I’m guessing that the cable TV situation here in Comfort is the result of a lack of ‘critical mass’ of potential customers. There is no service by any of the major players – although just up the highway you can have a choice of Comcast or AT&T. Instead, there is a Mom and Pop system called Comfort Cable.
Comfort Cable provides TV services only – no internet connectivity or telephone service. The television package is one-size-fits-all, and pretty reasonably priced, I suppose. There are 45 channels in all, and the selection is – unique might be a good word.
From what I understand, this hodgepodge of channel choices is the result of polling the clientele to see what they wanted – and the result says a lot about the community, I think. As I was programming our TV to skip over stupid stuff (like FOX “News”), I noted some interesting patterns.
As you might expect in an area as heavily Hispanic as south Texas, there are 4 Spanish-language channels. There’s also a good selection of regular cable channels; House & Garden, Hallmark, WGN, TBS, UPN, etc. There’s one PBS channel and one shopping network.
There are two music choices – VH1 (boomer rock) and CMT – Country Music Television.
We’ve got some of the regular niche channels, including two 24-hour religious channels, three news sources (although one of them is the afore-mentioned Fox “News”), the big three networks plus FOX, the Weather Channel, a couple of movie channels, Nickelodeon for the kids, Spike TV and ESPN for dads.
I don’t turn on the TV during the day, but on evenings that I get to choose (which are rare if the girls are home) the clicker points to the History Channel, The Discovery Channel or the Food network, or maybe some TV-Land (re-runs of classic sitcoms, mostly).
My favorite new discovery, though, has to be “RFD TV”. Way up on the end of the listings, RFD is just what it sounds like – TV for rural living. A network for ‘flyover country’. Regular offerings include stock auctions from Fort Worth, Chicago and other hubs, “The Horse Show,” agricultural reports, and the old country comedy show “Hee-Haw”. “Big Ed’s Polka Party” is in pretty heavy rotation, as are Rodeo events and an advice show with a large animal veterinarian. We’ve watched parts of live farm-machinery auctions, how-to shows on shoeing horses, gospel music concerts and more (I say parts of because the urge to keep surfing is not quelled by anything on RFD). Last Saturday was an all-day live feed from the National Convention of the Future Farmers of America – an ‘up with people’ day if ever I saw one.
If you can tell a lot about a community by what they choose to include in their cable roster, you can also get some information from what they don’t. Of course, there’s no ‘adult’ tv, but there’s also no Comedy Central (major withdrawal for me!) No Court TV, no Golf Channel, no MTV, no Game Show Network.
None of those abscences bothered me in the least. But when I found out there was no Cartoon Network, I died a little inside.
