Spectrum Sucks
 

We're watching the US Open tennis and suddenly a screen pops up that says we don't want to pay what Disney wants for ESPN so contact Disney. Now there is no ESPN channels. Really? You want me to do your negotiations for you? I don't think so. :mad:

They keep jacking up their rates and the service is never reliable. I'm calling Spectrum to say if you can't deliver channels like ESPN I don't need you!

Rant over

Same with the Gator football game. The SEASON OPENER and they pull the freaking plug just before kickoff!

Idiots!

No, not idiots. Bastages. They want the viewer to be outraged at the other company.
I spoke to a rep and he said they are doing this for our good. You are pressuring me to fight your battles for my sake? He said they don't want to raise my rates. Horse manure! They are constantly raising my rates.
I reminded him that they are losing more and more customers who are cutting the cord, their service is unreliable, and this move is going to drive more people away. I explained I wasn't angry at his but he needs to pass on to management the complaints. When he tried to defend what they are doing I suggested he find a better job.

Take your equipment back to them. Get another provider. They will suddenly find a way to cut the premium in half and give you more services. Then tell them, no way. Thats what I did.

We call them rectum around here. $200 a month for crap and commercials, Remember when cable first came out?? Brown Box with blender like buttons and a cord but zero commercials.

Add up your costs over time. It's probably close to a new car.

I've never paid for cable t.v. (aka "no commercials, we promise") and the times I've watched it have been infuriating.

-Every 5-10 minutes there is another commercial at the times when it finally gets interesting.
Mental boner lost. Again and again and again.

-And guess what, there is also commercials on the next dozen channels I flip though.
(calculate the statistical probability of that)

There is free news across the internet.
Also free movies and entertainment. I could list a dozen.
If a particular site has value and content...then pay a small amount for that and support them.

It costs ~.01cents to stream 10GB.

Simple question: You are paying. But are you in control?

This is what we are seeing on the screen.....lol......wtf?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1693539570.JPG

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1693539570.JPG

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1693539570.JPG

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1693539570.JPG

Yep, and all of this right as the college football season starts. Way to go Spectrum!!!

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We have Spectrum and were planning on watching the Florida game tonight when it went dark... SEC, FX, and NatGeo are gone, too.

According to Spectrum, you can get on Tubi and get everything: https://disneyespnfairdeal.com/

My rates have been jacked up twice in the last 6 months ! I only have the internet as I can stream a lot of other content. I need to start looking for service through another provider. The thing is...We just got the Spectrum cable in June of 2021. Prior to that our only choice was frontier dsl. That is the rub about living in the country. Spectrum was the first cable service on our road.

The part about being forced to take channels you don't want is very true.

You want the disney channel - well then you have to take every espn channel - if you only want some of them.... well your price per channel goes up any way to be the same price as having them all.

I don't give a **** about ESPN and the vast majority of sports on TV - so that makes me odd man out. Yes Spectrum sucks and I to degree agree with them cutting channels

anyway

Funny to read

How do you think they are financing the mega billion media sports industry. Someone has to pay.

Time to start watching high school heroes night.

Still free as far as I know

Thanks, John!

Coming up Fubo for me.....

We have been thru all of the available cable providers in our area and all the situations mentioned in this thread have occurred. After contesting the last price hike with no reduction, drove over to their store and dropped off the equipment. Still no offer of better pricing. F' em. So, now Roku. A bit of a hassle at times but a whole lot cheaper.
As long as I can get racing and rugby, I am satisfied,
Now, if something can be done about the commercial load which, on some networks is 40%. Aarghh!!

It's not free and while they say there's a 2 month trial, that only means you get a small discount for those 2 months and you can cancel anytime in thos first 2 months, which seems a little dishonest, because you can of course cancel anytime past those 2 months too.

No thanks....I'll wait it out.

Commercial are just not an issue for me, I record everything, and I mean everything, and fast forward through the commercials. We are on Cox Cable and internet.

During football season, my wife willl record and watch 8 or 9 games in a day. Record several games at once, and start watching one of them. When the commercials hit fast forward, and when she catches up to "real time" change to another game with still recording the other games. Get through all the endless time outs, penalties, and commercials, and get too thee action. It does not take long to watch a game when you skip to just the plays on the fields and not long reviews of a play, and walking off the penalties. Switch to another game and catch up there. She can record 6 different games at once.

