This morning, Time Warner made official that it would be spinning off Time Warner Cable as a separate company. I don’t pretend to know whether the step is a positive or a negative for either company. But I do know one benefit for me: Now when I complain about how much I hate my cable provider, I no longer need to feel guilty that I am somehow driving down my company’s stock price.
I was commiserating about TWC’s customer service and technological cluelessness with a friend this weekend and he asked me why I, a professional TV watcher, didn’t just change my service. It’s not that easy, of course. Where I live in Brooklyn, there’s little other option for cable service. I’ve been tempted to get satellite, but that would involve an entirely new ordeal of mounting hardware, running cable, reconfiguring my TiVo—and for all I know the service could be just as bad or worse.
The fact is, for most of us cable (and, from all I hear, satellite) is in the same position as the banks and airlines are now. They’re in the business of Optimal Customer Dissatisfaction: their job is to keep you just unsatisfied enough that you won’t drop their business.
I’ve heard plenty of cable and satellite gripes in the Tuned In comments over time, obviously. But I have to wonder: surely there’s one person out there who actually likes their TV-service provider. Can you tell us who you are?