Time Warner Cable vs Direct TV
Posted by GeneralisimoRCB on April 19th, 2009
One of the best things about modern cable and satellite television is the explosion of sports programming now available to customers across the country. While 15 years ago you might find a couple of college football games on Saturday and a game or two on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has additional coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.
Content is king today, and as the saying goes the networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the customer so they can sell more advertising. Lots of new all-sports channels have popped up over the last few years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche matches, as well as the Big 10 network and the Mountian, the network of the Mountain West conference.
Sure these networks are good for people in certain parts of the nation, but disagreements between the providers of content and cable networks that deliver the content have brought difficulties to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network started airing in 2007, but they were unable to strike a deal with big cable provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in Michigan were not able to see some of the local teams play because of the carraige dispute. Finally however, the parties came to terms before the fall football season, so customers could remain with with Time Warner rather than having to switch to one of the satellite TV companies like DISH Network or DirecTV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner cable vs Direct TV.
Out of market sports programming are another thing sports fans should consider. The Direct TV Sunday Ticket football package is exclusive to the satellite TV provider, so if you want this package you have to switch. This has upset some pay television subscribers, who do not understand why a package Sunday Ticket isn’t avaig lable to every provider, especially a bicompany like Time Warner. Other packages though are more friendly to subscribers, like the NHL Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. DIRECTV seems to have all of the sports programming.
