Our cable provider was acquired. We've been broadcast-free ever since. Not loving it.
Ok, my lede isn't accurate in all respects. But it's pretty close. Here's the fuller story:
It started 20+ years ago, when we fired our cable provider. At that time, and perhaps still today, the dominant cable provider in our area was Comcast. Their customer service was terrible, and their prices kept going up. This was about the time when cable providers' local monopolies were cautiously being replaced with more competition. So we decided to try a hungry new entrant into the marketplace. The company was called Wide Open West (WOW).
We're not huge consumers of television content. We watch the nightly local newscast just about every night, and unless I need to work or be at the parish during an evening, I'll usually spend an hour or more watching something, usually not overly challenging, and usually with my wife. I suppose that habit doesn't fulfill anyone's ideal of marital quality time, but we're both pretty tired and frazzled at the end of our workdays, and putting our feet up and not having to think too hard often is appealing.
We're also not the type of couple who shops around every month for a better deal. Once we find something that works for us, we tend to stick with it. WOW worked - it broadcast the news and sporting events and whatever traditional and cable broadcast networks we thought we needed. To be sure, WOW never seemed to be a new-features leader, and we were vaguely aware that technology was moving ahead, and WOW wasn't always keeping up. Xfinity came along, which apparently offers cooler features than we had with WOW. Personally, watching a television show on my mobile phone doesn't appeal to me, but for those who want it, I think Xfinity can do that. And then the streaming services became a thing. We didn't care. We were happy with our status qho.
Sometime in that first decade with WOW, it also became our Internet provider.
Around that same time, about 14 years ago, I found myself working for a large multinational, and suddenly I was part of work teams whose members were dispersed all over the planet. So I stopped going to the office. There was no point to commuting back and forth, or even showering and shaving every morning, if all I was going to do was sit at my desk, wear a headset, stare at a computer screen and talk with people who were in different offices. I can do that anywhere. So I started doing it at home rather than in the office. Nobody cared. My boss was a thousand miles away, in Texas. A lot of people all over the country and the world were starting to do the same thing as me. I reached the point where I was going into the office a half day every week, and that was only to stay in touch with people with whom I had formerly worked. Then the company closed our local office, and I had nowhere else to go. I was a full time work-from-homer.
It took me a while to figure this out: in working from home every day, my livelihood is massively dependent on my Internet provider. If the home Internet goes out, I can't work. I don't have the kind of job where I push numbers around in a spreadsheet all day. I have a dozen or more meetings every day, all of them utilizing Teams or Zoom or Webex or some similar connectivity tool. Without Internet connectivity, I can't email, I can't IM - the only way people can reach me is via a cell phone. But with WOW as our Internet provider, I don't think the Internet went out more than a handful of times in the last decade, and never for as long as a full day. On the rare occasions we lost connectivity, it was a welcome respite. I'd go for a mid-day bike ride, and often as not, when I got back, the service was back up.
But a year or so ago, the WOW customers in the Chicago area were acquired. And it's rocked my world.
The company which bought us (I can't think of a more fitting way to put that) is called RCN. At first, nothing changed. I wasn't even aware that WOW had sold us. I got my first inkling a couple of months ago, when I woke up one work day, sat down at my desk, and discovered I had no Internet connection. I turned on the television sets and discovered that cable service was gone, too. I tried the handful of self-help things which occasionally work (e.g. rebooting the cable router), but no luck. So I called WOW. Only it turned out, WOW isn't WOW anymore. When I called customer service, a pre-recorded message told me WOW was now RCN, and I needed to call another number. So I called the new number, and learned that this merger had occured, and it was such exciting news that RCN was now called Astound.
My excitement about this development was tempered when it became evident that (a) the person on the phone couldn't fix the problem; and (b) they would send a technician out, but that person couldn't make it for five days. That doesn't work for my job. I can't not work for a full work week while I'm waiting for a cable guy to show up. Suddenly, the old days of working in an office with its business continuity safeguards was looking better.
