This is why I don't pay for cable

Ok...where I live, I don't pay for cable television. My living arrangement has someone else paying for it. When I did pay for cable, it was only the most basic $12 a month package...the one that is one step above saying "fuck it" and going with an antenna.

The reason that I don't pay for cable...is that sometime in the mid 90's they stopped putting on old Odd Couple reruns at 4:30 am & started running infomercials on EVERY channel after, like, 1:30 am.

I couldn't sleep tonight so I was trying to watch TV.....but there was NOTHING on. Nearly every channel was an infomercial.

I'm not saying I'm a huge FAN of Odd Couple reruns...but at least it was something to watch when you couldn't sleep.

Oscar Madison is so much more comforting at this hour than the cruelly censored Girls Gone Wild fiasco on Comedy Central.

A few years back they had a good late night run that I would watch, Stargate and classic Star Trek on SciFi, then MacGyver and Fantasy Island on TV Land, but then they went and put up infomercials instead, and now I'm at work all bloody night anyways.

not to mention, actual commercials throughout the day on most basic cable stations.

this just reminds me that i need to cancel my cable service -- something i've been meaning to do for a long time. because paying someone to show me their "can you hear me now?" and "i like to live on the edge-uh" commercials 24-hours a day is ridiculous.

I'm sorry dude but that Magic Bullet infomercial is comedy gold.
I just got one for my friends bridal shower.

I pretty much have to have cable. I hate network television (with a few exceptions but I usually just download those...) so if I'm going to watch TV (kind of a rarity) I watch Discovery or History Channel. And sometimes Bravo because I'm a fucking Project Runway junkie...

I'm getting pissed off that the stations are finding more and more ways to shove commercials into their programming. Those little animated spots that run over the programming are taking up 1/3 of the screen on some channels. And I've noticed that TNT now runs the credits from one program in a small window while they start the next program in another small window.

I long for the days when the little station logo in the corner was all there was to get beefed about.

Don't forget the Q-ray one, which might as well be called an Infomovie.

Man, I miss The Odd Couple. Anyways....yeah, between constant Girls Gone Wild infomercials and those lame text-dating ads, life pretty much sucks for insomniacs.

I haven't had cable for about five years now.

The only time I missed it was during the Presidential debates a few years back, because the rabbit ears did a shit job of picking up the channel.

Now that everything I want to see is on the internet or Netflix, I can't think of a single reason to have cable... at least, not until they actually introduce a la carte cable, where you only pay for the exact channels you want.

Holy Crap, right? How sweet would it be if you could pick & choose the channels you wanted? Instead of paying $75 a month for 75 channels that you don't need....wouldn't it be sweet to pay $30 for 30 channels that you'll watch all the time?

I gave my TV to my parents before moving to Portland. Over 8 months later, I still have not bought a new TV.

Here's the thing though, Comcast being the wonderful people they are charge you more for internet and at half the speed if you don't have cable, so I actually have cable, and don't watch it (don't even have a TV to watch it) because it's the only way to get full speed internet access.

In my previous apartment I had a phone line, paid for phone service, and never in two years even had a phone hooked up to it. But I needed it for DSL service.

Also, invest in a DVR. TiVo gives away free boxes now, and only charges for service. Before the move I hadn't seen an infomercial (or live television) in 6 years.

Yea ACE, you're not alone. COX is the same way. I download all my movies and anything else i want, the TV is usually just on for background noise. I have cable TV in order to reduce the cost of my cable internet connection.

I hate Girls Gone Wild. History channel til 4 a.m. FTW!!

If you can get Verizon FIOS, the prices on that are much better, and you can add movie channels really cheaply. Also, HD Content is much better quality, and the DVRs are cheap (also the internet service is great).

Comcast generic cable does suck though....58 bucks a month for standard cable. Verizon is 43 bucks for 180 channels, and all the National geographic and Discovery Channels (and available in HD if you have HDTV)

I think lately there's been a perpetual, halfhearted legislative attempt to force cable companies to do this. interestingly, the pressure usually comes from the christian right, who don't want to be forced to buy anything that's not family friendly.

personally, I pay $12/mo to watch iron chef and mythbusters, and it's almost worth it.

cable rulez

even normal tv has this problem. I remeber when I was a kid (i'm33)
you could see a movie on a weekend afternoon or late at night. Now you have to see how seeweed can make your colon bigger.

fuck televison

Why must you entice me with something I can't have?

I would love Verizon FIOS, mostly because the data speed is ridiculously fast; 15 mbps down and 2 mbps up. That upload speed is faster than a T1, and the download speed is ten times faster than a T1, all for $50 a month.

And then of course there's the HD content, which I hear is way nicer quality than either cable or satellite.

The problem? Verizon won't enter Qwest territory. They have Verizon FIOS available all around the city of Portland, in all the suburbs, but Portland itself is a barren wasteland.

There's nothing stopping Verizon from offering up service, except they would have to physically install the fiber themselves from scratch in a major city. Qwest is too broke to ever offer any kind of fiber service, and Comcast is a cable company.

So that's that.

I'm in the same boat. What drives me absolutely batshit crazy is the fact that I keep getting junkmail from Comcast. You fuckers won! You take my money every damn month! Could you please stop raping my mailbox now?

ha! that's fucking hilarious. I keep wondering just how much I have to buy from comcast before they stop sending me fucking junk mail.

Hey, at least they know you're there. When I first moved into my apartment, it took them 6 months to get around to believing that I existed. You'd have thought they'd have taken my word on it....

Haha, yeah, I live in Howard County, which will be the first all-fiber county in the nation. Howard County is so tired of putting up with Comcast's bullshit that they said to Verizon that they will rubber stamp any permit Verizon writes to lay cable. Hence, Howard County will be the first.

From what the Verizon rep told me, it's actually cheaper to maintain FIOS than copper lines, albeit much more expensive in the short run. Also, they have almost limitless bandwidth for HDTV (no compression, 1080P support coming, HDTV Video On Demand), and the installation customer service is world class (they come and do signal testing on all your lines inside your house and replace splitters and optimize wiring)

The more you've bought... the more you will buy. THE SAVINGS!!! DON'T YOU WANT THE SAVINGS!?!?!

I pay for internet, and then drilled through the trap and ran the cable through it, and then bought a tv with a digital tuner. If they want to keep raising my rates for internet without providing me any better or more service I'll make up the difference with 255 channels of glory... actually it's mostly crap... but if they raise the rates again I'll set the building on fire.

That makes me sad.

Hopefully at some point the demand will be appropriate for them to break and finally start laying fiber in Qwest. What sucks is that Qwest doesn't have to lease its dark fiber any more. It's a pretty big market (14 states) to ignore.

I can understand their reluctance, though. Establishing FiOS in their own service areas where they already own facilities is leaps and bounds easier than entering a market where they have zero presence.