The CBS/Showtime blackout is over, so why am I still VERY angry?

It's all over. Sometimes last night after 6 pm. all those Showtime channels on the grid repopulated along with the Smithsonian Channel. Of course we never lost the CBS Sports Network, poor little unpopular channel. It's been the whipping boy of the whole debacle.

I am still pissed off. Pissed off at Time Warner Cable. Pissed off because they chose to not deliver content I had already paid for (you pay your cable bill for the upcoming month's service) as a negotiating tactic in a dispute that should not have involved me at all.

I was not on Time Warner's team or CBS' team, I was on MY team. They were not on my team, despite their constant claims to be "working for me." The point of it all in Time Warner's mind was that they were protecting me from higher prices.

Bullshit.

So we're back to Ray Donovan and the final season of Dexter and all the Gigolos reruns you can stuff in your craw from the On Demand menu. One thing this new agreement does do for consumers is provide Time Warner subscribers to Showtime Anytime, their IPTV catchup service. Not yet, just checked, but apparently soon.

I will not be happy until the pay TV services begin to sell access to their catchup services to non-cable subscribers. Starz doesn't have one yet but I'm sure it's in the pipeline.

Ultimately what the disruption did for me was it let me know I could survive without cable. I purposely spent many days with just offerings from Netflix and Hulu and I was very happily enrobed in all kinds of great programming from previously unseen British sketch comedy from Robert Webb and David Mitchell to the first season of Bob's Burgers with which I needed to catch up to movies like Iron Sky (Nazis who have been settled on the dark side of the moon since WWII are found) and Safety Not Guaranteed (Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass get ready to travel through time).

If I didn't have a senior in my home I would be cutting the cord right now. However, he has a thing for turning on the History Channel and watching hours of their Vegas-set pawn and restoration shows. Still gonna try, gonna lay out the costs and the benefits for him and see if I can talk him into it. The difference in price is enormous! These two services and a digital antenna can get you through and quite famously, actually.

Something to think about. Huh?

Angry Time Warner Cable subscribers on Twitter for August 18

The Twitter bird looks pretty mad! I think there's trouble in paradise for Time Warner Cable. If this goes past the beginning of football season all hell is gonna break loose.

Here's a selection of Tweet heat from the interwebs:

@MegTowe @TWC @CBS I was just wondering the same thing? Time for FioS?
— arianash (@arianash) August 18, 2013

@TWC is to blame NOT @cbs for your blocked channels. You pay the cable company your hard earned dollars. #CANCELTWC and move on to @Uverse
— Joe The Music Man (@IKNOWMUSIC_2012) August 18, 2013

@tvdotcom @TimAtTVDotCom Here in Kansas City, the @CBS @TWC mess is just a win for @googlefiber
— Ben Knight (@camulus) August 18, 2013

Saw the trailer for Season 3 of #Homeland just now. Pumped! Just hope @CBS and @TWC work out their dumb argument so I can actually watch it!
— Constant Complainer (@ComplaintMan) August 18, 2013

What nice gesture to fuck over LA during a great #dodgers season...@TWC & @cbs. Disconnecting my cable ASAP.
— Vizzy (@ShaunVizzy) August 18, 2013

CBS Sports Network remains on Time Warner Cable. Did they forget?

It's the only CBS cable television property left on my Time Warner Cable connected TV. Why? My theory is that Time Warner forgot they carry the channel.

Why? Maybe it's their programming mix, which obviously includes Major League Lacrosse (image above). Yes, there's professional lacrosse. No, I don't watch it. They wear masks, you can't see their faces like in Aussie Rules Football, which also has sleeveless uniform shirts. WIN!

Also today on CBS Sports Net? Bull riding, arena football and motorcycle racing.

Blah.

Couldn't have left Showtime, huh?

Deals on digital antennae -- get your CBS for FREE!!! The way it was intended. But what about Showtime?

FREE!!!

Sorry if I'm harshing your negotiating tactic buzz, Time Warner Cable, but it's true. FREE!

Channel Master has a deal for you on digital antennae, just use the coupon code "RestoreCBS" at the checkout.

Radio Shack is reporting double digit increases in sales of both indoor and outdoor digital antennae at their stores in cities affected by the CBS blackout; Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit, per Multichannel News.

I can't get you Showtime with an antenna, though. What I can do is implore both Showtime and HBO to make their content available outside the purview of a cable or satellite company. And so can you. Now
HBO's Richard Plepler has already batted down rumors that HBO would offer HBO Go to non-HBO subscribers, interestingly rumors that he started himself. I still don't have access to Showtime Anytime at all because Time Warner Cable isn't compliant.

