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Comcast Raises Controversial 'Broadcast TV' and 'Sports' Fees $48 Per Year (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast's latest price hikes include a significant increase in the company's widely despised "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees. The Broadcast TV fee is moving from $5 a month to $7 a month, while the Regional Sports Network fee is rising from $3 a month to $5 a month, according to notices sent to customers in several cities. Combined, that's a change from $8 to $12 a month, giving Comcast an extra $48 a year from each customer that has to pay the fees. Comcast began charging these fees a few years ago, which have risen quickly. Just over a year ago, Comcast raised the Broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5 and the Regional Sports fee from $1 to $3. The two fees have thus gone from $4 to $12, combined, in little more than a year. Comcast customers recently sued the company, saying that Comcast falsely advertises lower-than-actual prices and then raises rates by tacking on these two fees. Comcast falsely portrays these fees as being required by the government, the proposed class action lawsuit said. Charter is facing a similar lawsuit. Comcast says the fees recover a portion of the price it pays broadcast networks and regional sports networks to air their content. But paying for programming is simply part of the cost of doing business as a cable TV provider, and programming costs have always been passed on to consumers in their cable TV bills. By charging fees separately from basic rates, "Comcast has found a way to secretly and repeatedly increase the monthly price it charges for its channel packages" even when customers are supposed to be getting a flat rate during a contract term, the lawsuit said. The Broadcast TV fee was introduced in 2014, initially as $1.50 a month, and the Regional Sports fee was added in 2015 at $1 a month. Comcast charges the sports fee even though it owns many of the regional sports networks that broadcast sporting events in local markets. The price increases were reported by TVPredictions and DSLReports, and customers have been posting letters they received from Comcast detailing the price changes.
These fees are just one way they have to claw those costs back.
Another method is having State Governments pass laws stopping cities and towns from operating their own networks in competition.
Verizon recently introduced a $2.80 (plus taxes) fee for my FIOS router, which they claim is old -- and to "support it" they need this monthly fee.
Never mind that this is their equipment to start with. Now, my choice is to pay the fee every month or buy a "new" ($70) router, with no guarantee that they won't pull this exact same stunt next year.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Wall Street investors want year-over-year profit increases. It is far easier for Comcast to just raise these fees (which really should be a part of the quoted price for the cable TV package) than it is for Comcast to spend money on things that make its customers happy (like quality customer service) and more willing to buy more Comcast products.
The best way to opt out of these fees is not to pay Comcast ANY money and switch to just watching content from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube!
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
Actually, you are free to choose from a variety of alternate programming, including none. Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you pay for TV at all.
Or does making wildly false claims make you feel morally and mentally superior ?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Thankfully, I live in a market with cable alternatives to Comcast/Xfinity. Their service is unreliable, their rates are extortionate, and their customer service makes it preferable to deal with Cthulhu. I ditched them ten years ago as soon as there was an alternative, and I have no regrets. My impression was that they regarded me as an enemy rather than a customer.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Except that who provides your internet? Ah, those same companies! And what can you do without internet? Not much.
"Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you pay for TV at all."
Ultimately, someone may be. Those under contract, who paid for service at a specific rate are now seeing price increases to the service being disguised as government mandated "fees." Stop paying before the contract ends, and ultimately the full force of government law enforcement (which includes guns) may come into play.
Yeah, it's a stretch in the real world, but so is claiming that such people have a real choice. Do you "you feel morally and mentally superior?"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
...or switch to Satellite TV (which I've done for *years* now... )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
TFS: "Comcast began charging these fees a few years ago, which have risen quickly. Just over a year ago, Comcast raised the Broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5 and the Regional Sports fee from $1 to $3. The two fees have thus gone from $4 to $12, combined, in little more than a year."
So, a practice that started "a few years ago" and has continued over the past year, has what to do with Trump?
