Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9310030090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His two teen-agers like watching cable channels, like ESPN, and he needs cable to get a clear picture on his local channels.
So, what's a man to do?
Buy a satellite system. And that's exactly what Sessions did. It doesn't get him off the hook for subscribing to cable, but it gives him a greater variety of programming and more movie channels for less money, he says.
It may be that despite the deals signed in the last few weeks between cable operators and broadcasters that keep stations on the cable systems, the public feud between them has turned off many people.
And many say they're convinced recent Federal Communications Commission regulations won't stop cable bills from rising. People are looking at alternatives.
Antenna and satellite companies in Western Virginia say sales are booming, fueled by folks fed up with the public bickering between local television stations and cable system operators. Granted, this is the season when more people start watching more television and may have bought the equipment anyway.
Cable rates didn't fall as dramatically as government pronouncements indicated. Rather, some went up as the cable systems reorganized their offerings into several tiers of service.
Sessions said he was tired of the increases and doesn't think that's going to change, so he decided to make the investment in a satellite system.
"You've got to go several years to offset the price but eventually it will pay for itself," he said.
Roanoke resident Raymond Smith is testament to that. He bought his satellite dish five years ago. He subscribed to cable for about nine years and before he got rid of it was paying about $68 per month to connect the service to five televisions and had several movie channels. Back then, he paid $3,200 for his satellite system, meaning he recouped his investment in about four years.
"Even at $40 a month for 10 years" that's $4,800. "At the end of 10 years if you don't pay your cable, you don't have nothing," he said. "For someone who likes TV and if they pay $40 or $50 a month for cable, they can't go wrong."
Nowadays, a basic satellite system can run around $1,500. Top-of-the-line equipment runs around $3,000, and that's for the dish and its installation. It's like owning a cable company where the owner is buying programming at wholesale prices, says Matt Whitcomb, president of ACS Inc., a Roanoke satellite system dealer. He says his sales are up because more people are aware of what satellites can offer.
The dish alone can receive as many as 100 different free channels depending on its size - the bigger it is, the more it gets. The most popular size is 7 1/2 feet in diameter. The satellite system owner can purchase channels in packages from programming distributers. An HBO package, for example, includes seven or eight movie channels for about $8.
John Gibson, manager at Curtis Mathes, a Roanoke home entertainment electronics dealer, estimated his crews were installing about 25 to 40 satellites systems a month. Admittedly, most were in rural areas where cable is not available, he said, but there's an increase in people who could get cable purchasing satellites.
Sales at Starlink Satellite Systems have gone up 30 percent, owner Archie Hodges said. "There's tremendous interest," he said. His customers were complaining to him about the advertising blitz from the TV stations and cable companies that made each side look like bad guys. People were fed up with it and looking to change, he said.
Timothy Johnson of Roanoke just bought a satellite from Hodges two weeks ago.
"I thought about it 10 years ago, but my wife didn't like the look of it in the backyard," he said. So they subscribed to cable and were spending almost $50 a month, which included HBO and the Disney channel. Finally, with the atmosphere of feuding cable companies and broadcast stations, they decided to go ahead and get a satellite. He paid just under $3,000 and that included a lightning protector. He now pays $15 a month for eight HBO channels and two Disney channels.
Johnson likes that he can get rid of channels he doesn't want and with a "raw feed" he doesn't have to watch commercials during national newscasts or sports games. One drawback is that the satellite doesn't pick up the local stations so Johnson had to put up an antenna in his attic. Another is that each television throughout the home is wired to the same line and one TV can't be on a different channel from another.
by CNB