I moved at the beginning of the year from a very small city – more of a big town, IMO – to New Orleans, which is a smallish city itself but considerably bigger than where I came from. Back in Georgia I had basic cable. I got about 70 channels, and they were grouped logically. (SciFi was 42, and I refuse to believe that is a coincidence!)
So I move here. I’m not having to pay for it (the advantage of living with my parents, which I am doing for financial reasons), but the cable here SUCKS. There seems to be about the same number of channels, but I’m missing several that I at least occasionally watched. (Waaaah! I WANT MY MATCH GAME RERUNS!!!) A lot of these channels are available if you get digital. I’m considering getting digital on my own TV. What’s more, the channels are scattered all over the freaking place. The lineup is dreadful. I liked having all the news/sports/whatever together so I could avoid or watch as desired.
Why is this? I’d think that bigger city=better cable. More channels. Better organized. Is this a common thing? Does anybody else know? Or is it just that the cable here is particularly bad compared to what I was used to?
I can’t speak for your city, but in mine, they’re pushing the digital service by offering less with the analog. I actually tried to downgrade my service to analog to save money, and they gave me basic digital for the same price as analog to avoid switching me.
As far as the line-up being grouped logically, it may be that you had the only sane cable provider that has ever graced the world. And now you must suffer like the rest of us.
Perhaps your small town was wired for cable later than Nawlins was. If that’s the case, more channels were available and it was easier for the cable provider to arrange them according to subject.
I hadn’t even considered that it might be a conspiracy to get people to go to digital.
It just might work, too. Jerks.
You have Cox, right? Cox sucks. At least it did when I lived there.
Yep, it’s Cox. And apparently to get decent cable they want ME to suck. 
As for satellite, well, I am living here due to the kindness of my mom and her husband. I’m not about to demand they lay out a bunch of money for cable.
It’s just that he said he thought that was how it always worked; bigger markets get fewer channels, while if you’re in the middle of nowhere you can get EVERYTHING. I don’t know where he came up with this idea.