Unfortunately, Paul Allen has a history of leaving people in the cold (and poor Dave certainly doesn't need a hat-trick in that department).

A few years ago Allen decided to sell his technology TV channel (ZDTV / TechTV) leaving about 600 people without jobs and perhaps you've missed the news that his NBA basketball team is being moved from the great Northwest to Oklahoma City.

I can tell you with certainty that the cable tv industry is reeling with service cancellations and very high costs of operation. Satellite TV is much better quality and at a third (1/3) of the price. The cable industry's business model is stuck in the 80's.

Dave deserves a much more stable sponsor.

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Mopar to ya'!
Johnny Mopar

WHOA! -- Allen never owned the Seattle Supersonics. It was Howard Schultz (Starbucks) who sold the Sonics to the OKC folks, who are stealing the team from the 14th largest market in the US to the 45th largest...

Allen owns the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA and the very "staying put" Seattle Seahawks in the NFL.

Actually, Paul Allen owns the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, and the NBA's Portland Trailblazers, not the Seattle Supersonics.

I stopped following the NBA since their strike/lockout about ten years ago, but it really p*sses me off when the new owner of the Sonics promised that he wouldn't move the team to Oklahoma City, and then reneged on the deal. Hopefully the previous owner can get the team back.

Former Sonics owner Schultz sues to rescind sale of team

As a former engineer for a cable company for 10 years my view may be somewhat myopic ... but you are very misinformed. The ONLY competitive advantage/business model advantage that satellite has over cable is that they are not subject to the same federal/state/local taxes that cable is. In fact, satellite's business model lagged far behind cable's, as satellite persisted in charging for equipment and cumbersome contracts, all things cable abandoned long ago. Don't even get me started on service call fees and local channels ...

The bottom line is you get what you pay for, if you are comparing a cable bill that includes premium channels/DVR/HD to a basic package satellite bill is the ONLY way you are going to get a satellite bill to be 1/3 of a cable bill. For similar packages/services, you are going to pay a similar amount, because the price of programming is controlled by the networks you are subscribed to, not by the cable/satellite provider.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but some old habits die hard.

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I don't have a microwave ... I have a clock that occasionally makes popcorn.

Chris,

Your loyalty to the cable industry is admirable. The reality for our family is that we were paying nearly $90 per month with Charter Cable here at the Lake of the Ozarks. We switched to Direct TV and have more channels for $30per month and now have 4 receivers (only had 1 with Charter Digital) and a DVR (not offered at all by Charter). Another reason we switched is that our new golf course development, inside the city of Lake Ozark, isn't wired by Charter, although their contract with the City requires them to do so. The City of Lake Ozark has sued Charter for breach of contract.

As a homeowner I like the fact that there were no wires buried in my yard. I'm very picky about my yard (live on a golf course) and I've never seen a cable installer leave a yard in the same condition. My dishes are hidden from view on the back of the roof of our home.

The experience isn't even close...satellite wins by a mile with my family!

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Mopar to ya'!
Johnny Mopar

Actually the new owners signed a contract that they wouldn't move the team at all if the Seattle folks would pony up some money to help replace the WORST arena in the NBA within A YEAR. After hiring lobby firms, public relation firms and spending untold millions over the course of a year trying to get some help with a new arena the Washington State powers that be said sorry we don't really want you to move but you'll get no help from us. Now, if you had a chance to make a littile bit of money by moving or lose a great deal of money by staying, what would you do.

The new owners signed that contract in bad faith -- they said they wouldn't move the team, told everyone including the commissioner of the league that they "had no intention of moving the team", all while sending emails between themselves (just released) that clearly show they were baldface lies -- they had every intention to move the team as soon as possible. In fact, one of the mails talks about "flipping the team" if they couldn't move them. They then made some faint motions toward reaching a deal to rebuild the arena, and even turned down an offer from a local indian tribe to build a Taj Mahal arena with some bogus excuses. Clay Bennett and his team from OKC are lying, scheming, and insincere jerks who deserve to lose not only the franchise but a whole pantload of money in the process.

