What Is a Reasonable Price For Basic Cable Service?

I believe that cable prices are utterly insane. Do you agree with me?

I remember back in the old days when TV was free. Yes, free, that’s right, you got me. Then, about 30 years ago, it was something like $30/month. It stayed that way for a while. Then it went through the damned roof. Basic cable, and by that, I mean the most basic cable setup you could imagine, will cost me $50/month. That’s before any extras. What a ripoff!

I remember back in the old days when TV was free. Yes, free, you heard me right. Why was it free? Same reason that radio is free. It was advertiser-supported.

When they first put the evil cable channels on, they told us that there was not going to be any advertising. After all, they were billing us for watching TV, so why should we have to watch ads?

Ads are for free TV, not for pay TV. One of the benefits of pay TV was supposed to be no ads. Well, that didn’t last long. Cable TV is now as full of ads or moreso than the remaining free TV. So not only do you have to fork over an outrageous $50/month just to watch TV, but you have to sit through all the same stupid ads as before. Ripoff!

The reason for the ripoff prices? Monopoly! Cable companies have a monopoly. Everywhere in the US, there is one and only one cable TV company. They have a captive audience, and it’s clear that they charge the maximum that they can possibly get away with. Where you gonna go? There’s nowhere to go. It’s true that there is now some competition via the satellite companies, but that doesn’t seem to be working out very well, as they are charging just as much as the cable companies are.

I feel the cable companies should be a regulated public utility the same way that the phone companies are. I can’t think of any reason why they are not.

How much should very basic cable cost? I say $30/month maximum. I am not interested in paying any more than that just to watch TV, sorry. Now that everything has gone over to digital, I can’t even seem to get any of the free channels anymore, and that’s with a brand new wide screen TV. I don’t get it. Costs of similar “necessities” for me:

DSL internet: $30/month

Cellphone: $20/month

Landline: $10/month

Radio: Free

I figure cable TV isn’t worth one penny more than my DSL (actually a Hell of a lot less), but I’m willing to be generous to the sharks and pay them the same as I pay my phone company for the Net.

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2 thoughts on “What Is a Reasonable Price For Basic Cable Service?”

  1. A number of alternatives for those with a decent internet connection:

    Legal
    http://www.hulu.com/
    http://www.comedycentral.com/
    Various networks post TV shows online with brief ads.

    Undocumented:
    http://www.eztv.it/ (They go down fairly often though…)

    http://torrentz.eu/
    Type in what you are looking for or just hit search to see listings in order.

    Use this software:
    http://download.cnet.com/uTorrent/3000-2196_4-10528327.html

    As for the land line get a Google voice number. (Warning Google is controlled by the tribe..;-) They’ll be listening in… say exciting stuff so they don’t fall asleep…)

    Added benefit is the torrent sites sometimes have shows early (East Coast…) and you can download entire past seasons… oh yeah… no ads.

    1. I don’t watch TV anymore if I want to watch a program/film I just go to a website like irfree and download it commercial free from a file hosting website like fileserve, megaupload, etc.

      @Uncle Milton

      “As for the land line get a Google voice number. (Warning Google is controlled by the tribe..;-) They’ll be listening in… say exciting stuff so they don’t fall asleep…)”

      Dude an Israeli company controls the telephone service in the US and Microsoft Windows which was aided by the CIA/NSA has backdoors in it that’s why people use the Linux OS.

      Iranians were stupid enough to use the Windows OS at their nuclear plant.

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