Take My Money HBO is a website link you can click to check up on the progress of such and occasionally voice your opinion via Twitter. It's run by Jake Caputo, you can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

Variety's Andrew Wallenstein makes a great case for this in March:

HBO has good reason not to untether HBO Go. Such a move would undoubtedly trigger a mass exodus from the subscriber base that provides the lion’s share of the $1.5 billion in profits the Time Warner unit pocketed last year. Such a split would also upset the pay TV distributors who fork over billions to lock up that programming exclusively, not to mention shoulder some or all of the marketing and subscriber acquisition costs.

And yet the whiners are correct: It’s time for a broadband-only offering from HBO in the U.S. Let’s call it HBO Go-It-Alone.

Reducing copyright infringement isn’t even the primary reason to make HBO Go available on a standalone basis. More to the point is that the demand for a broadband-only version of HBO is going to grow astronomically; the subscriber count for the linear channels will not.

It is a foolish idea for the pay cable channels to ignore what the consumer wants. The consumer will win. They should get on the bus sooner rather than later.

NYC mayoral hopeful & City Council Speaker Quinn on TWC/CBS dispute

The war plays out on Twitter, too.

At @TWC & @CBS hearing urging both parties to negotiate & not hold NYers hostage to their contract disputes anymore pic.twitter.com/HVQncdmsxw
— Christine C. Quinn (@ChrisCQuinn) August 8, 2013

So you say you want to sue Time Warner Cable. You're not alone!

So? So do a lot of other people. Check out the results of this Los Angeles Times poll that asked what end users would like to do in reference to the dispute.

You can still vote in that poll, click this link. It's on the same page as Jon Healey's most recent story on the retransmission dispute (carriage war) between CBS Inc. and Time Warner Cable, from Friday's paper. I know, I think they should have a story every day, too. I'd rather see the Times to original reporting on this than recap So You Think You Can Dance, which they do.

(A newspaper. In a major city. Recaps the dancing show on Fox and publishes it in the paper, often. As if it were news. SMH.)

There are some people following through, people uniquely qualified to do so. In Milwaukee there's a retransmission dispute between Time Warner and their NBC affiliate which is owned by the Journal Broadcast Group. They missed a Green Bay Packers preseason game this past weekend.

The guys bringing the suit, those uniquely qualified guys? Lead plaintiff is Milwaukee attorney Paul Scoptur, and I'm guessing he's not paying himself for his work on this case. That suit might have legs, if only because of an angry lawyer. I never thought I'd be applauding an angry lawyer, but GO PAUL SCOPTUR!!!

His mention in a Friday Hollywood Reporter story at this link.

I'll follow this and keep you in the loop.

Time Warner Cable, don't screw with my TV. I WILL cut you.

Sometimes good things come of bad things.

It's day five of CBS Inc. vs. Time Warner Cable. Haven't had any of the gazillion Showtime channels, lost the Smithsonian Channel too, and I didn't even realize CBS served them up.

(Now I understand why Tom Cavanaugh did all that stuff for them, he's probably working off his Love Monkey contract. Yes, I know it doesn't work like that. Yes, I would have liked to see where that show went. No, I don't know what Tom is doing now.)

Missed Ray Donovan on Saturday. Not that I'm current, I have three episodes on the DVR yet to watch. The DVR's a bit of an issue right now, also, it seems to be stopping recording stuff after a time and you have to reboot the thing to fix it. Gotta watch those (and all of Downton Abbey series three) before I turn it in for new hardware, if I do at all, Time Warner Cable you bastards.

You see, the thing is ... CBS is more than happy to have Time Warner continue to feed the channels to their subscribers, but Time Warner has pulled them in an effort to affect negotiation. Apparently CBS Inc. loses $400,000 a day in fees from us because of this. Of course CBS lost probably 20 times that just airing a Rob Schneider sitcom a few times so I don't know how that's a punishment. $400K a day for a corporation the size of CBS is a dime clinking around your washing machine.

So yeah, I'm pissed at my cable company. And I'm doing something about it. And I'm activating this blog again.

I already have a Roku 2, but I also got a Google Chromecast this week. Roku didn't support YouTube and a guy's gotta see his very well shot amateur videos from the Comic-Con panels so that wasn't gonna do. Chromecast is fine, but for a guy like me who doesn't opt for a smartphone in his life (I'm a much better person for it, not judging you) it means operating the thing from my laptop, which means carrying that around the house.

The loser here is Samsung. I bought a Samsung Smart Blu-Ray player hoping it would handle all this but the YouTube interface fails constantly and they decided NOT to update the Smart Blu-Ray for HBOGo, just the higher priced TVs. Boooo!

I know ... White people problems.

So, for the next few weeks I'll be trying out this cord cutting thing without actually cutting yet. Trial run. Test. And if you want you can follow along. I'll update on Twitter too (@JoeWatchesTV) and of course I'll be complaining to every one of my Facebook friends along the way.

Don't screw with my TV. I will cut you.

House of Lies, Episode One -- Watch it Here Right Now

Boom! Who gives you the pay cable premieres? That's right, it's me.