Last month, I mentioned that my apartment complex entered into an agreement with Comcast, my local cable provider, to get basic cable service for all of its residents.  In exchange, Comast lowered the monthy fees to $40, down from a total of roughly $56 or so (which includes taxes and fees), and we now pay that $40 as part of our rent.

In the end, it’s saves us all money if we already had Comcast service.  I’m all for that.

The only missing ingredient for this to actually work, of course, is Comcast adjusting our bills so that we don’t get charged the old rate.  And that isn’t happening.

This new billing procedure went into effect on October 1st, which means that when I paid rent this month, I paid $40 more, and I no longer owed Comcast a cent.  But I got a bill from Comcast saying that I owed them $58 for service.  I called them and was told I would have to get my apartment complex to call.  I did.  In fact, I was there when she called to get everything straightened out.  They assured her that the bill I got in October would be corrected so that I wouldn’t owe them anything.

Oh, yeah.  You know exactly where this is going.

Yep.

I got my Comcast bill yesterday.  Not only did they not correct last month’s billing error, but they charged me an additional month’s service, so I now have a total balance of $116.  I called them again and was given the standard, “Have your apartment office call our business office” line, and was told that they’d have this whole mess straightened out in time for November’s bill.  The problem, it seems, was that they didn’t get all of the information they needed to get the billing straightened out.  They did, however, get all of the information they asked for, which leads me to believe that it’s their screw-up.  It doesn’t help at all that their attitude of “have your people call my people” means it’ll be another full month before I get a bill that shows what I already know:  that I owe them nothing.

Is it too much to ask that a business you pay money to actually fixes a problem when it’s first pointed out?  No waiting around, no failure to act, no blaming someone else for not doing something they weren’t even asked to do.

Just fix it.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all.

Talk about coincidence!

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was considering dropping the bulk of my cable television service.  Now, I learn that my apartment complex has worked out some kind of deal with Comcast so that everyone in the complex will automatically get “basic service,” which translates to channels 2-99.

Unfortunately, that basic service is not free: instead of shelling out entirely too much money a month to Comcast, I’ll be shelling out an amount that’s supposedly somewhat less to my apartment complex as part of the rent.  Comcast says I should see a savings; my apartment complex seems oddly unsure of exactly what it will cost.  The letter I received in the mail isn’t the most clear piece of communication, either.

But I guess I’ll take paying less if I can’t find a way to not pay at all.

I’m seriously considering something that I can’t believe I’m considering at all:  cutting my cable television service.

My parents first got cable television some time around 1979.  Back in those days, there were only about 20 or 30 channels total, but that in itself was a great improvement over the four we’d had before that.  Back then, HBO wasn’t a 24-hour channel; they came on around 5:00pm and broadcast movies until 6:00am or so, then signed off for the day.

Ever since then, we’ve had cable.  I’ve never lived anywhere on my own without, and never considered trying to do without.  Until now.

For one thing, like my dad, I spend far too much time in front of the television.  Unlike my dad, I do not do this while complaining about how worthless television actually is.  I happen to enjoy television…when there’s something on worth enjoying.  My dad will sit through things he doesn’t like, then complain about how there’s nothing on.  (I’ve never quite understood that.)

But there is less and less worth watching on all of those cable channels.  My favorite channels — outside of the local ones — are TV Land, GSN and TruTV.

On TV Land, I like the classic shows, like The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, All in the Family and Sanford & Son.  Unfortunately, TV Land keeps adding a lot of reality crap and movies to their lineup, and I’ve just read that they’re planning more of the same.  If the channel is supposed to be all about nostalgia TV, then show me classic television shows!

On GSN, I like the classics there, too, especially the Gene Rayburn version of Match Game from the 1970s and the original What’s My Line? from the 1950s and 1960s.  Unfortunately, GSN added a lot of interactive and original crap that never measured up to the quality of the old favorites.  And I heard they were bringing back a block of Chuck Barris shows like The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game, which I never liked to begin with.  Then, my cable provider, Comcast, decided to play dirty and suddenly move GSN to the digital tier, which means I’d have to pay more for it.  I pay Comcast quite enough as it is, thank you, so I’ve been without GSN for a while now.  Somehow, I’ve survived.

