Back In The Saddle

I was gone for a few days as I had some minor surgery on Thursday, but today I got permission to head back to work tomorrow so I am almost back in the saddle again.

As I laid in the hospital I realized how much I missed satellite television, the channel selection in the hospital was bad. However with that said I guess I felt better finding that many of the channels were from DirecTV,and they also had a few other channels which showed nothing but a bouncing DirecTV screen saver. Part of me wanted to escape my bed and go find out where the hospitals head end was located to correct their DirecTV issues, but alas since I was tied to the bed by all kinds of tubes, wires and a IV I grinned and bared it.

It was also the first time in a long time I was awake after midnight, and I realized that there is nothing to watch on television after 2am. Thank god the hospital had Cartoon Network and was able to catch a few episodes of Family Guy while dozing in and out of sleep.

It feels good to be home again and to have all of my satellite equipment once again at my disposal.

While I was away the news was finally officially announced that Comcast was buying controlling interest in NBC Universal. I believe that Comcast is a great company however I think that the merger could do more harm to the industry then good. Look at the ongoing fight between Comcast and DirecTV over the Versus sports channel. We have seen that in a fight Comcast will take its ball and go home. All other cable and satellite providers will be forced into buying directly from the main competition at the price decided by their competition. I can imagine that all channels will be packaged together and you must pay Comcast what it wants for access to its channels or the cable and satellite providers get nothing. I don’t see that as a good thing for consumers as since Comcast will be setting the price for their programming suite it could mean higher prices for cable and satellite customers.

Ultimately the deal is good for Comcast but bad for everyone else. This is one merger that I hope gets rejected.

Again don’t get me wrong Comcast is not a bad company, these guys do amazing things in the communities they serve and have worked to build their cable systems into modern technical marvels. In Comcast areas it is hard to go to an event and not have the word Comcast associated with it.

I can only hope that if this merger is approved that Comcast will invest money into the actual NBC Television Network and make the peacock proud again. Over the past few years the network turned into a shell of itself. The move of Jay Leno to the 10 time slot was a huge mistake, put the king of late night back to his rightful 11:35 slot. About the only show on NBC which still stands out is The Today Show. NBC needs a lot of work.