Its time for the yearly rate increases. Its the time of year when contracts need to be re-upped and content providers want more money for the same content. They don't offer one more hour than they did previously and lets face it, the shows are all about the same in the end. Content providers want more money every time and the cable companies pass it on to the consumer. But if you want to bitch about Comcast and other cable companies go ahead. What do you expect them to do? HBO has stopped offering contracts and is betting on its direct to the consumer streaming service. Pretty soon all those scrubs who ditched cable will discover they are having pay twice as much to get the same content they were getting from cable. But please don't let me stop you from blaming the wrong people for the way things are.
The OTA channels actually benefit because, for any number of reasons, it can be difficult to pick up their signal. Plus their ratings increase through the use of DVRs.
Except the broadcasters aren't all that happy about viewers who fast forward through their commercials.
I can see it now - they will stop itemizing your bill, and if you request an itemized version, there will be a hefty fee for that. Figure out how to charge someone who tries to figure out the charges. Brilliant!!!
(For the sarcastically impaired, yes, I know federal laws and regulations require the itemization)
This is the exact kind of crap that should really drive folks to do this.
I figured my set up....
For local channels, I set up an indoor HDTV antenna (you can find these on sale, I got mine at Wally Worldmart for $79). I put this up on a pole in my house and works great. I had to get this, in order to get our local PBS (WYES) that is still on VHF, and is very hard to pull in with other antennas. Otherwise, I'd recommend one of the Mohu Leaf HDAntennas. This one worked great except for my local PBS and I like some shows on there.
I bought a Tivo Roamia OTA 1TB DVR to act as my local channel tuner. It comes with included lifetime guide service. Worked great out of the box.
The only drawback of the Tivo unit, is that the Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming which it also does (and searches across), the front ends are horribly laggy, but for OTA needs, it is amazing.
For my streaming needs, I got the Amazon FireTV.
I got this over the FireTV stick for its extra computing power. It streams VERY well Netflix, and Amazon Prime (4K on these too). AND...the power was needed for my streaming app that solves my "cable network" needs.
I did Playstation VUE. I got the 70+ channels package for $35/mo. It has all the ESPNs (I like during college football season), all the cable news I want (MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc), and channels like TCM, TBS, Nat'l Geo, FX..etc...
It also has built in DVR functionality, which makes it great for catching the Walking Dead on AMC to watch at my convenience and skip commercials.
The Fire TV is powerful enough to use the VUE guide....Roku 3 and PS3 could not use the guide very well at all.
So, this is my living room.
For the other TVs in my house (bedrooms, office), I set up a bit of networking for those.
I set up Tivo Minis to stream from the main unit into each bedroom, for DVR and live HD tv. The main unit has 4 receivers, so you can watch different stuff in each room. I also have an Amazon FireTV for each other room, so I can watch streaming or VUE cable channels in each room. Again, each can be watching different things.
The Tivo Minis don't work wirelessly, and I also found the FireTVs don't work as well wireless as they do wired.
So, for each room I have Ethernet over AC....and a little TP-Link switch there too.
So now..everything hooks up nicely, and I dropped from $113/mo for UVerse to $35/mo with VUE.
I figure in about 8 mos I'll break even on the new hardware.
So far, the only caveats....my house has some less than optimal wiring, I think leftover from Katrina rework problems. At times, my Tivo has problems with slow network, but not that often. Also, setting up the Tivo minis...it has to go through Tivo Centrals computers before it can get recognized by your main DVR unit. This is a horribly thought out, PITA...but if you register your Mini online with tivo 24 hours before you hook it up, and then you have the main unit phone home a few times while trying to sync them , it will finally work. They need to fix that. I almost gave up on it, but once it syncs..works as intended and I live the Tivo guide and user interface. Auto commer
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No TV, no phone from your cable provider. Internet only. You can live without TV. Really. Even sports. Try it and you may be surprised.
I do have the above, and it was only a few hundred dollars and easy to set up.
I just listed it in case others wanted to jump in, and save them a few steps of research in what works very well for me.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The cost of communications keeps going up and up. Don't really know why. Fucking monopolies.
