“You’re not gonna watch it. You’ll just have to miss it.” — a commercial for cable television a few years ago.
I remember in the fall of 1976 when I first had my television hooked up to cable. It was in the City of Albion and my carrier was Triad CATV, now relegated to the dust bin of history.
Triad was a local outfit run by A. Wayne and C. Wayne Wright and at least they were from Marshall and knew Albion well. In fact, they operated two local radio stations, WELL in Marshall and WALM In Albion.
As time marched on, Triad was ousted by Americable, which not long afterward was upended by yet another company, and it wasn’t long before ownership changes many hands because of the renewed practice of mergers and monopolies, the kind that President Theodore Roosevelt railed against not long after the turn of the 20th Century.
Monopolies, which I was taught didn’t have their customers more in mind that making money, were generally though of as the result of greed and fixing prices. The original idea of lowering prices very quickly gave way to some corporate entity selling you goods and services for whatever they wanted to charge.
The hard reality for the many customers has been that it’s difficult to switch to other broadcasters because there are damn few. We could try satellites, which too often are negatively impacted by inclement weather. And what other cable TV services now are available nearby for a lower price?
We were sold a phony bill of goods. Shame on us for being flimflammed.
This awful reality came into sharp view Sunday when it became painfully apparent that most cable TV customers would not be able to take in the Detroit Tigers’ ballgame against the Cleveland Guardians, who had just swept the Detroit’s in the first three games of a four-game series.
My wife is a loyal watcher of Detroit Tigers baseball, so she noticed early Sunday that she wouldn’t be able to take it in. She also was disappointed when she learned that Tigers ace pitcher Tarik Skubal would be on the mound to try to stop the bleeding.
A bad situation got even worse for the left behind fans, who weren’t able to take in a remarkable performance by Skubal, in which he went the distance, nine innings, did not walk a single Cleveland, struck out 13, and threw a remarkable two-hit shutout in a badly needed 5-0 victory.
Now most baseball fans know as well as I do that in days gone by it was extremely rare to be denied the opportunity to watch the Tigers, as long as yopu paid for it or signed up for it. Virtually all ballgames were telecast to an appreciate audience willing to huckstered by products appearing in far too many commercials.
Not so any more. If you sign up to a certain cable channel in order to watch your favorite team, you are not guaranteed access to all games.
It makes that cable TV commercial ring true: “You’re not gonna watch it. You’ll just have to miss it!”
Even when you paid specifically to be able watch the games.
I’ve learned to hate cable TV, where you are forced to include a list of too many channels you’ll never watch and are not guaranteed what you pay for.
We had the same trouble last night when my wife tried to watch her New York Mets game. We ditched cable about a year ago because we were tired of paying for channels we didn’t watch.
Now, we pay about $30 a month to MLB to watch all* the games. The word “all” has an asterisk because MLB makes monopolistic deals with Apple TV, Fox Sports, Roku, and ESPN, blacking out certain games so customers must watch them on these other channels or platforms.
Last night, the Mets’ game against the Dodgers was on ESPN. We paid ESPN so we could watch the game. To our surprise, my wife was denied access because we didn’t have cable!
If a customer is paying for a game package, they should be able to watch all the games, regardless of which channel or platform airs them. MLB mistreats its customers like this simply because it can.
I’m no fan of government regulation, but in this case, it is sorely needed.