I threw my work laptop in a computer bag and drove over to our local library when it opened. It offers free wifi and lets me reserve a conference room for two hour blocks of time. That got me through the morning. Then my wife, who is a bit more tech savvy than I am, showed me how to make my cell phone a hot, spot. That sort of worked, and I limped through the afternoon. And then, sometime around the end of the day, Internet and cable service was restored. Whew!
Well, not really, because the next morning, it was all gone again. I made the same trek to the public library in the morning, and then used the hotspot again for the rest of the day. This time, the service didn't come back for about three days. I was getting to know the librarians on a first name basis.
By the afternoon of Day 3 of that outage, Astound managed to get an engineer out to my home. He plugged some sort of a signal tester into my cable, and then gave me the diagnosis. The gist of it was: the WOW equipment worked well with the WOW cable's electronic signal frequency. But Astound's signal runs at a different frequency, and the old WOW equipment doesn't deal with it very well. He went out to his van, came back with a new router, slapped it on the end of the cable, and the Internet worked. And it's pretty much worked ever since.
But.
He couldn't fix the cable television. Each of our televisions had a WOW cable box (and VCR) which was compatible with the WOW cable router, but is not compatible with the Astound cable router. Oh well, I figured, he'll dash back out to his repair van, come back with some new cable boxes, and we'll be good to go. But no. He said he doesn't have the cable boxes. I'd need to call the Astound customer service toll free number to make an appointment for a technician to come back with new cable boxes. I foresaw a several-day delay, and was annoyed, but figured we could get by without television for a few days.
Only it wasn't several days. This all happened in mid-June; the nice person at the other end of the Astound customer service line told me the earliest I could make an appointment would be for August 9th. If I had been eating porridge, I would have spit it out. Two months without cable! Think of the ball games and golf tournaments, not to mention the nightly newscasts, I'd be missing.
Naturally, our young-adult children were smirking as we went through this ordeal. I don't think any of them ever have been cable subscribers. They stream. My wife and I weren't complete streaming neophytes; we've watched stuff on Netflix (some of it quite good), and we've dabbled in Amazon Prime (I had joined it several years ago in order to get the free two-day shipping; I hadn't even known at first that it included a streaming service); and we had ordered HBO Max at some point for some reason I no longer recall. But now, to continue our old habits, we had to figure out how to get content from ABC, NBC et al without cable service.
We're still figuring it out. We learned that Hulu carries ABC content. It mostly works. But the newscasts don't come on at the same times, and they're not the same as what we were accustomed to. For some reason, Hulu carries our local ABC station's 4 pm and 6 pm newscasts (more often that not, anyway) but not the 5 pm newscast, which was my preferred viewing time. And the newscasts get pre-empted by other programming which the Hulu gods (or interns) have decided we should watch instead. Last night, I think it was the Espy Awards (is there anything dumber?). Tonight it will be the January 6 hearings. I suppose I could watch the news from the local station's website on a laptop computer, or over an app on my cell phone. But those are rather solitary activities; I like to watch the news with my wife, and my kids secretly like it, too; their watching our newscasts is the only way the actually know what is going on the world, as watching the news or reading a newspaper on their own is utterly foreign to them.
The obvious thing for us to do would be to fire Wow and go crawling back to Comcast and ask them to take us back. But that takes effort and discussion and decision-making on our part, and it might not be as good a deal as Astound has promised us whenever it gets around to getting our cable service reinstated. So for now, we're trying to make do. Probably it's good for our character or something to watch less television. But I'm not enjoying the experience so far.
Yah, I think work-from-homers are forced to rely on a system that maybe needs less innovation and more stability.
ReplyDeleteWe have spotty internet out here in the cornfield thru Frontier. We never had cable because all our neighbors said it was confusing and didn't work half the time. So we got a TV with Roku. It works good as long as the internet doesn't cut out.
Public libraries are lifesavers. Tax money eh well spent imo.
