Viewing Upstream: The Cable Wars Continue 

I sat in the backyard on my red plastic Adirondack chair from Target and gazed at the Dish Network receiver perched on my roof like some Orwellian gargoyle. I had moved Himmel unt Erde to get that fucker installed.

First I had abandoned all pride and called Comcast, a company to which I swore I would never give a cent. Thankfully the young lady on the phone who "helped" me there was so infuriatingly obtuse and rote that I hung up on her. I investigated Direct TV, but it seemed too expensive. In the end it was looking like Dish was the best option. I had previously just streamed all the TV I wanted to see on various sites, both legal and illegal, but some stuff was slipping through the cracks. I missed valuable crappy horror movie marathons and anything that was happening live, like the Trayvon Martin trial or the Lotto ball picks. Important stuff like that. That would never do.

My landlord hated the idea of installing the dolorous digital diaphragm on his house, but agreed to it since I guess it's the law (who knew?). I'll spare you the details about how long it took to get the thing up and going, or the fact that it ended up being $60 more a month than I had anticipated. I had signed a goddamned contract. Almost as soon as it was up it slowly dawned on me that subscription television services like this one were going to be obsolete in a year. I had basically just bought a new 12-disc CD player on the eve of the iTunes launch.

Of course, it's wonderful that our options are expanding. The latest trend is single subscriptions to single channels through your computer, as HBO is planning to do. Since cable and satellite companies have been able to yank up their rates to ridiculous levels based on the "Yeah, but with this package you get HBO" schtick, the behemoth providers are freaking out. Soon people will be able to pay a nominal fee to HBO directly, allowing us to completely forgo any of these cable companies. It reminds me of an old poster that indie record stores used to put up in the '80s, "Home taping is killing the record industry! ... And it's about time."

Everyone hates cable, Dish, and Direct TV. And the companies brought it on themselves. Allowing a handful of shareholders to have a lock on what everyone sees is feudal. It's time to behead them.

But last week Dish really went above and beyond the call of douchery. The details are murky, but basically it stopped carrying any Turner Broadcasting networks, which means no CNN, Cartoon Network, or TCM. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company says that it dumped them because their ratings were low. Boy, they must really think their customers are the extended family of Honey Boo Boo, too stupid to figure out that Dish is just being cheap and maybe even vindictive. Turner is owned by Time Warner, which also owns HBO. As the WSJ points out, Dish has a history of dumping networks that decide or even think about going rogue by providing separate online outlets, as it did with World Wrestling Entertainment and the AMC Networks.

If this is what is happening, and Dish is trying to stick it to Warner, it shows incredible imprudence on its part. It knows that it can't dump HBO, because then it really will lose a ton of subscribers. But Dish perhaps thought that it could get away with axing Turner Classic Movies in some sort of megalithic game of chicken with TW. This hardball crap might've worked back in 2012 with AMC, but not now. Newsflash: While you guys are maneuvering in boardrooms like 12-year-olds with Transformers, the villagers are sharpening their pitchforks. If and when I am given better alternatives than what you are presenting me, which at this point is an Etch-A-Sketch, I am going to bail faster than you can say, "Would you like to bundle that?"

Oh she mad, she mad.

Unlike music, it's fair to say that the liberation of television broadcasts online will not cause gigantic money losses for the industry. It will however hopefully cause major financial losses for Dish, Comcast, Direct TV, and any other entity that bled us dry knowing that we would do whatever it took to watch Breaking Bad in real time. Home streaming is killing the national cable TV industry ... And it's about time.