Actually, NO, it is not free to cut the cord. I tried to cancel my service with verizon which I've had for at least 7 years and they want to charge me $70 to cancel, claiming I have a "contract", which they are in violation of for raising my rates from the $99 per month to $146 per month with no service upgrades whatsoever.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I don't feel sorry for the majority of people. You guys put us in this boat by voting in politicians that push for big government and regulations that have created these monopolies and eliminated choices in the market that may not have been so manipulative. I'm going to remind you how this went down and where these monopolies came from. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when cable companies started rolling out services municipalities granted exclusive rights for lengthy periods of time. The cable companies argued that they had to recoup their investment and they couldn't do that if there was competition in the market place. The problem is when you put in monopolies they never go away. You just guarantee that more regulation will later be needed to stem the ever increasing costs. What municipalities should have done was refuse to regulate and open the market to competition instead with rates for access to polls and such at the cost of maintaining said polls. There is already going to be a limit in what the market can handle so charging excess fees to connect does little more than raise funds for other projects that shouldn't exist and hinder competition.
Cost to connect my neighbour to fiber despite that fiber is *already* nearby and there is a local junction box in which to connect? $17,000 USD and that's a steal compared to what Comcast is asking in many areas. I've seen $60-80,000 quotes. Comparatively the cost to connect me to fiber was only $3,000 one time fee. Why was it so much higher for my neighbour? The poles are licensed already so despite that they had to run a lot of fiber to connect me and it would be significantly less for my neighbour the charge from the city greatly increased the cost to absurd levels.
The only way we're going to solve these sorts of issues is liberty-minded people who believe in private property and the free market get together in one place to eliminate laws where the are no victims. If there is no violence, fraud, coercion, or theft there should be no law against it. The poles should be readily accessible at cost for those who wish to provide services to the towns residents and on reasonable conditions to provide fair competition in the market. They should be treated like the roads we all drive on.
If you want more personal liberty and a free market you should join us in New Hampshire. The Free State Project and the Shire Society (may be more appetising for anarchists) among other organizations, individuals, radio shows, and groups are organizing in a decentralized way a migration for liberty. Thousands of people are fleeing tyrannical governments across the United States and around the world to help us eliminate the state to whatever extent we can manage.
We aren't against charity, we aren't conservatives, we aren't republicans, we aren't democrats, we aren't socialists. We don't believe the government has any authority over what we can put in our bodies or who we can marry (or even how many people we can marry). We don't want to build a wall. We want the freedom to travel without hindrance of government permission slips. We want the freedom to conduct business without intrusions on our livelihoods. We don't believe in copy"right" and intellectual property. We don't buy into the hype that we need a state police or even any policing at all. We believe we can develop solutions to security issues outside of a theft-by-state paid monopoly. From free apps for smart phones like Cell 411 which enable people to reach out to friends, family, and neighbours to volunteers for help in emergencies to commercial security services (including neighbourhood patrols). Detroit's gone bankrupt and can no longer maintain decent response times. It's resulted in private security service companies being setup to replace government policing. We believe by ending these socialist programs we can increase individuals personal assets across the board. If we eliminated all taxes peoples incomes would roughly double. The vast majority of us would be able to take care of our own health, retiremen
Remember that these fee increases are driven by the spiraling costs the content providers are demanding, especially the sports networks.
Right of Way Use Fee - $1.05
FCC Regulatory Fee - $0.08 (not a government imposed tax)
HD Technology Fee $9.95
On top of that. I have six televisions. It would be an extra $50 a month just for set top box rentals.
If you use their router it's an extra $10 a month.
And if you want unlimited internet it would be an additional $50 a month.
Luckily, I have AT&T as an option (I never thought I would be saying that). $70 a month for unlimited gigabit internet - no additional fees or taxes. I have 4 Roku boxes and three 3rd gen AppleTVs connected to my TVs and my house is wired for Gig-E.
I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Sling and I have an Amazon Prime account (Amazon Video). My total TV cost is Round $50 a month plus whatever you want to allocate toward the cost of an Amazon Prime subscription to Amazon video.
