Why does Comcast hate Chicago?

By Chris Karr in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 16, 2005 12:41PM

Last night, after two weeks of traveling, a good bit of stress at work, and with a general sense of laziness, Chicagoist hoped to sit down, get some ice cream, and veg out in front of the television - getting caught up on missed episodes of "Stargate" and "Battlestar Galactica". Chicagoist may not watch a whole lot of television since "Hell's Kitchen" wrapped up, but we wanted to see how the ragtag band of survivors from Caprica were doing since the last episode.

Chicagoist sat down on the couch, soft drinks and snacks in hand. We picked up the Tivo remote and navigated to our favorite shows.

Ah. Bliss...

Odd. There seemed to be a few episodes missing. What's up? Where were the new shows?

Checking the recording log, we found that the shows were not recorded. Not an odd coincidence since the (future) in-laws were in town and hanging out. Maybe they just decided to watch Trading Spaces (or one of its ilk) on a Friday evening instead of recording Stargate and Galactica.

Understandable.

Going to our Season Pass manager, we looked for upcoming showings. The Tivo politely informed us that there were no upcoming showings of anything on the Sci-Fi Network.

WTF?

Increasingly panicked, Chicagoist checked the backup plan - the fiancé's Tivo where Chicagoist covertly sneaked some shows into the recording list for cases just like this. Nothing there either. What the hell's going on here?

After visiting the oracle at Google, the answer became clear - Comcast switched a number of their offerings from standard basic cable to digital only. Apparently only in Chicago.

(More below the fold.)

For years, Chicagoist has enjoyed basic analog cable. We could take a standard coax cable and plug that into our TV, VCR, or PC. No futzing around with crappy set-top boxes, advertisements when we changed the channels, extra charges for hooking up other televisions, or dealing with the morons that they send out to hook everything up. Analog cable was simple, unobtrusive, and something you could hook up to as many televisions as you had coax cable and outlets.

The Chicago Tribune has been following the topic in their entertainment news. (Search for "Comcast" to jump to the relevant portions.) In the August 5 entry, a Comcast representative named Pat Keenan is quoted, "I think a lot of people won't even pay attention to the change."

While the simple rules of etiquette and numerous laws covering defamation prevent us from saying what we think of Keenan and her company, we will say that this is a sleazy tactic on behalf of a shady company to strong-arm consumers into purchasing their digital service. So, what will Chicagoist end up doing? There are a number of options. If the set-top box issue wasn't an issue, Chicagoist would subscribe to DirectTV or DishNetwork. We might look at RCN's offerings, as they have no plans to only provide these networks through their digital offerings (contrary to the misinformation being spread by Comcast representatives). If we were a member of the Wired generation (and we're not claiming that we are), we might look into some old-fashioned peer-to-peer downloads. Finally, there will eventually be DVDs made available, but we don't really feel like waiting and letting our co-workers spoil the plots over lunch because they've not put themselves in a position to be shafted by Comcast.

While we could rant about the evils of giant corporations and what we dream of doing should we encounter a Comcast employee on the street, the thing that hurts us the most is we loved the Sci-Fi Network and its new shows. It gave us a renewed hope that television might stop its progression of being a series of product placements wrapped up in stupid and inane plots and become an actual vehicle for good storytelling. If Comcast had even a heart the size of a pea, it would have left the channel blank as a sign of respect for what was once there. Instead the bastards replaced it with the likes the Golf Channel and CourtTV.

We shudder to think how Dante would describe the level of hell that is reserved for Comcast and its frakking ilk.