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Charter Bans Ad for TV Antennas
OTA Seen As Threat As Cable Prices Soar

Antennas manufacturer Antennas Direct is angry at Charter Communications because it claims Charter has banned the company from advertising to Charter's customers. According to the company, Charter refused to run a sixty second ad in the St. Louis market that pictures a cable company executive and a narrator that informs him he's going to "lose a ton of money when people realize they don't have to pay you just to watch TV."

Traditionally over the air hasn't been much of a threat to cable earnings, but clearly Charter is afraid of something. That something is the fact that customers are finally reaching their breaking point with cable TV rate hikes, which helped contribute to a minor but significant surge in OTA households over the last few years. The cable industry gives half answers when probed by the Associated Press, simply giving a canned speech about cable's "value":
quote:
Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said that as Americans watch more TV every year, "the value of cable's video service continues to be the best of any form of entertainment."
Granted if cable TV's "value" was so great, Charter wouldn't feel the need to ban antenna ads. All banning the ads does is to give the company more attention -- like oh, in the form of an Associated Press story.

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I'll Just Leave This Here

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benefit of the doubt

this makes a good story - too good. my guess is Antennas Direct is creating a controversy to drum up free advertising for those people sympathetic to rising cableTV rates who may already be on the verge of buying an OTA solution.

the fact is OTA station ratings keep dropping while cableTV only based station ratings continue to rise. compare any award show now to a decade ago, and you find far more cableTV shows are winning industry recognition than OTA stuff.

bigger budgets are also going to cableTV shows - consider high quality and authenticity "Game of Thrones" or "Boardwalk Empire" would have not been able to thrive into 3 season runs under today's typical OTA budget constraints.

Disclaimer: i do not have cableTV, i get my entertainment from OTA + Torrent(pirating), and would only pay for cableTV when it finally becomes a'la'carte - fully payperview - as i feel paying for content you will never watch is insane.