Do you have a streaming device? I have Roku (same as Jean). The device is cheap ($30 or so) and there is a tremendous amount of content available, free and paid. I have a lot of streaming channels (Prime Video, Disney+, HBOMax, Showtime, Hulu, and several more. My latest addition is AMC+, on which I have watched Dark Winds (an adaptation of a Tony Hillerman novel) and This Is Going to Hurt (highly acclaimed by the critics, but sometimes hard to watch). How could you not watch Stranger Things on Netflix? Did you not see Game of Thrones (HBO) or Homeland (Showtime)? If you don't have the time, then I suppose it may be good to watch less television. But television has never been better, and there is higher quality programming now than ever before.
ReplyDeleteWhen my parents got cable (decades ago) my mother discovered they were getting all the premium services (which they had not requested and did not want) for free. Honest woman that she was, she kept calling the cable company to notify them, but they were so unresponsive she finally gave up. She said, "If they don't care, why should I?"
David - yes, we do have a sort of streaming device: an Apple TV device, which actually belongs to one of the kids who is living with us at the moment. When she moves out, she'll take her Apple TV devices with us. I could try Roku then. Or, our televisions are supposedly smart TVs, and seemingly can pull in the streaming services without the need to a device. But the Apple TV works better than the smart TVs without the add'l device.
DeleteCan I get all my network content with Roku? The gaps for us right now are the local newscasts, and (for me much more than my wife) the sporting events. I'd need access to the major networks (including Fox, which broadcasts ballgames during the summer), ESPN and Golf Channel. Oh well, I guess I can out to Google to get answers to those questions.
I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Stranger Things, simply because it sounds science fiction-y, and I'm not much of a fan of that stuff (although I don't mind Dr. Who too much, but I know it's not the same kind of thing). I have seen some other good stuff on Netflix, though. Among the best we've seen is a limited series called Unbelievable, based on a true story of two women detectives who discover a serial rapist is on the loose and try to track him down. I admit I missed Game of Thrones, because we didn't subscribe to HBO when it was a hot show. I did start to watch Homeland, which is on one of the streaming services now (Amazon Prime, maybe?). I sort of took a break after three or four episodes - need to get back on the horse and power through and see if it gets good again.
You might check out Hulu + LiveTV. There is a link right on the page that lets you enter your zip code to see what local channels you get. I should say I am by far no expert here. Hulu+LiveTV looks a little expensive, and you need to have high-speed internet separately, but i guess it partly depends one how much you had to pay for your Cable TV service. This article comparing YouTube to Hulu+LiveTV might be helpful.
DeleteAT&T is my internet provider and was also my cable provider until I discontinued cable when Trump became president. Before AT&T, I had a different cable and internet provider. As soon as AT&T became my provider, the world of difference became evident. Very few problems; they get promptly fixed, usually over the phone. The superior competence of their employees is very evident.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the video content is better than ever. And so much of it. However, let's not forget the old "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits". They were a great supplement to Scripture and helped form my moral outlook. I don't know if I'd have courage to act like the characters in the stories under extreme circumstances, but I darn well knew that was how I should act. They also formed my patriotism, not the jingoistic kind but a concern for my fellow Americans of all stripes.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I live a contemplative life. Solitude has been essential. I have deliberately chosen not to be influenced by TV. Whatever one tunes into (whether Fox, CNN, the Discovery Channel or PBS) one becomes a disciple of those world views. One can maintain one independence only with a much larger diet of books and journal articles.
ReplyDeleteMy home world has essentially been shaped by classical and liturgical music, the books and scholarly articles that I read, my intellectual activity, gardening and landscaping.
That has not changed much with Betty’s friendship and companionship. As her Christmas present, I gave her four of Merton’s books, and told her that while I was not a celibate and monk like Merton, I am a contemplative and solitary like him, but that I thought solitude and contemplation can be shared.
Betty is a cantor and has a far more professional understanding and love of music that I, so we share the soundscape of my house very well. Betty already had a love of the Divine Office and so we have shared the project of building a blog of audio-visual internet resources for the Divine Office. We sing monastic Vespers with the Meinrad Monks daily, as well as Morning and Evening Prayer with Paul Rose from SingtheHours. We have a shared love of gardening. Betty has many intellectual interests and so enjoys my library and my conversation. She has become used to asking me a question which will be followed by a search for one of more books, and the beginning of an answer. If she is fortunate that I have read and underlined the book, she can quickly become well versed in the subject.
