77% Increase in Price in the Last Decade

The cost of everything hasbeen rising unmercifully, and for many things we’ve made personal cuts. Trying not to use the car for un-necessary trips to the store, cut back on how much food we buy, even though food companies have increased the price while making the packages smaller.

But what about your cable bill? Have you cut back on your cable bill?

Cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the rate of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month.

Cable customers, who typically pay at least $60 a month, watch only a fraction of what they pay for — on average, a mere 13 percent of the 118 channels available to them. And the number of subscribers keeps growing.

The resiliency of cable is all the more remarkable because the Internet was supposed to change all things digital. Technology has led to more choices and lower prices for news and music as well as cellphone and landline minutes — not to mention computers, cameras, music players and phones themselves.

Interesting. I know that my cable bill has had two increases in the last 5 or 6 months, and it is one of the bills I have set aside meaning to make adjustments.

Now, one of the things about cable that has really bothered me is having to pay for bundled channels. I have a ton of channels that we just do not watch and I pay for a larger package just to get the couple of channels that I do want to watch. The cable companies have fought long and hard against customer’s building their own packages.

One answer is the alliance between cable companies and Hollywood producers of content to sell channels in bundles, rather than letting consumers pay only for the channels they want.

The producers of cable television content share $15 billion to $20 billion a year in fees from cable subscribers, roughly equal to the $20 billion they receive in advertising revenue, Mr. Moffett said.

Without those fees, the cable companies say, prices would go up.

How about we put this in another perspective. If the cable companies did not raise their prices, it would be the Cable companies and producers of cable TV content that would take a huge cut in pay.

But, the big question has been, from the consumer side, is the programming we get from the cable companies worth the price we pay?

Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the F.C.C., said in an interview that since 1996, when Congress increased competition in telecommunications, prices have dropped for many other services.

“We’ve seen the opposite occur in the cable industry,” he said. “The dramatic increases in pricing we’ve seen are one of the most troubling issues from a consumer point of view.”

Troubling? This is the result many folks talked about as cable companies ate up large swatches of communities and shut out competition, and came true. And, it is still the consumer that takes the biggest hit in the pocketbook, and their viewing pleasure.

What I find so troubling is that it used to be that if large groups of people connected and voiced their opinions (including through boycotts) the companies were forced to change things for the better for consumers. With all the methods available to us to connect, nothing seems to happen. Are you going to sit back and let the cable companies continue to pick your pocket for vastly crappy programming?