Same here. Our local cable company ("Broadstripe") is now on it's third owner in 5 years, the service is terrible and drops repeatedly (down for 18 hours just two days ago), and the company is based 2000 miles away with only subcontractors here. We lose power frequently here, for days at a time, and I'm about the only one in the area with TV -- my generator and DirecTV work great. Add to that the fact that I get dozens more HD channels than our cable company offers and it's a no-brainer.

The concept of buying vans, equipping them with thousands of dollars of wire and repair tools and equipment, then hiring someone...paying them a good wage with good benefits is why I paid THREE times as much for cable.

I can't see how they'll continue with their current model. I realize they're ramping up to sell more services (high speed internet and telephone) but it still won't go. In this market Charter makes you "bundle" their services to get their new stuff. This means you have to pay three times as much for TV service for the privelege to buy their overpriced internet and overpriced phone service. It's an old fashioned business model based on high labor costs.

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Mopar to ya'!
Johnny Mopar

The bundle in Vegas is $99 (Cox Communications). That gets you 75 channels of TV, digital phone with all features, and 3 Mbit/s internet service. You can add HD for $10 (box rental ... no charge for the actual channels).

Either Charter's prices are WAY out of line, or you got a smokin' deal on your DirecTV John ... either way you done good. My parents have DirecTV in their motorhome, 1 receiver, HBOs, and sports package on top of the basic programming and it is $65 per month. The upside is no matter where they take the RV, they always have TV. The downside is that is a fair piece more than they pay their cable company in their home in Kentucky for LESS services/boxes.

As I was saying before, the cost of programming is not controlled by the cable/satellite companies, it is controlled by the networks. HBO is $8.95 per month (or thereabouts) no matter who you subscibe to. Sometimes you can get special rates, but that is controlled by HBO promotions, not by your local cable or satellite provider. That is why both cable and satellite try to get you to bundle channels together, for instance in Vegas if you want SpeedTV, you have to get the sports tier on digital cable. So you will wind up with ESPNU, ESPN Classic, Golf Channel, various Fox Sports outlets and some other junk just so you can watch Speed for an increase in your bill of $10, they are amoritizing the cost of the channels knowing that you will likely not watch all of them. It is the same for DirecTV.

Cable's operating overhead is surprisingly low. Once the cable is in the ground, and they got you as a subscriber, the ROI is relatively quick especially if you bundle services, because the internet is all cheese (at Cox we owned our own backbone and servers, if you had to lease bandwidth/server space, there is still a healthy profit margin in internet).

This is a 6 of one/half a dozen of the other type of argument. Some people have had good experience with satellite, some with cable and they will spend their dollars accordingly. When I worked there, I found people generally hate utility type companies, so I learned quickly not to wear company shirts out into public or volunteer where I worked to strangers, cuz then the b!tch session would begin ....

Sorry for being WAY off topic ....

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I don't have a microwave ... I have a clock that occasionally makes popcorn.

My issue isn't price, it's service, and quality of product. We have this tiny little company, and their service and product is horrible. The neighborhoods to our west (200 yards away) and to our east (200 feet away) have Comcast, and they get great picture, a million channels we don't get, great HD, and great service for the same price. But because this crappy little company has a government authorized monopoly on our development, we're screwed. That, quite simply, sucks.

Oh -- and the ONLY way for me to get ESPN2 in HD (read: NHRA Racing) is off the bird, my little company doesn't offer it in HD. <<Maybe that'll get this thread kind back on track >>

There were a couple of high profile developments in Vegas that did something similar to what you describe. The tenants successfully sued the homeowners associations/developers to open the development to Cox's services. I would be willing to bet if you dug a little deeper, you would find that small company was owned by someone in your development, or someone was getting a cut of the monthly bills of everyone in your development to maintain the exclusivity of that contract. That was the case in Vegas ....

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I don't have a microwave ... I have a clock that occasionally makes popcorn.

Hey, I heard Dave Connolly will be racing in Atlanta! Anyone else hear anything about that?

Dave C is for Connolly??? I thought that it stood for Cable......or Charter......or Cox