Cable’s Futile Attempts at Survival

DISCLAIMER: All references to the word "cable" are directed at analog cable, not digital cable, which is of the same quality as digital satellite.

Have you ever seen those cable TV ads that mock the ads put out by DirecTV? You know the ones, where they impersonate the installation guy and try to get the point across that cable is better. I just happened to see one recently on the television in my dorm room. There are other inherent problems in advertising that I could discuss, like dishonesty and playing with your emotions, but I feel the need to rag on cable TV for the moment.

Cable is trying to scare people into not getting satellite TV. They cite facts that you have to buy extra boxes for each TV to hook it up to the satellite. They cite facts that you have to pay extra for your local channels. Now both of these are true, and I give them credit for actually finding a base for their arguments. The problem is that they warrant the fact that their transmission is of the same quality. They try to get the consumer to believe cable is exactly the same, but cheaper, so they don’t switch. They try to scare you because they know that most people, having seen satellite TV, will not want to switch back.

The assumption that cable gives the exact same quality is total bullshit. I can look at the television right now and say the quality is not the same. Most cable providers cannot give the same digital quality as satellite. When I was in Montana, the local cable provider made these claims that cable was better. The irony of it was that I could have picked up Washington D.C. stations on an antenna out there better than they got their local channels. Almost every channel was fuzzy, and the sound faded in and out, definitely not the same quality.

Cable also makes the claims that you lose service when it rains hard when you have satellite. This is true, as well. You lose service for maybe ten minutes in a localized thunderstorm, maybe a half-hour in a big storm. Now this may seem like a travesty to the general American public. Oh no, I might miss Friends, or Jerry Springer. Obviously this fact worries the public, which, at least in the younger culture, lives and dies by television. But can it not be said that you could lose cable for an undetermined amount of time? If a large storm can knock out telephone lines and power lines, can it not take out cable lines? And wouldn’t that disruption of service last for hours or days? Well, it seems that the cable company is overlooking some of the facts.

Remember, cable TV, no strings attached. Except for the big cable connected to your house.