Paying for TV???

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OK, some­times I watch as much as three hours of TV in a week. Since anten­na recep­tion in San Fran­cis­co is so abysmal that it makes North­ern Ver­mont look good, I shell out $16 per month for basic cable so that I can see the occa­sion­al show I want to watch.

But some mar­ket­ing genius has pushed my but­tons by re-mak­ing Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, a series I have fond child­hood mem­o­ries of, in a SCI-FI Chan­nel minis­eries that starts on Mon­day. I’m sure I can get upgrad­ed to “Stan­dard Cable” by Mon­day, but DAMN we’re talk­ing about $43 per month. That’s an extra $27 every month just so that I can watch one damn TV show.

I hate to be a cheap­skate, but damn. It galls me enough to have to pay $16 each month for TV with adver­tise­ments in my own city.

Oh, to hell with it. If the series is any good, it’ll come out on DVD even­tu­al­ly, right?

Published by splicer

12 Replies to “Paying for TV???”

  5. Actually…Northern VT gets
    Actually…Northern VT gets great cable 🙂 They actu­al­ly have bet­ter cable than South Shore Boston..

    My cable provider jacked up my pack­age by $5. It does­n’t seem like a whole lot, but I’m broke. And if I decide to down­grade to basic cable, I’ll be out of my “bun­dled” pack­age and will have to pay MORE for less. This does­n’t make any sort of sense to me..

  6. Well, my rec­ol­lec­tion is
    Well, my rec­ol­lec­tion is that with­out cable (which has only been in Cale­do­nia Coun­ty for 10 years or so) the recep­tion was two sta­tions: Chan­nel 3 (Burling­ton) and Chan­nel 8 (Port­land). I remem­ber each one com­ing in clear­ly though, even with an anten­na instead of cable. 

    Here in SF I can see the broad­cast anten­nae on top of Mount Sutro. It’s less than three miles away from me and I can lit­er­al­ly look out my win­dow at it. I think there are two sta­tions that come in clear­ly here. The rest are gar­bled and screwed up unless you have cable. That’s just wrong.

    You should sell your pho­tos. Do you have access to a reli­able means of mak­ing qual­i­ty prints from your dig­i­tal source?

  7. If a series is any good,
    If a series is any good, it’ll come out on DVD *even­tu­al­ly*. But the good major­i­ty of the mar­gin­al crap on TV these days comes out *imme­di­ate­ly*, since the suits know that they will fade from peo­ple’s mem­o­ries quick­ly, and want to squeeze every dol­lar out.

  9. Here in SF I can see the
    Here in SF I can see the broad­cast anten­nae on top of Mount Sutro. It’s less than three miles away from me and I can lit­er­al­ly look out my win­dow at it. I think there are two sta­tions that come in clear­ly here. The rest are gar­bled and screwed up unless you have cable

    I remem­ber that. I think you have to be a bit far­ther away to get the sig­nal from Sutro.

    I lived in Albany, in this beau­ti­ful one bed­room place in a funky build­ing. I had a huge deck and a view from down­town oak­land, to SF all the way up to the Marin head­lands. I could point an anten­na right at Sutro and get killer reception.

    It’s too bad that KNTV still has­n’t got­ten their act togeth­er re: SF cov­er­age of their sig­nal. They seem like they’re still cop­ping atti­tude re: San Francisco/San Jose rival­ry, and they’re los­ing a lot of customers.

    Or, is cable con­sid­ered stan­dard, now?

    If so, that would be very sad, con­sid­er­ing it’s still a monop­oly. Com­cast rais­es prices willy-nil­ly, they have hor­ri­ble cus­tomer ser­vice, they’ve start­ed degrad­ing the ser­vices they do pro­vide (like chop­ping pay per view movies for con­tent and time in order to fit more of them in, and inten­tion­al­ly chang­ing their line­up, forc­ing the use of a box to get HBO)

    The annoy­ing-est part was when I called to try and low­er my cable bill, they could­n’t even tell me what chan­nels were avail­able on each of the pack­ages! There was noth­ing on their web site, noth­ing they could look up to tell me whether or not a chan­nel would be on stan­dard cable, or enhanced stan­dard basic, or whatever.

  10. I think cable is con­sid­ered
    I think cable is con­sid­ered stan­dard now. Notice for exam­ple that the only ref­er­ence you see to KNTV is “NBC3.” It takes a lot of research to dis­cov­er that they’re actu­al­ly chan­nel 11.

    My “basic cable” is sup­posed to get chan­nels 2 – 36 on the cable list, which is prob­a­bly dif­fer­ent in the East Bay than it is over here, but I get:

    2 KTVU (Fox)
    3 KNTV (NBC)
    4 KRON
    5 KPIX (CBS)
    6 KICU
    7 KGO (ABC)
    8 KTSF
    9 KQED (PBS)
    10 KTEH (PBS)
    11 QVC
    12 KBHK (UPN)
    13 KBWB (WB)
    14 KDTV (UNI)
    15 Discovery
    16 KKPX (Pax)
    17 KCSM (PBS)
    18 KSTS (TELM)
    19 KTNC
    20 KFSF (TELE)
    21 KCNS (looks like QVC)
    22 KRCB (PBS)
    23 CSPAN2/L4144C (I have no idea)
    24 CSPAN
    25 sup­pos­ed­ly MSNBC, but what’s on is “the Lord has spo­ken to me”
    26 GOVACC (a UC Berke­ley lec­ture on the death penalty)
    27 L4144D (Ara­bic pro­gram­ming right now)
    28 LEASED
    29 SF ACCESS
    30 pro­gram­ming list/Tony Lit­tle’s Gazelle ad 24 hrs per day
    31 HSN
    32 KMTP (looks educational)
    33 The Cal­i­for­nia Chan­nel http://www.calchannel.com
    34 list­ed as E! or Jade, looks like QVC
    35 Food Channel

    How­ev­er, I also have a few chan­nels with vary­ing qual­i­ty in the upper range. I get a very fuzzy SCI-FI Chan­nel, but it’s about as good as Chan­nel 5 was before I got cable. So I can watch Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, it’ll just be fuzzy. Which is kin­da lame for a spe­cial-effects-heavy show.

    69 The “Inter­na­tion­al Channel”
    70 BET very fuzzy
    72 Trav­el Chan­nel very clear
    74 TVLand very clear
    77 BBC Amer­i­ca very clear
    81 Out­door Life Net­work very clear
    82 Appears to be the Golf Chan­nel very clear

  11. Ama­zon is already tak­ing
    Ama­zon is already tak­ing pre-orders for the DVDs of the Sci-Fi Chan­nel Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca series, so that prob­a­bly puts it in the “mar­gin­al crap” cat­e­go­ry. It also means I can shut up and be a patient geek.

  12. I pay an extra “what­ev­er“
    I pay an extra “what­ev­er” just to watch Six Feet Under and that shit isn’t even on till who knows when. I think I pay almost $70 for cable and I’m too lazy to shut off the HBO thingy when Six Feet Under isn’t on. For that, I should get real­ly hot porn or some­thing don’t ya think? I nev­er even watch TV otherwise…when is Six Feet Under com­ing back!?

    *stomps feet*

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