Practicalmadness

Tonight we have finally gotten our cable TV reconnected after a two-month dry spell, and this time we're sticking to just basic cable, at least until the money situation improves. Then again, we may not ever have to upgrade our cable to a nicer package, as there are apparently only two channels we ever watched that don't fall within the comfy confines of Comcast's cheapest package.

I find it incredible that Food Network is a basic channel, but CNN is not, nor are Fox News or MSNBC. (CNN Headline News is the only cable news channel we get.) Bravo, with its independent movies and Canadian sitcoms, is a basic cable station. And we get Sci-Fi and Comedy Central but not USA, TNT , TNN or TBS. This is a good thing but for the loss of Law & Order Monday Marathons.

I thought that perhaps the cable guys had made a mistake -- Comcast had told me that our $17/mo cable TV would include only local broadcast stations -- until I saw which channels were not available. We don't get major AOL Time Warner-owned channels or any MTV Network besides MTV itself. We don't get the Disney Channel or ABC Family, which is owned by Disney.

This makes a lot of sense: Time Warner would charge the higher 'expanded basic' rate for their channels because they have their own cable business of which Comcast is a competitor. (I wonder if Cartoon Network and CNN are basic channels on Time Warner Cable?) Disney networks's would be better-than-basic because Disney thinks anything with their brand names on it is worth more money than it really ought to be. And MTV is basic because it always has been -- it debuted before there was even such a thing as 'expanded basic'.

On the other side of the coin, Discovery makes money by keeping its costs low, and is (I presume) able to sell their channels for less without affecting the bottom line. This is brilliant business because on some cable systems, Discovery channels like Animal Planet can run without competitiion from more glossy kid-oriented channels like Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.

At any rate, I am pleasantly surprised.