I’m getting tired of this crap.
I was just notified that SHOOTING GALLERY, COWBOYS, PDTV, G&A TV — the entire Outdoor Channel, in fact — is going to be "up-tiered" in the Chicago and central Illinois area. Up-tier is a nice cable industry euphemism for charging people more money to watch the programming they really want…you paid extra to get the Outdoor Channel on the digital basic package, so time for the ole bait-and-switcharoonie!
Don’t worry…you can still get the 24-hour home putt-putt golf, the all-insects all-the-time and the party lingerie sales channels, but owweeeee, guns are scary and we want to make it harder for you to see them on television! Is it any surprise that this "initiative" is happening in Illinois, which as become the front line gun-rights battleground in the last year or so? Hey, Illinois is also one of the biggest shooting and hunting states in the country…the Barry shooting sports complex, one of the top practical pistol venues in the world; the Sparta World Shooting Complex, home of the Grand; companies like Springfield Armory, Rock River Arms and on and on.
Yet another example of Big Brother sticking it the consumer, who in this case happens to be my viewers! Interesting information: Comcast owns both Versus and Golf Channel. Guess which networks are conveniently missing from the list of ones Comcast is putting on the more expensive “sports tier” in Chicago? You guessed it…the Comcast-owned cable homes of hockey and golf somehow missed their ticket to the sports tier. Last time I checked, hockey and golf were sports. Well, hockey, anyway. Well, sort of.
Outdoor Channel is one of the last independent cable networks left — why I work for them, BTW — and Comcast thinks they can push the little guy around. Sucks. We've fought long and hard to make sure real shooting, real hunting stuff is out there...even in Mayor Daley's Gun-Free Paradise of Chicago.
So we've decided to not roll over.
Let’s all send good ole Comcast a rousing "thank you" for screwing shooters! Log onto www.iwantmyoutdoorchannel.com and sound off. If you want to really tick them off, call 866-654-SAVE (7283), too. Even if you don’t live in the Chicago area, log onto the website just to irritate 'em. Like anti anti-gun "initiatives," this is a slippery slope. Comcast gets away with it in Chicago, guess what? tomorrow it’s your cable system. If they do it once, they’ll do it again. Yeah, the Outdoor Channel pays me, but show me where else you get real shooting shows...show me another channel that'll put John Farnam, Michael Janich, Bill Murphy, Clint Smith or Mas Ayoob on the air...ain't happening.
Oh, and be sure to tell Mayor Daley Michael Bane says, "Hi!"
We've had to pay extra (a LOT extra) for the package including OC since before Comcast took over from Adelphia. It sucks.
ReplyDeleteThey also charge extra for the History International channel!
Hobie, another History International fan, except when they run incessant variants of the DaVinci Code crap.
ReplyDeleteMB, I cannot even GET the Outdoor Channel, as I am deployed to Harrisburg, PA on business for the foreseeable future. All I get is comcast basic, and they just removed HBO from that! May be the apartment building's doing, though, as the apts get the Comcast as a part of the monthly rent payment. In any event, I have not seen the Wed lineup in months, now THAT sucks!!
I haven't watched OLC since they stopped showing their Cowboy SASS every Monday night, replacing it with bull riding. It wasn't bad - it just wasn't SHOOTING!
ReplyDeleteThen, they called it Versus, and put in Hockey.
OUT, which I should get on DirecTV, doesn't even show up.
It's sad when the Skateboarding channel shows more kids with shotguns - IN A POSITIVE MANNER - than the former hunting network. I kid you not, the FUEL network did an interview with a young skateboarding amateur, and they did the interview at the range where the kid did his shotgunning. And the host had fun. Bless Fuel...