The only time I watch TV in real time is for severe weather coverage of severe thunderstorms, super cells, and tornado watches and warnings. The local TV stations show the storms and the exact locations mile by mile and the direction they are moving.

I haven't had cable in years, and I haven't watched ESPN in decades, but the cost per channel, especially for ESPN is insane. I have no doubt that the cable companies play musical channels specifically to increase prices and profits. I remember years ago with basic cable you'd get a bunch of crap that I suspect was barely, rarely watched along with some channels that you wanted. But then there was always a couple of channels that you wanted that required the purchase of one of the upgrade packages. The problem was that the upgrade packages that included a couple of channels that you wanted, also included a bunch of other crap that you didn't want. I have no doubt that the cable companies knew what channels were watched by folks and did the channel shuffle in an effort to get folks to buy the upgrades to increase their bottom line. Of course, it's a business, and that's their ENTIRE goal, so no great surprise. It just feels like you're getting bent over since no other purchasing is like that.

When you go to the grocery store if you want those chips or that steak, they don't force you to also buy 10# of kale 5#of kohlrabi, a 20# bag of Alpo (whether you've got a pet or not), and 5 boxes of panty pads.

I remember MANY years ago, after my dad retired, they lived in the middle of no where, and had C-band satellite (the old big, 6' dishes that moved between multiple satellites) and they were able to get channels a la carte. Their satellite provided eventually stopped supporting the old C-band satellite systems and forced them to move to digital satellite which did not allow a la carte channels and was priced more like we are used to these days with basic and then various upgrade/premium/add-on packages.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/pricing-out-youtube-s-potential-15-price-decrease-amid-disney-carriage-battle-68074065
https://www.snl.com/articles/410812959.png

Baz, it was better that didn't see the Gator's game. LOL!

We have been using Roku for many years now but have Spectrum for our internet. For the channels like Fox News and ESPN, I sign in to watch them. Bama plays on the SEC Network Saturday night so unless this dispute is resolved by then I guess I won't be watching.
This is the message I get when trying to view anything on the ESPN app. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...709da0dc3e.jpg

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That's because most football games have only ~11-12 minutes of actual playing time.

https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/how_long_is_an_nfl_game/s1_15524_29110679

The rest is announcers yammering on and players just standing around while the viewers endure endless friggin' commercials with "talking animals", old people in bath tubs on some hillside or other inane bs about "saving" money. What a joke. The last thing the almighty tv wants us to do is save money.

Else, how are they able to pay the commish more than 20 mil...every year?

Btw, it appears the PAC12 has gone he way of the Emu. Love it. Screw them.

Gotta say....watching with my new YouTube TV and it's fantastic!

I just discovered multi-view....you can have two different games on the screen at one time!

The picture looks a LOT better too. Crisper!

Nice to have the ability to do what I'd normally be doing this time of year again!

****ed up my Italian Gran Prix practice, quali and race.

I got fed up with Spectrum back in March and switched to Youtube TV and I am quite happy with it. Between YT TV and my Firestick I have several hundred channels to choose from. I also went with TMobile internet and they promise to never increase the monthly fee. Will see how that works out. Total win if it it does.

I hope that Spectrum is losing a ton of money for all the sports commercials they aren't broadcasting. Maybe they will wake up and stop playing chicken with their subscribers. I'm that this latest 'up yours' o the subscribers will cause some to say I'm out of here.

This Spectrum is the provider that brings you 47 channels of sharks. You guys pay for that?

We would boot Spectrum TV completely if not for shows that my wife likes that are not available on YoutubeTV.

Why no blame for Disney? Part of the issue is that Disney wants to force Spectrum to carry all of Disney's streaming content. Disney wants that because their own streaming products are not doing well.

Disney's woke a$$ sucks too!!!

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Disney owns ABC so those that don't have a broadcast antenna don't have the ABC broadcast channel either. That's the news, Jeopardy and Monday Night Football as well as other Disney channels like Nat Geo. I don't know who shot their foot off but this is now a 3 legged siht show, or even 2 with only one leg each.