In some ways cable companies get the same rap as insurance companies for costs largely beyond their control. This of course is not to excuse Comcast for playing games with HOW that cost is recorded and associated indefensible marketing schemes which essentially lie about actual prices and fuck over those on contract.
Used to be broadcasters were thrilled to get as many eyeballs as they could to tune in as bigger audience translated into more advertising revenue..at some point long ago cable stopped being dominated by access fees and is now dominated by carriage fees. Now even local broadcasters who broadcast the same signal over the air for free to anyone able to receive it are in the business of extracting carriage costs from cable and satellite providers just because they feel they can get away with it to make more money.
The FCC never said cable companies were REQUIRED to carry local stations for a price other than FREE. Consumers should have the right to opt out of the local crap and should not be forced to pay if they don't want it. I can throw up an antenna in the Attic for $30 and an hour of my time if I want local channels.
Price insanity is particularly egregious given cable/sat industry is on the brink of becoming the next home telephone/portable cd player.
How much can they be paying broadcasters who...broadcast their content for free? The cable co is giving them more eyeballs to sell to their advertisers, the broadcasters need their access as much as the cable cos need their content. I doubt they're jacking up their fees...would be interesting to see some real data.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Just ask them to remove local channels and local sports from your cable package. Buy an eternal VHF/UHF antenna to pick up those channels. Yes your TV will look retro like something from the 1970s. Who cares, you look at the screen, not the antenna.
If Comcast lets you remove those channels, then you won't have to pay the fees and you'll make back the cost of the antenna in a few months. You can pocket the savings every month thereafter.
If Comcast says you can't remove those channels, then they've basically admitted that they are falsely advertising their prices. If there's no way to remove a fee from the price, the fee is a part of the price, not an optional add-on. And they will lose the lawsuits and be forced to include these fees in their advertised prices.
They are actually 'Fuck you" and "fuck your mother too"
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
...or switch to Satellite TV (which I've done for *years* now... )
If it takes years to switch to Satellite TV, who would wait that long?
Whose Comcast account login are you using to validate your session? If your answer is "nobody's", I hate to break it to you but you're using someone's honeypot and all of your internet activities while connected to that router are compromised; a real xfinitywifi AP will only serve you the gateway login page until you sign in.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
... would not even be in business any more if even a large percentage of their customers felt they had any other choice.
Lemme guess, you are under 40, yes? You still have friends that can play and not collapse from overheating, or whose wives and sproggs let them out of the asylum long enough to play?
Except the broadcasters aren't all that happy about viewers who fast forward through their commercials.
Which is what I already do with their OTA broadcasts.
Have gnu, will travel.
Comcast's billing systems are clearly designed to overcharge.
I recently returned a rented cable modem because I bought my own. I can log into Comcast's account page and look at "Devices" and the rented modem is no longer there.
Yet they still billed me for the rented modem. How can their systems know that I don't have the modem, yet continue to charge me for it?
I expect that, if challenged, they would claim that there are two separate systems that don't interact properly and their agent simply did not do his job when I returned the equipment, but why maintain two systems? Why not make them interact better? Probably because mistakes like this almost always work in Comcast's favor, so they have an incentive to not fix the problem.
Someone has taken a decision to not fix a problem that screws up frequently and almost always benefits Comcast. Design can be implemented through concious inaction as well as action. After all, fixing the problem would improve productivity.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If you use XfinityWifi, you are either using it on a free temporary pass (some restaurants do that) or you are a Comcast customer using your own login.
But either way, Comcast uses your device MAC to determine what you are allowed to do. So even if you aren't logging in, they still know it is you and that your device is associated with your account, mainly so the bandwidth you use on an XfinityWifi hotspot is counted against your bandwidth cap.
None of this has anything do with Comcast TV.
If you want TV and sports, get Kodi and an IPTV package for ~$10-15 a month and you'll get hundreds of channels including all the pay channels, porn, sports, and more. It does use a lot of bandwidth so you need the 1GB Comcast cap level.
$10 too much? There are freeTV options via Kodi. Anyone into any sport can probably find a free feed there.
Sig for hire.
And this is why I have internet only.
