They’re Gathering Ammo To Raise Rates

On Tuesday, our cable provider, Comcast, added four new channels to our lineup. They are Fine Living, Nick 2, MTV Jams, and CNBC World. These basically add up to an upscale combination of Food Network/HGTV/Travel Channel, the West Coast version of Nickelodeon, another channel for hip-hop and R&B videos, and a world business channel. I admit that I already enjoy MTV Jams, seeing as they showed a couple of videos that I had never seen before. However, the others don’t really add much to our lineup.

On July 1st, we will also see a new “Digital Sports Tier” which will include a network with the vague name of TV Games Network. Also, we get another new channel we can’t take advantage of...Discovery HD Theater. Although I’m glad that Comcast offers such a wide variety of HD channels (including HD versions of local ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, and PBS affiliates, WGN, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and two HD-exclusive channels), it’s annoying to have channels we can’t enjoy because we don’t have the money to burn on an HDTV.

Also, our Music Choice digital music channels will get flipped around. They haven’t listed all the changes, but we do know that there will be new channels for 90’s music and Radio Disney and some channels are getting renames and reformats. The R&B and Hip-Hop channel will become R&B Hits and Power Rock is being renamed to Arena Rock.

Honestly, I like having cable and the wide variety of channels, but it’s almost as though they are running out of channels to put on our service. In addition, some channels we want aren’t on there yet. My mom would love to have DIY (Do-It-Yourself Network) but we get Fine Living (which is from the same company) instead. We’d also love to have Soap Net, but it’s only available on satellite. I'd personally love to have The Anime Network...but I'm not holding my breath. I have to wonder if and/or when they will raise cable rates again.