by Myles Schulberg
My wife and I live outside of Hilton Head SC and we’re serviced by a “podunk” cable company, Hargray, for TV/internet/landline phone. They have a monopoly in our and several other developments. On Sundays during football season, I enjoy watching NFL RedZone on TV with its live coverage of all the games in a “whip around” fashion. Red Zone is part of an NFL Network package one can buy and discontinue at any time. Several years ago I arranged for the NFL Network with NFL Red Zone to play on my TV from September to January at an additional cost to my bill for those 5-months. This past September, on the first football Sunday of the season, I turned on the NFL Red Zone channel at 1PM and the station was dark. I thought there was a technical problem, so I called Hargray’s tech number and it took 45 minutes til a tech specialist got on the line. I told him my issue of a dark screen on the NFL Red Zone channel that I subscribe to, and he responded that there wasn’t a technical problem, rather that Hargray discontinued the NFL Network with NFL Red Zone due to an increase in cost. He said he had no more information than that and if I wanted to discuss further, I’d need to call back weekdays to Customer Service.
Early the next day, Monday, I called Customer Service and again it was a 45 minute wait to talk to someone. When a woman finally got on the line, I laced into her. I told her that I learned the previous day from their Tech Specialist that the NFL Network had been discontinued for cost, which she confirmed, but that how dare they not have let their customers know until I had to call them at the start of the NFL season to find out. She apologized without explanation. I angrily said I’d like to speak to their upper management and she said she’d pass that along and to expect a call. A few hours later I got a call from an upper management executive who’d been briefed on my issue. He apologized and said the NFL excessively increased the cost of their programming to TV companies and Hargray couldn’t afford to absorb the cost increase nor thought it reasonable to greatly increase the cost to the customers to retain the programming. Hargray thus decided to discontinue NFL Network programming. I told the executive that Hargray should have surveyed their customers for amenability to paying more for the September to January months to have NFL Red Zone. No response. I then told him I thought a lot of customers want NFL Red Zone and will drop Hargray TV for satellite or streaming TV to g
et NFL Red Zone. Shockingly, this Hargray executive told me that he’s a big NFL Red Zone watcher and he himself dropped Hargray TV in favor of YouTube TV to get NFL Red Zone. He then said streaming TV and not cable or satellite TV is the future for TV as the only cost effective format for broadcasting is streaming. I was flabbergasted. I thanked him for his candor, hung up, and immediately canceled Hargray TV and signed up for YouTube TV to get NFL Red Zone and all the cable channels I had with Hargray at a much lower cost. Should have done it a lot sooner. Talk about “what the hell.”