Fuck off and die Cable TV companies. Fuck off and die.
M 100mbps for $40 month gets me everything I need.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, I hope you never find out you can use Kodi and an IPTV package that blows away everything you are doing. Because you'd have to undo all you have done and probably be very sad about how much overspending and overthinking you did.
Sig for hire.
Whose Comcast account login are you using to validate your session? If your answer is "nobody's",
Nobody's, because Comcast doesn't block ICMP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICMP_tunnel
I can remember when cable systems were nothing more than community antennas. And the local broadcasters begged to get on them because otherwise in hilly areas not many people could receive them. Then they got greedy and had congress enact a law that required cable operators to pay them to carry their content. So now Comcast is being honest and recovering these costs from their customers. Next step: Make the local broadcast package optional and see how many people will just drop it.
Look up the definition of "hoist with his own petard." In this case, I'm siding with Comcast.
Have gnu, will travel.
as cable TV. Meanwhile as my options to watch online content increase so does the cable Internet bill needed to support them. It's pushing $70 now. It was $40 when I started. And net neutrality just died with our last presidential election. That means you won't see you're cable bill going up because they'll be charging Netflix $10/mo per user for access.
You're only option is to stop consuming. That sounds good on paper, but TV brings people together. How much water cooler talk is about TV? How much Ice breaking? It's part of our shared culture, and if you're not in, you're out. Try talking to your Boss about the last great book you read and see his eyes glaze over and him look down his nose at your 'elitism'. We Americans at least don't like elites...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If the terms and conditions change, it gives you the right to cancel your contract without being subject to early termination penalties
Welcome to the real world, most of us don't live in Theory. What you claim is only true if you have a lawyer on retainer. Otherwise, say goodbye to your credit rating and more.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Maybe its your area but in my city there are pretty active rec leagues for all sports. You create a team of your friends or alternatively join a team looking for people.
Where can you buy a legitimate IPTV package?
I have downloaded Kodi on my FireTV, but haven't found much to do with it yet....
A friend of mine had one set up on a Fire Stick...and all it seemed to be good for was a bunch of live TV feeds from Eastern Europe, lots of stuff out of Russia, etc.
I'm not sure what IPTV is, but will look into it.
I didn't spend all THAT much money...but I did want to balance out geeking out myself and my time and want for something not all cobbled together that doesn't work very well or have a nice clean interface. Sound and picture quality are important to me, so what I have so far seems to fit the bill and only cost a few hundred to put together for the whole house.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I salute you for having to balls to do it! As stupid as it sounds, I keep delaying doing something like this because "I can't justify spending that all now", even though I'll end up spending that and more on my Comcast service. My wife and I just have an issue dropping $X at once, even if we'll be spending $2X over time. It's stupid, but I'm glad there is a reasonable setup out there. I'm getting ready for a cable cutting though, by checking antenna placement around the house so we can maximize our TV channels. (I live in Oakland, CA, so it's pretty cool when I can get Bay Area Channels, as well as one or two from Sacramento) My biggest thing is finding someone with reasonable high speed internet and with a reasonable data cap (or none at all) Once I can get that, I may finally just go for it.
Nice writeup. Just wanted to mention that an alternative for those without PS hardware is a raw Sling TV subscription. It goes for $20/mo (+$5 for sports) and runs seamlessly on the FireTV as an app. The interface isn't too bad and definitely passes the wife test.
Btw, I also run Kodi sideloaded on the FireTV despite Amazon's attempts to bury it. Its gets used as a media center for displaying my ripped DVD movies from Netflix for watching later. But it's also a great interface to my mythtv box and HDHomerun tuners. So it's not really useful for viewing OTA within the interface (for that just switch to the native TV's tuner), but it serves as a DVR interface to the mythtv backend for broadcast recordings. The mythtv backend shares duty as a NAS so the hardware cost wasn't one-off for just that purpose.
2 cents.
I can remember when cable systems were nothing more than community antennas. And the local broadcasters begged to get on them because otherwise in hilly areas not many people could receive them.
