Time Warner Cable Tries To Appeal To "Cord Cutters"

With more and more customers fleeing, cable companies have claimed that customers are just reacting to the recession, not the growth of viewing opportunities on the Internet. But, next week, Time Warner Cable is launching a trial of a stripped-down, cheaper cable package, which the NY Times believes is "an apparent attempt to retain cable customers who are thinking of canceling, or to woo back people who have already canceled."

According to the Times, "For roughly half the cost of Time Warner Cable’s current cable TV package, customers will receive ESPN News but not ESPN; TBS but not TNT; CNN but not Fox News or MSNBC. A market trial will begin in New York on Monday, a Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said, and in the company’s northeastern Ohio market on Dec. 15." Other cable channels it will include are MTV, Nickelodeon, HGTV, Cooking Channel, FX, Bravo and USA.

The package, called TV Essentials, will go for about $40 in NYC (and $30 in Ohio) while the digital starter cable package costs $60 in NYC.

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By Jen Chung in News on November 19, 2010 6:09 PM

Comments [rss]

mo

our cable tv is way over priced.there are way too many channels that no one watches .they should do more than one of these packages mixing and matching different channels . my bill is a little over 80 dollars a month with just cable no computer ,no HBO or any of that .once they went to this digital stuff a few years back the bill went way up.

Elwood Blues

I have AT&T uVerse here in CT. $90/month. 3 boxes, whole home DVR + 'net. NO CONTRACT!

I feel sorry for you people stuck in NYC. TW: sucks. Fios? Just do some research. Unfortunately you don't have (m)any alternatives.

abcohen

roadrunner & cable tv w/ 2 dvrs and 2 prem channels my bill is 190$ - it should be 120-140 (MAYBE!)

F - them and they're shitty customer service!

while everyone is increase modem speeds for free they want to charge you another 10-50$ a month!

Reflect

Im thinking about it.. I cant even get a full signal, on BIO Tv i watch a show called i survived,

Its really rude to the people paying and there story to have commecials jerkingly cut them off and delete there sound.

3 days of cable outtage.. And my price lock garuntee just ran out and jumped to 109 a month to 130. Now im pissed. I download music off sites other than itunes and hate slow downloads but at this point in seriously thinking of just doing it at a friends place.

I called and without being disrespectful to the phone opp told her to tell them to stop coking and whorein up on the weekends and the prices wont jump so high.

Like most shit ran by males these days deceptive is right. She was a woman and asked if she could help with anything else, i said yes rise through the ranks of that male company and shut them down. Get it some morals...

Dan

$40 is MORE than the triple play package price for cable. I called them up and questioned why the price went back to full price and they have me the triple play for another year.

mistermarkdavis

yeah but the tripple play forces you to buy overpriced VOIP service so the price is deceptive.

aydiosmio

The cable TV business is a murky mess of content contracts. It's not such a straight forward business to slash prices and provide al a carte service (which would end up being more expensive).

I'd love to ditch cable for online content providers but cable has me locked up:

Discovery Networks US does not post their TV content online.

mistermarkdavis

wow only $40. still too much to pay for crap.

I just got boxee box. it was $200 and it streams all kinds of great content from the internet and files I downloaded on my computer.

J_Temperance

Why waste your time with a breakout box? Most HD tv's have monitor cables.

mistermarkdavis

I used to use a laptop hooked up to the TV with a monitor cable. It's a pain in the ass. I want to control everything from a remote. i don't want to have to get up to pause. also it feeds the digital surround sound data to my theater system. the benifits of having a dedicated low power box over using a desktop interface is worth the price of admission.

Kanger

How about Time Warner actually fixing their cable service first?

It's great watching a show to have the sound cut out and then the picture get scrambled.

HairyG

Tell me about it. Verizon is in the process of wiring FIOS in my area and I will run, not walk to them when it is available.

Pachinko

Exactly! When cable first came out, you paid for movies and programs. Now you pay for unlimited hours of commercials. That's BS!

As far as cable companies go, we switched to RCN about a year ago, and we find the reception, customer service, and price much better over TWC. Only problem with it is you have to scroll past tons of foreign channels intermittent throughout its lineup.

ides_of_march

I'll pay for cable when there are no commercials and I can pay for only the channels I want.

PaulaNYC

You should know, should you check your bill, that BASIC internet service in Manhattan is $55 per month, roughly DOUBLE what it costs in Toronto and about three times what it costs in Europe.

newyorkcitygal

Where did you find that info? I lived in Italy for a year and a half and it was roughly 30 euros a month for internet by me. $55 dollars is most definitely not triple 30 euros, but maybe Italy is just silly like that.

calista

Hey, wanna retain some customers? Offer a quality product, good customer service at a decent price. .....................!!!!!!!!!!

Doctor Memory

So close, yet... wait, actually, not close at all.

The cable cos signed their own death warrant the moment they deployed the first cable modem. Between Hulu, iTunes and bittorrent, the only thing holding their business model together is live HD sports and sheer intertia: neither of which are going to save them in the long run.

Eric

That's exactly it. I have my laptop connected to my TV, Hulu streams in HD, I can download my round of shows in HD from [bittorrent site]. The only thing I miss is my Rangers games in HD, but I can still find them streaming online, when blown up on my tv it looks like regular definition. My cable bill has gone from $140 to $30 and I couldn't be happier. I was at a friends house the other day, and I forgot what it's like to mindlessly flip through channels while trying to find something to watch and only landing on crap or commercials. It's mind numbing and I don't know why I ever paid for it.