[mythtv-users] Comcast bricked me above 33 so I bricked Comcast with my wallet

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Sunday 09 May 2010 01:08:46 pm Ben Kamen wrote:
<SNIP>
>> I agree with the absurdity of your numbers. While they may not be exact,
>>  they are probably accurate in proportion -- I'm not just talking Myth
>>  Users though. If EVERYONE cancelled for a month.. wow - that would send a
>>  message.
>
> Or you could have a lot of people call and complain about "fuzzy pictures" or
> something equally subjective. It costs them a lot of money to roll vehicles on
> service calls, and cable companies don't dare charge for them (at least not
> the sane ones), it's the only way they have of finding out how their system is
> working.
>
> This would inconvenience Comcast a lot, without causing inconvenience to the
> customers like a month without cable might.
>
> But a Cable-Less Day would probably get their attention.
>
> Certainly just getting people to stop buying on-demand or other high-profit
> services might hit them in the cash box.
>

I think that my thread here is a bit off-topic, in the sense it's only
tangentially about Myth. However I'm very glad to see people
contemplating change.

Clearly, I've voted with my wallet as the title states, and while I'm
going without cable, I'm not going without media access. I'm actually
getting more media now than I was with Comcast, and it's costing me
less. It's simply a choice I made due to time constraints and the
issues of content protection to use DirecTV's DVR instead of Myth for
the near term future - say 3-6 months.

If the MythTV community wanted to make a statement to Comcast - and
I'm not suggesting it does - but if it did then don't give up Comcast
for a month, give up Comcast for a year. Subscribe to some other
service which in the case of DirecTV was a 1 year commitment, but
let's find a way to tell Comcast that we as a group don't like what
they are doing.

The question I have is how many Myth users are actually Comcast
subscribers? 500? 1000? 10,000? More? Unfortunately even if it's
10,000 then at $80/month - roughly what I was paying - that's
$8M/month or roughly $100M/year.

It's small compared to their quarterly revenues of $9B but it's a
start. Couple that with some sort of press release about 10K users
leaving and I suspect that's how you'd get Comcast's attention.

Cheers,
Mark

Symbol - CMCSA
Quarterly Revenues (Mil)

Fiscal year Quarter 1  Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4 Total
2010 9,202.00 NMF NMF NMF 9,202.00
2009 8,835.00 8,938.00 8,802.00 9,067.00 35,642.00
2008 8,389.00 8,553.00 8,549.00 8,765.00 34,256.00
2007 7,388.00 7,712.00 7,781.00 8,014.00 30,895.00
2006 5,901.00 6,228.00 6,432.00 7,031.00 25,592.00

Diluted Earnings per Share Excluding Extraordinary Items

Fiscal year Quarter 1  Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4 Total
2010 0.310 NMF NMF NMF 0.310
2009 0.270 0.330 0.330 0.330 1.260
2008 0.240 0.210 0.260 0.140 0.850
2007 0.260 0.190 0.180 0.200 0.830
2006 0.150 0.140 0.310 0.140 0.740

Latest Fiscal Year Ended:  12/31/2009