They didn't have to beg very hard. "Must carry" rules said they had to be carried for free.
Then they got greedy and had congress enact a law that required cable operators to pay them to carry their content.
Uhhh, what? Any broadcaster that wants to be paid for their content does not get to invoke "must carry", so the cable operator is not required to carry them. Broadcasters do not get to demand carriage and payment at the same time.
So now Comcast is being honest and recovering these costs from their customers.
The issue at hand is not that Comcast is justified in recovering these fees, it is that they are listing them as line items outside the normal service fee. The latter is what they advertise.
Make the local broadcast package optional and see how many people will just drop it.
Not a lot. It is really inconvenient to deal with two sources (cable and OTA), especially when DVRs are included in the system. And for some people, myself included, OTA signals are really poor and limited. I get PBS perfectly. If I want to change from ABC (intermittent at best) to FOX/MY/CW I have to physically rotate the antenna, and there is no signal strength meter in my fancy TV to tell me when I'm pointing it the right way. NBC is even more fiddly to get, and I've never gotten an OTA CBS signal. The downside to the whole system is that the TVs don't allow you to simply specify the channel you want to tune to, they have to go through a scanning process to figure out where the channels are and what they are called. ("Channel 8-1" is usually not where "Channel 8" used to be; it can be anywhere in the allocated spectrum.)
F*ck Co mcast - F*ck Com cast = F*ck Comc ast + F*ck Comca st * F*ck Comcas t & F*ck C omcast ^ F*ck Co mcast % F*ck Com cast $ F*ck Comc ast # F*ck Comca st
I recently returned a rented cable modem because I bought my own. I can log into Comcast's account page and look at "Devices" and the rented modem is no longer there. Yet they still billed me for the rented modem. How can their systems know that I don't have the modem, yet continue to charge me for it?
I can top that. I am a Comcast customer and I own my own cable modem. I've never rented a modem from them at any time. But last month what do I see on my bill but a rental fee for a modem. I also got a notice from them telling me that my modem is obsolete and that I need a new one from them. My modem is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and always has been and no service that would require DOCSIS 3.1 is in my area. Comcast knows what equipment I have (or they should since they set it up) and it hasn't changed in 5 years. But that didn't stop them from trying to slip in some charges for renting equipment I never rented from them. Douchebags...
I'd consider going to another vendor but Comcast is the only realistic option where I live. My only other "high speed" internet provider is Frontier Communications which offers substantially slower DSL connections.
The best way to opt out of these fees is not to pay Comcast ANY money and switch to just watching content from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube!
Since Comcast is my internet provider and is the only realistic option for internet in my area, exactly how do you propose I cease paying Comcast any money? Streaming doesn't solve that problem. It allows me to pay them less but I spend more on my internet connection than on cable. You have to have internet service to stream and there are no other service providers in my area worth mentioning.
I actually tried SlingTV first....and found that it didn't have built in DVR, and the channel offerings weren't as good as VUE.
The new ATT DirectTV NOW streaming thing just released is interesting looking...but won't have DVR on it till after we're into 2017.
The nice thing about these is...no contract, if one looks better, change....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you can't put on roof (and I think local laws now can NOT prohibit you from this after the move to digital OTA)...put antenna in attic...you can have it feed all your TVs natively, or to a central TIVO like dVr box like I described and have it stream throughout the house.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Huh, you might want to try that again. It may have worked in the past, but Comcast currently passes no traffic out of the xfinitywifi jail, which you must sign in to get out of.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Why don't more people go out and play sports, instead of sitting on a couch and watching somebody else have fun?
Because the options to play sports for people who aren't children or professionals are rather limited. In my sport of choice (wrestling) it's rather difficult to compete in any meaningful way after college if you aren't an elite athlete. Even if you have the time (which can be challenging if you have a career and/or family) there is basically nobody to practice with and few events to enter. Some sports are easier to participate in as an adult (running, cycling, etc) but most aren't. I coach my sport but I haven't wrestled a competitive match since the early 1990s when I was in college.