Back in March 2011 I wrote a post for PrayTell, the liturgy blog, entitled Television, Time Use, Lent and the Divine Office. I laid out the facts that over the last half of the twentieth century we essentially became a television watching society. While both paid and unpaid time deceased, that along with some leisure time was converted inTV watching. I argued that we needed to fast from TV, and that one better use of time was praying the Divine Office which has just become available over the internet and as podcasts. One no longer needed a book. Like TV it could easily fit into one’s life.
The classic explanation for the dominance of TV has been that it easily fills time. I think there is another better explanation. It builds community (among families, neighbors, co-workers, etc.) though sharing of our viewing experiences. Essentially it has become the modern equivalent of church, even more than newspapers became the modern equivalent of the bible.
Anytime we turn on the TV, or read a newspaper, we are choosing to become disciples of that media.
« One can maintain one independence only with a much larger diet of books and journal articles.«
DeleteAgree. That is why we never watch TV news, including PBS news shows. We watch the drama series, nature, science, and music shows on PBS. No news.
We rely on the written word rather than 30 second bites. Reading allows one to get a fuller picture, and also allows for immediate, personal fact-checking. I do that a lot when something I read raises questions in my mind about its validity.
Jim So I called the new number, and learned that this merger had occured, and it was such exciting news that RCN was now called Astound..
ReplyDeleteLol!
As a mostly home- based consultant since the 80s, long before the internet, I was thrilled when that technology arrived in the mid-90s. I had to do a lot of research and knew just about every government agency and academic library around, from the Library of Congress to the local community college. For me, being able to access the research resources of all of these libraries without leaving home was a miracle of sorts. Eventually I was dependent on the internet for every aspect of my work, including most interactions with virtual teams. Occasionally I had to get out of my jeans and put on my career clothes and go to an in-person meeting, but that didn’t happen very often.
But, for a few years the electricity was unreliable, especially whenever there was a thunderstorm, pretty common around here during the summers. I had deadlines, of course, for submitting my work. It was then that the local library saved me. I would pick up my laptop and head down the road, find a private study room, close the door, and keep working. Finally the big trees that were tossing heavy limbs onto the major electrical wires every time we had a thunderstorm with high winds were trimmed and our electricity stayed on. The local government for Ed the power company to trim the trees. In California the major power companies are facing enormous lawsuits for poor maintenance in wildfire areas (pretty much the whole state). Their fallen wires, sometimes falling because of wind, have caused several of the most horrendous fires there in recent years.
Your Apple TV device is like a Roku. We cut the (cable) cord a few years ago, and we use Roku to access what we want. My husband also put up an antenna in our attic to grab the local over the air stations, but we seldom have to switch to It. We don’t watch much tv. Mostly PBS - we subscribe - and Netflix, which we access via the Roku. Our son has Apple TV. They do the same thing. Swallow your family patriarch pride and ask one of your kids how to use it to access what you want. The big three networks also offer streaming at reasonable prices that you could subscribe to and access with your Apple TV device.. We don’t watch TV news ever, so don’t bother. If we want to watch a network show we switch to the antenna.
We have only one internet provider here, no choice. We can afford to have one streaming service at a time. So we watch Netflix for a few months, then switch to Hulu, Prime, etc. We can stream YouTube on the Roku free, and that offers a lot of old movies. Tony also has some older stuff free like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits that Stanley mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI find a lot of shows over-produced, pretentious, and/or really depressing. My sense is that even a good show begins to wear out at between three and five seasons.
S/b Roku has some older stuff (tho maybe "Tony" does, too ...).
DeleteTony! I didn't think that was Raber’s first name.
