If you're like me and have Dish for your tv service, you don't have FOX "News" right now. And if you're really like me, you might not know it because you have them blocked, or at least not on your favorites list.
Apparently, the weasels of FOX want more cash from their distributors, and Dish has not yet complied and so has temporarily dropped them (like they did earlier this year, much more annoyingly, with my beloved TCM and god help me, TOON network). And that provides an opportunity for a laugh, if you're feeling bored.
If you missed it, the usual negotiation strategy goes like this: channel wants more money; Dish balks; Dish removes said channel and then a battle of wills (of sorts) occurs -- how many viewers will call and howl? More howling means more money for the channel, less howling strengthens the distributor's hand.
Right now, Fox is exhorting its fan base to drop dish for DirectTV or cable, while Dish is running their standard "Fox made us drop this channel" crawl over the empty slots in their guide grid.
Since I called and howled when TCM was blunked out (and when I lost my beloved Adult Swim on TOON), i thought it would only be fair to call when I (finally) noticed FOX was not there. So I called and congratulated them on dropping (even temporarily) the FOX propaganda channels (while keeping the other FOX affiliates that have actual non-"news" programming) Best of both worlds, right?
I got on the Dish chat, and the rep started hitting these buttons that generated pre-written (canned) responses ("we are sorry for the inconvenience but Dish has successfully negotiated with every other channel and expects to reach a fair compromise soon, blah blah blah") It took a minute or two for me to make the rep understand I was not complaining -- I was HAPPY about it. "I'm sorry," the rep typed, "but most people who call about this are calling to complain."
Which is why, if you have a down moment this holiday, you might want to do the same -- it confuses the hell out of Dish, but they dutifully report your reactions to someone…or so they assure me. The points I made with them were two-fold: Unlike TCM, which provides value (commercial-free non-premium movies), FOX offers only self-serving propaganda and hate-speach designed to push the book sales and personal appearances of it's "personalities'. They should pay Dish to be carried, not the other way around. I also complained about my pet peeve -- how FOX "news" is part of every basic package, while MSNBC and even CNN are only offered in higher-cost packages. Then, in an move the rep found especially baffling, I offered to pay more for any package that did NOT offer FOX news.
It's kind of fun, getting the rep off script. A waste of time, maybe, but I would love there to be a moment in the negotiations where the Dish suits say, "Hey, it's running 2-1 from viewers who would pay MORE for FOX-free programming." And, if I can do anything to take one dime out of their pockets, it's worth it. Anyway, here's the chat page if you're game: http://www.dish.com/... The phone numbers are at the bottom.