There also is the fact that actually playing sports is a lot of work. Sitting on the couch and watching requires zero effort and carries no chance of injury and still can be pretty fun. You don't have to block out hours of time which can be nigh impossible if you have any family responsibilities or a spouse that doesn't share your specific interest. You don't need anyone else to watch with you to be a spectator either which is not true for a lot of sports. Unless you are lucky enough to live in an area that happens to have adult rec leagues in your sport of choice then you are kind of out of luck. A lot of the fun of sports is the camaraderie with the people you do it with. Most sports are social activities at some level.
Maybe its your area but in my city there are pretty active rec leagues for all sports.
"All sports"? I very much doubt it is true for all sports. Maybe there are for the sports you care about but I very much doubt you have leagues for quite a few sports. The options for adults tend to be rather limited even in the best of circumstances. I don't even need to know where you live to know that there isn't an adult rec league in your area for my sport (wrestling) because such a league simply doesn't exist anywhere. The best I could do would be to do something like train at an MMA gym or judo dojo but it's not the same sport.
Even if you live near a major city with lots of rec league options not every sport has such options or is compatible with the life of a busy adult. Most places in the US do not have much in the way of rec leagues for adults available. That's certainly true near me unless I want to drive a considerable distance and play a sport I don't have any interest or skill in.
If you have a fancy new TV with HDR you may want to look elsewhere. The Fire TV doesn't do HDR. It's also limited to 30Hz at 4K, which doesn't currently matter for Netflix or Amazon Prime but does mean that you can't see a tiny amount of YouTube content in its full 60Hz UHD glory. A Roku Premiere+ or Roku Ultra would be better bets.
If you have a 2015 or earlier UHD TV or a new model without HDR, the Fire TV works very well.
Local laws can't prevent you from putting up an OTA antenna unless you are in a historic district. But if you live in an apartment or condo it's another matter. You can't be prevented from putting an antenna outside your own window but it may not be effective in that location, and the people who control the building are not required to give you access to a roof location where it might work. City dwellers often don't have a clear line of sight path to the broadcast stations in any case even from the roof, and reflections off other buildings create a multipath nightmare, so OTA reception may not work reliably.
Things should get better for urban populations if ATSC 3.0 is ever adopted. It is abandoning 8VSB modulation in favor of OFDM, which is much more resistant to multipath interference. We should have done that in 2000 when Sinclair Broadcasting petitioned the FCC for that change (the cost would have been small at the time because HDTV receivers were not yet widely available) but the FCC rejected it.
Comcast only startes telling people about the broadcast TV fee. The fact is cable companies have had to pay for broadcast TV since 1992/3. Don't blame Comcast or Trump for this....this went down during Bush 1.
They didn't have to beg very hard. "Must carry" rules said they had to be carried for free.
I'm talking about the way things were before that law was passed in 1992. When cable TV systems were largely community antenna systems, they had the option to carry or not carry local broadcast stations. In a few cases, the CATV operators would actually charge broadcasters for the privilege of being on their cable. Broadcasters didn't like this and got a law passed which says if they want a cable system to carry their programming, the cable system must do so. But for free. Broadcasters have the option to request licensing fees for their content, but that triggers a clause in the law which gives cable companies the option to drop them.
Not a lot. It is really inconvenient to deal with two sources (cable and OTA),
Your problem, not the cable systems. They are providing you with a service to make your TV watching life easier. The least you could do is to pay for it. And broadcasters have been riding on the cable companies coattails for free as well. Much of the reason that you don't get decent OTA reception is that the broadcasters haven't bothered to maintain equipment suitable to cover their assigned areas, or installed repeaters to fill in dead spots. They can force the cable companies to carry their content (meanwhile whining that the cable systems are getting 'free' content) and leave fringe areas unserved.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm not sure what is meant by "comopetition" when it comes to the larger ISPs in the US, because they go out of their way to make sure they will have as little of it as possible.If anythng the fees are probably an attempt to adjust for all the cord-cutting.
What the hell does this have to do with Trump, they have been pulling this shit for years. And they're perplexed as to why so many people are cutting the cord...