DeleteWe “donate” $60/ year to PBS for the streaming. We’ve been using our son’s Netflix account legally. They allowed multiple devices in different locations to use it. They have been losing money, and have announced that they will soon be ending that practice. So we will have to break down and get our own account. YouTube has a lot of good stuff. There is something called chromecast, another Google device. We have lots of Google stuff because of our son’s job. You attach the device to your TV and hook it up somehow ( I don’t remember the details) so that you can “ cast” shows from your computer or tablet or phone etc to your TV, including YouTube. But we have the YouTube app for streaming and seldom use the chromecast device anymore.
PS. I posted a link to Diana Butler Bass on the Pestering God thread. It’s relevant to both the discussions of scriptural translations and the Mary/Martha story. Some pretty interesting stuff.
DeleteFor a long time the only game in town has been Spectrum (that is unless you want to go with one of the "dish" services) We have been a subscriber ever since we moved here. They kept raising their rates, finally we cut out cable tv. Like the rest of you, we have gone with various streaming services. We still have high speed internet through Spectrum, and a land line (which isn't really "land" anymore). The land line cost is negligable, and we keep it because some family members call us on it, besides, it is good for backup when our cell phone service isn't great. Which brings us to our cell phone plan also being Spectrum. It is affordable, $15 per month per each. The catch is that they require you to keep their high speed internet to have the cell phone service. Now there is a newcomer in town, Allo. They provide the same things Spectrum does, the except they brag that it is better because it is totally fiber optic. Which Spectrum is also, but they rely on copper wiring to bring it into one's house. K. wants to go with Allo. I said ,"Fine, but we're going to have to figure out something else for cell phone service that doesn't raise the price."
ReplyDeleteI've never had the experience of being able to work from home via the internet, so I don't know if I would like it. The closest I have come is a family "Zoom" gift exchange for Christmas during the Covid restrictions. I found it less than satisfying.
DeleteLOL, my husband did Zoom K of C meetings during Covid restrictions. It was kind of Jerry-rigged, he heard the sound through his phone, and saw the picture on his tablet. He found it tiresome. I think I would find the in person meetings tiresome.
I had Consumer Cellular for my mother. No fuss, no muss. She just wanted a flip phone. There was also a button on the back she could push that would automatically call a preprogrammed number in an emergency. It didn't receive texts, photos, or get her on the internet, but you can buy smart phone versions.
DeleteRaber and I got rid of the landline and basically use use glorified burners as if we were drug lords. Saves some $$. Not too many bells and whistles, but they'll get you an ambulance if, say, you're having a heart attack in the Home Depot and then need to call your wife from the ER.
I have had a smart phone for a few years . I actually kind of miss my flip phone that had a pull out keyboard and a small screen, not to mention a good camera. It was such a nice size, would fit in my pocket. But it didn't do most of the things we have come to expect now.
DeleteJean, yikes, a heart attack in Home Depot. Glad he (and you) survived it!
Yup, he started having chest pains in Home Depot at 11 a.m., loaded his plywood sheets into the SUV, and realized he wasn't going to make it. Local hospital was full of covid, so ER would not let me in. I had to sit in the parking lot and get phone updates. They got his BP down and transferred him to the heart center 30 miles away by ambulance. They installed a stent. He called me about 5 p.m. goofy from the drugs. The nurse grabbed the phone and walked me thru the covid protocols, and said I could see him in the cardiac unit in hour. I put his toiletries together and when I got there, he was eating a sandwich and ordering pudding cups from the cafeteria. That night he had some hemorrhaging in the groin, but the nurse managed it. He was in there for three days. If I wasn't indignant about the anti-vaxxers and idiots suing the state over mask mandates before, I was after getting a load of how every single person there had been dealing with the pandemic for a year, was tired, had to work long shifts in stifling masks short-handed, and treated us like VIPs.
DeleteOh, Jean. How awful. So scary. Thank God he’s ok now.
DeleteIt was very hard not being there, but the nurses were really good about calling to let me know what was going on and answering my questions. It was incredibly goid care, doubly so during that particular covid spike.