Being w/o cable for years I could care less. The only reason I would have had ESPN 5 years ago was F1 but that is such a corrupt snooze that I watch only the recaps on YT. Google provides more if I want it.

Spectrum (Charter) is the largest cable provider in greater L.A. and that is a 3rd of their entire cusomer base. Adios MF.

WiFi Internet is kicking cable's ass. End of an era.

Actually, ABC is still being broadcast on my Spectrum cable.

Got a game coming up at Noon in fact.

I don't disagree with your other comments, Milt.

Why don't people just switch cable providers? There must be a good reason because it seems a lot less dramatic than all of this.

Options are limited for some, even in the city. Here it's Comcrap, ATT, Dish Network or Starlink.
It's all expensive.
Internet is already outrageous so why not one bill?
YT TV listened and is edging towards that market share but Google is too big imo. They tend to do things well though. There are others.

Plenty of entertainment and information out there to decide what to do with on your free time.

The only channels that I watch that are not on YT TV are local and I have an antenna for them.

Yep, YouTube TV here I come and I'm good with that. We have Spectrum internet here and the town I live in has its own internet service so I am looking into that as well, would much rather spend and keep my money home, so to speak, instead of it going to Spectrum.

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(borrowed from another forum I frequent)

Disney is in trouble.

The company has issues in every one of its business lines and what to do with ESPN is one of the biggest. Bob Iger has said that he wants to spin off ESPN as a standalone direct-to-consumer service. Frankly, there is no way that entity can be profitable by itself without a massive increase in net revenue. They can either demand more revenue from carriers or seek concessions on package values with leagues and conferences. But that leaves them vulnerable to competitors like CBS, FOXSports and NBC. And some of those guys have streaming platforms they'd like to build. And they can undercut Disney for a year or three. And there's always Amazon, Warner Bros/Max, Netflix and YouTube TV.

What to do with Hulu is another thing. Comcast (parent of NBC) has a put option on the 30% stake it owns in the service. They will execute that option this year and Comcast has the right to decline negotiations and just send the invoice. Hulu is how I watch what I used to watch on cable and DirecTV. It's nice but very pricey and going higher.

Parks attendance is ok but not growing much. Films are underachieving in theaters. The company was the target last year of activist investor Nelson Peltz (current CEO of Wendy's) who demanded a seat on the board of directors when Iger was re-hired as CEO. He also demanded steep cost cuts and the firing of long-term execs. He set up a proxy fight for the company's annual shareholder meeting and started acquiring beaucoup shares and votes. He gave the stand-down order just before the vote was to happen when Iger gave up everything except the board seat for Peltz.

Things are only gonna get worse. They have chosen to take sides in a hotbutton political issue that is serving to alienate about half of its customer base. Not getting into that here except to say that if some cultural or political issue in the public sphere doesn't affect your business financial results, the best response is always "no comment." Biz Comms 205...

The stock (Ticker: DIS) hasn't paid a dividend since December 2019. It reached an all-time high of about $206 in early 2021 and is trading in the low $80's now. Total market cap is about $150 billion and if it gets into the $70/shr range it's an acquisition target for companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft...

I only hammered out this long post to show that how we pay for and watch college football next season will be very, very different from next year. ESPN may be owned by someone else and who knows what it will cost to watch the 3td Saturday or Iron Bowl next year.

Because in most places, the cable provider has an exclusive access agreement with the city.

As far as Disney is concerned. I would be thrilled to see the rat die. They will have to sell off ESPN.

So does Disney get revenue from commercials during a broadcast or does Spectrum?

FuboTV. Great for sports. Wife likes it because of HGTV and Magnolia Network. Only thing I miss is the History Channel. Other than that, way cheaper than DirecTV

That's weird... I wondered why you said you were going to try Fubo. When I checked it and made that post, they were recommending people use Tubi, which is free.

I wonder why they changed it.

I was able to watch Zandvoort last weekend, but no Monza this one. Not surprised based upon the heads up for m this thread. Will find an alternative to Spectrum this weekend. We've been thinking of canceling anyway. Not like we needed another reason to begin with.