I haven’t quite been able to figure whose side to take in the current standoff between Mediacom and Sinclair Broadcast Group. I have the great misfortune to be a Mediacom cable customer in a television market with a Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate.
Faced with the impending loss of CBS – home to The Amazing Race, Late Night With David Letterman, NFL broadcasts and (gulp) Super Bowl XLI – I’ve devoted far too much time investigating satellite television providers. I’ve compared DirecTV, which Sinclair suggests for Mediacom customers, with Dish Network.
My conclusion is that Dish would be slightly cheaper than DirecTV. Both offer NFL Network, which has exclusive broadcast rights to eight games beginning on Thanksgiving, which Mediacom does not. Only DirecTV has the NFL Sunday Ticket, but do I really need to spend $240 for the ability to see every NFL game when all I really care about is seeing the Green Bay Packers? (Rhetorical question.)
Neither Dish or DirecTV can compete with cable in a household with seven TVs, all of which need to operate independently of the others. (I’m guessing 1.75 TVs per person puts me on the high side, even in the good old USA.)
With my mind still not made up about which direction to go or not go, I marched into the local Best Buy looking for answers. Voila! For a mere $53, I walked out with a high definition antenna that pulls in all of my local channels, including CBS, and also their HD signals, which Mediacom doesn’t.
So my problem is solved, for the most part, but now I have another quandry. Why is Sinclair pushing Mediacom customers to switch to DirecTV when all they need is an auxiliary antenna to pull in the local channels Mediacom will soon drop? And why doesn’t Mediacom fight back with the same argument?
It seems neither is acting in good faith or in the best interests of its viewers as they wage their high-profile pissing match. It makes me want to pull the plug on both of them – but not until after the Super Bowl.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Mediacom vs. Sinclair -- which evil is the lesser?
Posted by Lonnie at 11:00 PM
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3 Comments:
Thanks for your comments Mr. Westerman. I have no doubt Sinclair is the bad guy in this matter. What you didn't address though is why, with all of the money Mediacom has spent defending its side, it hasn't suggested its customers could add an antenna that would allow them to continue to receive the local affiliate, in this case CBS. Instead, you stand buy as DirecTV pays Sinclair for any customers it converts. I don't get it!
Actually, if you look at Mediacom's website, you'll find that they do, in fact, suggest using an antenna. Not only that, in at least some of their markets, they will provide you with one. I'm currently a DirecTV subscriber and have been thinking about switching TO Mediacom cable to get combined cable, internet, and phone service. Locally, we've lost WICD (ABC) from cable as a result of this dispute, but that will not stop me from switching because I already use an antenna for local channels. I just hope that when the dispute is settled Mediacom can offer an option to those of us that have antennas to NOT receive local channels (and NOT pay for them). If Mediacom could provide something like that, then it would give cables subscribers the ability to vote with dollars and tell Sinclair to go take a flying leap!!!
Sinclair doesn't want to suggest you buy an antenna to pick them up over the air because then they don't make any money off of you. The reason Sinclair wants to charge Mediacom now is because they're not making as on advertising these days, so they need to make up the money somewhere, either by getting the cable company to pay them to carry their station, or by getting people to switch to dish, who has to pay to carry thier signal.
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