their service. We pay more per customer since we don't have millions of Subs like Cox or Comcast. In turn we have to charge our customers that fee.

Every three years by law content providers like ESPN, Disney, VIACOM and even LOCAL broadcast channels that we carry that are free if you own an antennae are allowed to renegotiate their Fees and they always increase their per subscriber fees by at least 100%, then we fight to get them to lower the subscriber fee.


Allow me to explain to you the latest round of fights we are having with the AMC Networks this will illustrate how you pay for content from your cable TV company.

AMC Networks has informed my company this year that in order to continue to carry all their channels they are raising the per subscriber fee by 200% in January 2016 and we have to move 3of4 of their channels to our premium content (lowest cost package) line up. Now mind you AMC Networks has four channels in their package AMC, IFC, WE tv, and SundanceTV. Three of the four channels NO ONE WATCHES but WE HAVE to carry them in our lineups and charge customers for, monthly fees charged to us by AMC.  We did a market study and less than 1% of our current subscribers watch the other three channels.
So instead of passing the 200% increase on to our customer we are fighting AMC for forcing us to move their channel line ups and the price increase.

But AMC Networks is not budging in their demands. So why does a company with 4 channels, three of which no one watches feel like they can raise our per subscriber rate 200% and demand we move their line up?
The Walking Dead.  
That's their leverage, if we fight them and refuse to their demands we lose the rights to carry their shitty four channels, our customers will bitch because we no longer carry one of the most popular TV shows in the country and AMC will run crawlers on their channels that our company is cutting out their favorite program from their lineup and to call your cable TV company and DEMAND they put AMC back on.
But AMC is really telling you to call your cable company to raise your rates 200% and then blame the cable TV company.

They all do it. ESPN is the DEBIL and are the worst.

We used to be able to carry local broadcast channels and re-transmit their signals on our cable network for free as a courtesy because people did not have to buy an antenna to get local channels. That used to be a FREE service but 5 years ago the local TV stations got greedy and started charging us to re-transmit their signals, started at .50 per subscriber and now it's $2.00 per subscriber. But you can still buy an outdoor antenna and get them for free.

This is a small glimpse into your how cable rates and lineups are offered to you.

Content owners set the rates, CONTENT is KING. Once they separate content from the media conglomerates that owns them and put that stuff on the internet then the cable companies will fade away.

But they know that people DON'T want to watch anything on the Sundance channel and won't pay for it on the internet so it will also die out.

You will be able to buy the show you want directly from the company that owns that show.

This might be a better explanation:  http://www.rooshv.com/what-is-a-social-justice-warrior-sjw

 
This.  A la carte bitches.

I think what you are going to see is the content providers selling their shows directly to people on the internet. With Broadband getting more and more common more and more people are dumping cable and going with a direct model.

Fortunately we are also a internet service provider and we have a google and netflix caching engines within our network, it allows our internal internet customers to download and watch Youtube and Netflix videos at a faster rate and since we have content cached within our network anyone of our internet customers can watch netflix videos on 1080p.

I think this is where it is going, people like netflix and hulu will start producing content available for their subscribers.

As soon as the NFL and MLB start selling individual games on the internet to viewers you will see the end of ESPN.

The end is near for cable TV companies because of people like ESPN forcing their packages unto people who don't want them.

All that is needed to tip the scales is content providers offering their shows across the internet to viewers on a individual basis, get The Walking Dead without having to get all of the AMC lineup? Where do I signup? Give me my favorite discovery channel shows that I want to watch like deadliest catch without the rest of your lineup I am there sign me up.
Allow me to buy individual NFL and MLB games that I want to watch and deliver it across the internet, that will be the death of cable.