DeleteI as grateful that my husband could come with me on all my medical appointments last fall and winter. He could even be with me in pre-op during the long pre- surgery wait, extended 3 hours past the scheduled time, and he was there when I woke up. This was allowed because he was my caregiver- due to my hearing loss. I often couldn’t understand the medical personnel because of masks and social distancing. It made me realize what a lonely and frightening experience it was for all patients in hospitals during the height of the pandemic, especially frightening for the people there with Covid and nobody to hold their hand. I was able to go home after my surgery, at 9pm.
DeleteJust got my second Moderna booster. Just as bad as the previous two. A day of lethargy, loss of appetite, fever. I may try Pfizer if they recommend another booster.
DeleteYou probably should. My husband and I have had Moderna for all vaccines, including two boosters. Other than a mildly sore arm for a few hours neither of us had problems. If I had, I would probably try Pfizer.
DeleteMy immunity isn't great, so that may be why these don't knock me out much. Waiting to see what's on tap for fall. I gather the CDC has urged companies to develop a vax aimed at omicron variants.
DeleteI had my second booster earlier this week. I had Pfizer for my first two shots and my first booster. I decided to have Moderna this time. They had said to call in about a half hour early if I wanted Pfizer since it has to defrost. I decided I didn't want the extra hassle since none of these are by appointment.
DeleteMy reaction was the same as to the Prizer shots, a mildly sore arm for a couple of days, perhaps a little more sort, and a little longer.
Betty also got her second booster; all her shorts have been Moderna. She had a day long reaction (soreness, fever, headache) this time, milder than her earlier several day reactions.
Betty and I debated whether or not to wait for an Omicron variant booster. However, it seems that by the time they actually have that ready to go into arms, another six months will likely have elapsed. It is also sounding that the vaccine they are developing may be a lot like the flu vaccines. It may all depend upon what variants actually show up. They come and go very quickly.
DeleteI've had four shots total. My impression is that they are all pretty much valueless against infection after a few months, but remain useful in preventing severe disease. I still mask up indoors. Maybe about 1 in 10 people do, and all of them are old.
DeleteMy high school friend Tony visited from Detroit a couple weeks ago and I was touched he tested before he came. We went to the cheap Italian joint for lunch on the patio. No crowd, no heat, no bugs. It was quite a pleasure!
I am hearing that people who were in the trials for the combination flu/covid shot experienced more side effects than with the individual ones, though still not serious ones. Think I will get them one at a time.
DeleteAlso am hearing that women shouldn't schedule mammograms right after getting a booster, because it may be more painful due to swelling, and possibly lead to confusing results. Since I am due for mammogram, I have that scheduled, and won't get the second booster until afterwards.
I use the home tests sometimes before a group activity, for what they're worth. I figured I'd get the 2nd booster while the BA.5 is running hot. I agree about getting the flu shot separately. I'll get mine at my September yearly checkup. Life gets medical enough with age without a pandemic on top of it.
DeleteKatherine, I was scheduled for a booster a few weeks before my breast cancer surgery. The surgeon said to get it, but in the arm opposite the side she would be operating on. She said it can cause some swelling in the lymph nodes and that could possibly confuse the biopsy results of the lymph nodes. So I assume the same thing could happen with a mammoth.
DeleteMy dental hygienist said she was told something similar about mammos and the vax. She delayed her vax last year until things were squared away there. (And please join me in prayers of Thanksgiving for health care workers like her. She went to bat with the dentist, and they did a procedure in the office for $120 that the oral surgeon wanted $500 for.)
DeleteI am very sorry to hear about people dealing with serious illness or diagnostics for serious illness in the middle of all this.
To pull the point back to something thematically adjacent to Jim's original post, none of us have come this far in the pandemic without running into something that reminds us of our own fragility and how much we have to trust others (two things I hate, but am trying to change). Might be a new work situation that requires more tech literacy, or a medical issue, or dealing with family members who think they are are political pundits and experts on the spread and treatment of novel viruses, dealing with shortages of goods, or having a favorite store go out of biz..
For those with chronic illnesses hoping to do things while they still feel pretty good, 2+ years of covid is a significant amount of "healthy time" to have been cooped up.