I'd say that I have a love-hate relationship with DIRECTV, but that wouldn't be honest. My DIRECTV relationship is almost entirely based on hate.
I hate how much our monthly subscription costs. I hate how shows we've recorded mysteriously disappear from our DVR (digital video recorder). I hate that the Pac-12 Networks aren't carried.
And I hate it when DIRECTV engages in a corporate pissing match with the owner of one of the channels that we've paid to get, yet is at risk of being taken off the DIRECTV lineup for reasons that are never specifically disclosed but which obviously involve corporate greed.
The current channel-losing irritation is the prospect of losing KGW, the Portland NBC affiliate, at 5 pm next Monday, November 30.
KGW is owned by Tegna. DIRECTV and Tegna can't agree on how much the former should be paid by the latter for being able to offer the local station to subscribers.
I couldn't care less who is at fault here. Both corporations are money-grubbing assholes who don't care about ordinary people, just how much money they're making.
DIRECTV says Tegna is doing them wrong. Tegna says DIRECTV is doing them wrong,
My attitude is that both DIRECV and Tegna are wrong to threaten the removal of programming that us DIRECTV subscribers have paid for, yet won't be getting if KGW is taken off our channel lineup on Monday.
DIRECTV is losing customers at a rapid rate. So the non-geniuses at AT&T, which owns DIRECTV, are figuring that taking away channels from their diminishing number of subscribers is the way to increase profitability?
Not going to happen.
Sure, currently my wife and I are stuck with DIRECTV (or Dish, which is just as bad as DIRECTV) because we live in a rural area where cable TV doesn't exist and cell service is slow, leaving us with no TV alternatives other than satellite.
But I'm looking forward to the rollout of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service, which promises to give people like us a hugely faster Internet speed than the crappy 6-7 Mbps we get from CenturyLink now.
This will open up streaming possibilities that are closed to us at the moment. So the more DIRECTV offers up horrible customer service, the more likely it is people like us will bail on DIRECTV when we have the chance.
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