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?

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.