My mom called this morning upset that CNN and HLN are gone. At first I thought they had completely collapsed. Their ratings have nosedived and they’ve been firing staff.
Turns out it is a dispute with DishTV. Unfortunately my mom is stuck with DishTV. DirecTV doesn’t cover the local Arkansas stations where she’s at (30 miles from the border with Louisiana ).
CNN doesn’t even have a news story on this. 
I just searched their web site for Dish.
Hope this gets worked out before election night.
This stupidity and greed doesn’t help anyone. Turner is trying to jack up rates in spite of CNN’s major drop in ratings. DirectTV and Dish are already too expensive for fixed income retirees like my mom.
What a useless statement. Has there ever been a time where customers haven’t whined that they pay too much?
It is really absurd now though. I paid $60/month for the cheapest DirecTV option a few years ago before I canceled. Add HBO and a sports option and that number can go up to $150 or so. When I can stream almost anything ad-free on the internet for a few bucks?
This isn’t the 90s, when my options were cable, satellite, antenna or VCR. There’s just too much competition to ignore. Most of what you get with cable or satellite is terrible and no one watches it. There are a few good channels, but why would I pay for them, plus ads, plus a hundred more unwatchable channels when I can get just the content I want for a few bucks online?
DirecTv and Dish are coming pretty close to pricing themselves out of the market.
I have DirecTV with just the basic package of channels. Two receivers. I’ve watched the check I send them climb dramatically in the past 10 years. It started back 8 years ago around $55. Now it’s $86 and we’re fed up. My wife and I have already agreed if it ever tops a $100 that will be the final straw. They can go fuck themselves. We’re not going to be screwed over like that. We will go back to just watching local channels with rabbit ears.
There’s always a breaking point for any price where the value just doesn’t justify the cost. We love DirecTV but there’s only about 10 channels that we watch regularly.
Doesn’t Dish do this every couple years with some network or other? I haven’t had Dish in over a decade but they used to pull this all the time even back then. They see who’ll hold out longer but they always seem to settle inside a month.
How can anyone live without Nancy Grace?
I told my mom it should work itself out in a week or so. DirecTV has lost channels too for a day or so. All over greed and money.
Sure odd, that our cable bills in the 80’s and even the 90’s was pretty consistent. Very little change in pricing.
Now all these channels are demanding more money from the satellite and cable providers. Which results in higher subscription rates.
They have a huge yellow banner that says “demand your shows back on dish”.
The referenced rates seem comparable to cable rates, which is what I would believe is their main competition. They do not seem unreasonable for that market. I do not believe they worry too much about competing with free OTA.
You seriously thought that CNN completely closed up shop?
I cancelled our cable two weeks ago. There were only two channels I occasionally watched, and one of them was a public broadcaster which shows stuff online too. The other was CBC Newsworld. It just wasn’t worth paying for, and hadn’t been for years. And I am so totally spoiled by watching stuff commercial-free that I literally cannot handle all the commercials. 
A half-hour comedy that’s really 15-16 minutes? Gah.
This is the problem. Cable is NOT their competition. Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Pirate Bay are.
Happily?
Well, they* do *sell emetics at the drugstore.
I wonder how much CNN spent covering the Malaysian Airplane that disappeared.
Most people only watch a couple of channels. I cancelled cable years ago, when I realized I was basically paying $50/month to watch the Discovery Channel. Network TV has enough decent shows that I can watch for free.
Here - the tag is buried in the “The Latest” list.
(No wonder you couldn’t find it - it’s on CNNMoney, which CNN treats as a different website.)
I remember when CNN aired this thing called “the news” at night - in the 1990s, the schedule was, usually Larry King at 9 (Eastern), an hour of news at 10, sports at 11, a repeat of Moneyline at 11:30, and another hour of news at midnight.
I hope CNN is back soon. It’s the only News that even trys to give balanced news.
MSNBC and Fox are way too partisan and biased. My mom gave up on MSNBC back in 2008 when they fell in love with Obama. Chris Matthews and his Thrill Up My Leg love affair with Obama was the final straw. My mom was a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Try Al Jazeera. I’ve found them to be the best.