clubbing baby seals

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That was hard to watch.

Reply to
tm

Go, Giants!

A baby seal walks into a club...

Bob

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Reply to
BobW

Yeah, like the Monte Python boxing match between some big ugly bruiser and an 8-year old girl.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Yes, very hard - no FOX on cable here.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

My clients in Texas are very quiet right now ;-)

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Reply to
Joerg

They might s well take it of here. The quality is so bad I can't watch or listen to it. The Aural modulation is set so high that everything clips, but Brighthouse claims nothing is wrong.

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Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

That's unusual.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Groan. Sorry to hear that. Sounds like yours is an ongoing situation of poor service. Ours was ( past tense! :-) ) due to greed - Cabelvision diddn't want to pay the fee that FOX demanded. In any event, it was settled (whatever that means) yesterday and we got FOX channels back on the cable.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

Why should the cable companies keep paying higher and higher ransom to broadcasters? If the cable companies don't agree, their ad rates will drop. The TV stations are double dipping, and it's the viewer who gets screwed.

25 years ago the law was 'must carry', and stations couldn't charge anything. It forced cable tv companies to carry things no one watched, at their own expense. The stations wanted to be on cable, to get higher ad rates. Now, it is pure greed. The cable companies know that if the price gets too high they lose customers, with no reduction in operating costs. Cable, Dish & Direct should drop fox for one year, then offer to take them back, but only for free. the same for any other network. Fox isn't available over air around here, but there isn't much worth watching except the local news when the other networks run some dumb ass ball game instead of news and weather reports.

I worked for United Video Cablevision in the early to mid '80s. The signal quality was a hell of a lot better than what I get from Warner/Time-Warner/Brighthouse these days. it was part of my job to monitor and maintain signal levels and quality at the headend. Our crew was small, but well trained. There were few extended outages, or signal problems lasting more than a few hours. It makes me sick to see how much to see how low the quality of broadcast & cable have dropped since I left those businesses. I'm sure dimbulb is going to start ranting that Time-Warner was better, but their dual trunk system was crap. A lot of cross talk between the two distribution systems that they weren't trained to fix.

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Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Exactly. My idea - which would not have worked, because people won't get off their butts and do anything - was to send letters to every sponsor that FOX carries to say we would boycott those products. I have no power to get FOX to do anything, but the companies that advertise on FOX do. If those companies put pressure on FOX, they would reduce their insane demands.

That makes one helluva lot more sense than my impractical idea. Sigh. But we both know it ain't gonna happen. :-(

That's part of the trouble greed causes, too. Lower salaries, less capable people, and smaller investment in training. Corruption is another result of greed. In our town, we (the town government) sold the rights to Cablevision to wire the town for cable. (I didn't know they could do that.) Verizon FIOS wants permission to provide cable service over their optical installation, but the town demands that they pay for the right - and pay something like triple what Cablevision had to pay, if I understand it correctly. Anyway, Verizon told then to take a hike. And I still don't understand how the town has any legal standing to sell those rights. But I do see where greed and stupidity rules. :-(

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

They can't. What they do is sell a franchise to operate a system within their legal boundaries. They are for a set time and have to be renewed. Anything else is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

If they had applied at the same time the CATV franchise was set, the rate would have been similar. Also, FIOS is usually all underground, which uses more of the government's legal right of way. They would have to pay pole rent if it were aerial, but the fact they have to dig up most of the area to bury their fiber and equipment vaults disrupts other services. That costs the cities money. Another point is that Verison only wants to build in high density, high income areas, while CATV has to build to a lower density and serve low income areas. IOW, Verizon cherry picks for profit.

State and federal laws give them those rights.

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Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Aha. Cablevision was available - and installed - here years before FIOS came along, so that explains the high rate. You nailed it. And thanks for explaining that it's a franchise to operate a system vs "rights to distribute communications" or some other description. It makes more sense to me now.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

You're welcome. :)

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Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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