Cablevision and Fox's Thin Thread

Tonight, as I was preparing my kids for bed, I switched to check the score of the Phillies - Giants NLCS Game One. As previously mentioned, I'm not life and death with the Phils; I renounced fandom in my 20s for all of MLB during the strike, and it never really fully came back for any team but the early Moneyball A's, and since that franchise went into full-scale fraud, I'm a man without any great allegiance beyond my fantasy teams. But I did want to see the game.

Instead, like millions of others in the New York through Philadelphia region, I got a blank screen from my cable provider (Cablevision) blaming Fox, and asking me to go complain to that station for the stoppage. Fox, of course, wants me to go blame Cablevision. It's likely to continue through tomorrow at this point, and cause me to miss the Eagles-Falcons game.

At which point I'd like to say to both entities... Boy, it's surprisingly easy to live without both of you.

In the past year, my income has been stagnant, but my expenses have grown. In this, I'm pretty sure that I'm far from unique. The family makes sacrifices; we cut back on groceries and movies, haven't taken any expensive vacations, don't use the heat or AC more than we absolutely have to, etc., etc. I blog for spare change, grind at poker and fantasy sports for hustle bucks, and mostly just cut back on any unnecessary expense. So I don't go out to lunch at my day job very often; hell, most days, I just don't eat, or at least, not much after breakfast. The digestive problems help on that part.

And every month that my income doesn't rise, I look for things to cut back on, since we're more or less breaking even as a financial unit. This cable box that I'm looking at right now? Increasingly indefensible. And I'm not alone in thinking it should go. According to a recent survey by Credit Suisse, 37% of Netflix subscribers aged 25 to 34 use their service instead of pay television. Almost 30% of the 18 to 24 market use the Netflix stream instead of cable or satellite. And I'm really thinking hard about becoming one of them. So long as Fox and Cablevision decide to play Phallus Roulette with the games, I can't imagine that I'm going to be the only one that goes this way.

Sports is the very last thing that I watch live, rather than on DVD or on a stream. The blog revenue, when it's good, covers the pay part of the vice, which means that the only thing left is the time. So without the game, my girls and I watched other stuff. On my Netflix queue, without commercial interruption, without a dime (potentially) going to either of these disgusting slagheaps of bloat, waste and avarice. The billions of dollars that are spent on broadcast television ads? Completely missing me. Much in the same way that radio and newspaper, magazine and outdoor get missed, because I either no longer subscribe, or no longer notice.

So, Fox and Cablevision? Keep pushing the envelope. Take no quarter. See how much you enjoy Congressional investigations (since Congress critters are people too, and they react just as badly when you take their games away), your ever-deepening sense of public scorn, your calls for legislation to protect consumer interests, and all of the rest of the PR crapfest that you had months to avoid, but could not. Suck it down, just the same way that your customers are taking it today, and most likely tomorrow.

Just know that the longer you do, the smaller the pie that you are cutting. And the greater chance that the public will demand your hides, and that some government employee that would like to curry favor with their constituents will figure out how to give it to them. Hopefully with prejudice.