TruTV, which used to be CourtTV, carries a few cool shows like Forensic Files.  I don’t care for the Most Shocking or Most Daring video shows, but the CSI: fan in me does enjoy the Forensic Files-type shows.  But I can watch CSI: and still get that kind of content, even if it’s more fiction than fact.

Sci-Fi Channel used to be a favorite, but I don’t care for most of the sci-fi they run nowadays.  And History Channel used to be a favorite, too, but I honestly haven’t tuned in there in months.

Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics are great channels; I just watched Adam’s Rib on one of them the other day.  But I can always pull out an old Hitchcock film if I’m wanting a classic.

I’d like to take that nearly $60 a month and pay other bills with it.  And I’d like to put the time I’d spend searching for something to watch to better use, like more reading, more writing, and some Bible study that my friend Archie has inspired me to do more of.

I still love television, and I think I’ll always be hooked.  But some things are more important than TV.  (And yes, it’s really me saying that!)

If Comcast would let me cherry-pick five channels and charge me just $10 over the “local reception” package, it would be worth it.  But short of that, I think I’ll drop down to the few-dollars-a-month local reception and just see how it goes.

So tell me this:  Are there even 10 non-local channels that you watch regularly? Are there any that you think you couldn’t live without?

I had noticed something missing lately from Tivo’s offerings: classic game shows, like those typically found on GSN (which used to be Game Show Network and now goes only by initials).

For the past week or so, apparently, GSN has been MIA. I called Comcast to ask WTF, though not in those specific terms, and PDQ after pressing the button indicating a “problem” with my service, a recording came on telling me that as of November 16, GSN had been moved to the digital tier at channel 179.

To continue receiving it, the recording explained, I would have to upgrade my service. (Translation: I shell out more money and they’ll give me the channel I’ve been getting for less out of the goodness of their hearts.) Continue reading “Comcast’s Quick Switch”

On a recent blogjog, someone offered a recent CNN story as one example of proof that television is dying: a survey shows that today’s teens mostly are unable to name the “big four” TV networks. Only about 20% of kids 16-18 can correctly identify ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

This isn’t a death knell for TV by any means. Most kids of that age have grown up with cable television, so they’ve never had to live life with only four channels. Cable television came to my hometown in the late 1970s. When I first got cable, TBS was still known as WTCG in Atlanta. HBO was more commonly referred to as Home Box Office and wasn’t a 24-hour network: those who tuned in prior to 5:30 or 6:00pm or so would get a screen asking that you come back later when the movies started.

The poll also claimed that 85% of teens of that age choose to spend their free time online, while only 69% would rather lounge in front of the television. This isn’t that surprising a figure when you consider the fact that the poll was conducted by Bolt Media, which operates Bolt.com, a teen-targeted website with the lofty goal of becoming the #1 teen brand in America: they want teens to choose the web over television.

I have no doubt that if they’d asked teens to name four TV networks, the teens would have had no trouble doing so. They might have come up with names like Spike, USA, G4 or MTV, but I doubt that those kids would have had any trouble demonstrating that they do, in fact, watch TV regularly, even while they’re surfing the web. It’s obvious from the numbers, since you can’t have a poll add up to 154%, that there are plenty of teens doing both at the same time.

I haven’t been a teenager for a long time, but I rarely go online without the TV on, at least in the background.

These eulogies for television seem to grow in popularity despite shows like American Idol, in which more people voted for their favorite contestant than voted in the last presidential election, a fact touted by the show’s toothy host, Ryan Seacrest. I don’t understand the wild popularity of such shows, but at the same time, I can’t watch shows like this attract this many viewers and then be so confident in predicting that TV is dead.

A more realistic view of television’s future is that the internet will not only keep TV alive, but revolutionize the way it entertains you. In the old days, TV was a “push-push” business: the networks ran what they wanted to run, and viewers either watched or they didn’t. There were no other alternatives. The future will see TV networks delivering more and more of their content online and via “on demand”-type setups, with the viewers deciding when they want to see a show.

Could you have named the “Big Four?” It doesn’t matter, really. Today’s TV is about a lot more choices than that. Tomorrow’s will give you even more. Would you want anything less?