Comments on: 20 Cable Networks To Reach 100 Million Subscribers By Year End

By: Jim Kosmicki

Jim Kosmicki — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:24:53 +0000

Ah! but TruTV has started running a show called Man Vs Cartoon in which a group of engineers try to recreate Wile E. Coyote’s gadgets to see if they could work in the real world. It’s Mythbusters applied to cartoon logic. It has NOTHING to do with TruTV’s normal programming, but it’s great fun.

Just like Travel Channel – I don’t watch most of their programming, but an occasional Anthony Bourdain is fine and Man Vs Food is a really fun show.

That’s the biggest problem with cable today. It’s not 900 channels and nothing on — it’s 900 channels and which one is the interesting programming on. I love niche programming, so I know where to look for certain program types. Who’d look on TruTV for a Discovery/TLC type show like Man Vs Cartoon. How does one even find out that it’s on (an online blurb on a blog told us about it).

By: daniel

daniel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:42:04 +0000

i think i get all of those channels with basic cable
comcast in tucson/marana is great
i think the only channels on that list that my family and i dont watch are
CMT
TruTV
and C-SPAN

By: craigward

craigward — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:18:35 +0000

My cable is missing many of those channels. Ones I don’t have include:

Weather
Nick
TNT
Food
HGTV
Spike
ESPN
Disney
MTV
FX

Comedy Central and Cartoon Network are the only channels I care about, but it would be nice to have some more variety. And Spongebob.

By: jay

jay — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:01:43 +0000

It’s fun to compare notes with dedicated cable fans on which ten of the fifty above are necessities, etc. The truth is, household cable penetration has stayed flat ( not decreased ) during every recession so far. It will probably hold at 70-75% of households. Which means for all the grumbling and complaining, the present system offers just enough variety or even “wallpaper” to keep customers from voting with their dollars – that is, cancelling. ( I’d much rather have cable than my dish, but the cable company diidn’t figure it was cost-effective to lay a line for one household, and I’m sure they would have helped me out if they could.)Like a slow but not too slow ISP or Windows 20000 or whatever, the pain threshhold has got to be pretty high to motivate change for most people. ( An annoying but basically loved spouse is I guess an even better eg.)

By: Cathy

Cathy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:04:45 +0000

Considering the fact that every one of those channels is offered as Expanded Basic Cable in our small city it is not surprising. That means that anyone who gets Expanded and Digital cable receives these cable nets here. I would imagine it is a similar story all over the country.

If we got to pick and choose which networks to receive would all of those be so popular? I’m not so sure. For our household USA, Comedy Central, MSNBC, TNT, Nick, TCM (not on list)and History are the only ones we watch (in order of viewing) consistently. With our local stations which we can get by antenna in HD, I could reduce my paid selections to those cable networks and be happy. We only occasionally watch the others if we happen to read about something we would like to watch or notice it when we surf.

By: James B.

James B. — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:47:58 +0000

Who are these cable companies that are offering service without EPSN? Is that the basic lifeline service?

And if subscriber bases are growing like this even in a recession, then I guess all the talk of people cutting the cable and doing HD over the air, Hulu, and NetFlix are few and far between.