Now that we're finally moved in to our new apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, time has come to set up our TV and internet access. As much as I love living in New York City, one of the huge drawbacks is having to deal with the awfulness that is Time Warner Cable. In addition to its notoriously bad customer service, TWC offers a paltry number of sports-related services as compared to its major competitors. Unfortunately, Time Warner has a monopoly over TV and internet service in my building (and, in fact, throughout much of the island), so I'm stuck with them at least until my apartment gets wired for Verizon's Fios.
Now, Time Warner Cable isn't all bad. In addition to ESPN, ESPN2, NBC Sports (the artist formerly known as Versus) and the local RSNs (YES, SNY and MSG / MSG2 / MSG+), it offers MLB Network and NBATV on the standard cable package. They also offer a Sports Pass for an additional ~$5.95 a month that gets you CBS Sports Network, NHL Network, ESPN Goal Line and ESPN Buzzer Beater and more. Granted, some of these are included in the standard package offered by other TV providers, but at least you can get them for a comparatively reasonable fee. What you can't get, however, is NFL Sunday Ticket or other RSNs from around the country, both of which are offered by DirecTV. Fios similarly has Sunday Ticket, ESPN Gameplan for college football and a host of other premium offerings.
When you include the fact that Time Warner Cable is, in general, more expensive than either DirecTV of Verizon Fios, being forced to deal with TWC is extremely frustrating. Within the past year, TWC also went through a fierce contract negotiation with Madison Square Garden which resulted in Knicks and Rangers games being blacked out for many New Yorkers for a few weeks in January. If not for Jeremy Lin's unexpected rise to dominance which happened to coincide with the negotiation and force a deal, MSG and MSG2 still might not be offered by Time Warner. Who knows what other channels might be stripped from the TWC lineup - could ESPN be next?
For most sporting events I want to watch - starting with tomorrow's Euro 2012 finals between Spain and Italy - Time Warner Cable will suffice. But when football season rolls around and my friends are watching every NFL game on Sunday Ticket - or at least the scoring plays on the Red Zone channel (offered by both DirecTV and Fios) - I'll be pissed that I've been forced into doing business with Time Warner Cable yet again. At least, for the moment, the internet is working - with TWC, who knows how long that will last.
1 comment:
Matt, things could be worse; you could live in an area were Time Warner refuses to negotiate with the provider of broadcasts for the baseball team(s) assigned to your territory by MLB. Imagine having all games by these teams blacked out regardless of whether they are available on local cable or broadcast channels at all. That's the situation here in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill where all Orioles and Nationals games are blacked out from view. No Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, Adam Jones, or Matt Wieters and, worse, none of the teams--including mine--which play these teams. We're even blacked out from MLB's computer packages because of this infernal, eternal struggle between TWC and MASN, who haven't been able to reach an agreement for over seven years now on how to handle "local" baseball coverage despite numerous court challenges, arbitration hearings, and ultimatums. It's an absurd situation. Of course, I could completely change over to satellite coverage and bypass this problem, but there are other associated costs with this, including the need to abandon all analog equipment in favor of digital, something TWC has thankfully not insisted on. Plus, TWC has quite a bit of beneficial on-demand services as well as easy access to local high definition channels that don't need to go through the cable box. As far as cable providers go, there are better and there are worse, but other than this dispute with MASN, I would easily rate TWC above average overall. But good luck to you; I realize that being without RedZone coverage can be a difficult withdrawal. Of course, since my team is never IN the Red Zone, there's not much to miss.
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