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Comment by butterfi | Hacker News Reader

Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as people like me start refusing to pay for those extra services (TV, phone). I've already dropped Comcast for Sonic for some for these reasons.

If I was in charge of a TV network, I'd start dropping the amount of ad time during programming and start adding more time to my hit shows. I know there is an ecosystem that makes this challenging, but would you rather spend you life bailing out the water or would you rather just fix the boat?

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Not to burst your bubble, but I recently ditched Comcast/Xfinity for Internet TV. I tried several providers, and found that Xfinity provided the most permissive interface for skipping commercials on my DVR recorded content.

I settled on YouTube TV, however their policy regarding commercials is even worse than Comcast.

For example, if I record something to my YT DVR, AND the show is also available "on demand" YT will force me to watch the ON Demand version (with unskipable ads), or will block me from skipping commercials on the DVR version.

Whereas Comcast restricted skipping commercials on On Demand content, they did not force me to watch the On Demand version, and did not block my ability to skip commercials.

Hulu Live TV blocks commercial skipping completely on DVR content.

My point is that I believe people would appreciate less ad time. Tools for skipping ad time are a band-aid rather then a solution.

People have been complaining about ad time for years and nothing happens. People from other countries think our ad duration is insane. In the US it's about 9 minutes of commercials for every 30 minute slot, so roughly 1/3rd. Plus, commercials will disrupt a 30 minute show slot 3-4 times.

You can do some analysis on iTunes. When I look up "Leave it to Beaver," which came out in the 50s?, it was 4.2 minutes per 30 minute show, so it has more than doubled. You can tell by the run time of the show: 25:38 for Beaver vs 21:00 for Pawn Stars.

Some syndicated shows have been sped up slightly and edited so stations can add more commercials.

The biggest problem wasn't commercials (didn't help) but bundling. Why should I pay ... $10/mo for MTV/Nickolodeon? $20/mo for 20 different ESPN channels?

A la carte cable offerings is what NFLX should be worried about. 10 live stations (maybe a small premium station surcharge) for a small fee will compete for the same limited number of leisure hours in a day we have on average.

The idea we could use (or want) 500 channels was always a mistake.

Only Sling offers a "lightweight" bundle akin to your description. Most start with the same 50-60 base channels (I recently tried most of them). In a few years, "Internet TV" providers will essentially morph into traditional TV providers (jokes on us!)

What Comcast doesn't mention is that when you get a TV bundle to save on internet costs the fees they tack on for TV increase the monthly bill by around 40% of the advertised rate. Bundling TV is actually more expensive when you look at the total bill but people buy according to the advertised rate vs. the actual bill.

There's no way that's true unless you live in a really messed up market, taxation-wise.

Here in the SF bay area I have gigabit internet through comcast and allow them to shove their "basic" cable TV service in my general direction (it's not even hooked up) because it 'saves' me $5 or $10 or whatever per month on my internet charges. (All I know is the total bill is $144 which is less than the advertised rate of $169 for Gigabit, but I've been through this excercise many times in the past 5 years, where I try to get JUST internet, and they offer me tv+internet for $5 or $10/mo cheaper; last time I didn't even ask for the full numbers)

Fees:

Broadcast TV Fee $8

FCC Regulatory Fee: $0.08

Franchise Fee: $2.01

PEG Access Support: $0.55

Local Utility User Tax: $1.55

State Sales Tax: $0.23

So, $12.42 in taxes and fees, only $8 of which is clearly related to broadcast TV (and here I'm assuming I don't pay that fee just by being a subscriber to a cable company, even if I get internet-only).

I plan on calling sometime soon to clarify, but I've done it many times, and it never saves me a penny.

Somewhat unrelated, just reduced my internet speed from gigabit to 250Mbps; upload down from 35Mbps to 10Mbps and it's $96.95 'before taxes' .. hopefully, at least, I won't have that $8 broadcast fee, but I'm pretty mixed about this whole thing. I only got gigabit because I could, but I might miss that upload, just a little bit. And it's only $40 per month that I'm saving. Maybe $45 tops. Still, interested to see how it pans out. And finally I get to return the damn cable box they won't let me return as long as I have TV service. And -1 subscriber count, almost worth it for me just for that alone. They tried to throw a 2 year $99 gigabit offer at me, but I keep hoping SOME day I'll get FTTH.. I know, don't hold your breath.

There is also the $10 "HD Technology Fee". If you have multiple TVs it's $10 for each additional set top box per month. I know our 6 TVs is a little extreme but that by itself would be an extra $50 a month.

Ah. I have no idea what kind of box they gave us, it just sits in the attic. I've got 3 TVs; 1x 4k and 2x 1080p but they're all hanging off the TiVo Bolt and TiVo Minis.

We're definitely not getting charged an extra tenner for an HD box.

I looked at my bill. I pay $140 per month for cable and internet. Actual bill is $181. So more like 30%.

They all do it. "Add cable to your internet connection plan for $10." Then at checkout they tell you about the $9 sports fee, the $15 local channel fee and the $5 news fee. Deception pricing is becoming all too common. Hotels with resort fees, cable with channel fees, mobile providers with number portability fees. All never included in advertised priced

40% is not accurate.

There was an article a couple months ago about how fox/cbs/nbc/abc had committed to reducing the amount of commercials during regular programming. It was not an insignificant amount.

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