One would think Charter Communications, the Cable TV monopoly in Madison, would have carried the football game on Sat. Sep. 17 between the 7th ranked University of Wisconsin Badgers and Northern Illinois, but the game was not on any of the 50 Basic Service stations, the 56 on Expanded Service, or any of the 54 on Digital View Plus, even though we subscribers give Charter plenty of money each month to provide good service.
So what was on Cable at 2:30 p.m. instead? Their lineup included seven football games, including none we wanted to watch: 1) Versus carried Texas Tech and New Mexico; 2) Fox showed Colorado St. v Colorado; 3) ESPN went with Texas and UCLA; 4) CBS broadcast Tennessee v Florida; 5) NBC had Notre Dame and Michigan St.; 6) ABC announced Nebraska and Washington; and 7) the Big Ten Network chose Minnesota and Miami of Ohio. If I had purchased cable’s Sports View package, and spent even more money, Northwestern v Army was on CBS Sport Network, and Virginia v North Carolina was on ESPNU.
Why does Cable TV do this? When will they ever learn that our interest in a local football team, does not translate into a general desire to watch whatever game they decide to give us. Like the vast majority in Wisconsin, I turned the TV off, and had to watch the Badger game on my laptop through an online stream of ESPN-3. When will advertisers learn the vast majority of people watching most games, are just fans of the two teams on the field.
Although the cable monopoly promotes itself as a wonderful carrier by advertising over 100 stations to choose from, the number of channels makes no difference, if they show only filler programming no one wants to watch. Cable TV could be so much better if the people of Wisconsin huddled up, went on offense, put Cable on defense, and pressured them to change their lineup. We should be able to stop them from calling all the plays. We should be able to move the ball in the direction we want it to go, by collectively forcing them to show us the games we want to watch.