Cable battles

Cable companies have been monopolizing viewership for close to 30 years now, though initially there were several companies that would compete in an area, by about 15 years ago it had come down to one main company per major city or network area. Like AT&T's monopoly before 1982, these companies don't just cover one city, but have statewide networks and almost national coverage, or they cover a powerful network area like New York City. Time Warner, Cablevision, Comcast - these are huge corporations that pretty much do just enough to not be considered a monopoly but might as well be one since any other competition in their areas are pretty much nill. I've noticed a trend recently where just before some major TV event, a cable company will 'suddenly' get into a battle over fees from the major networks and the next thing you know there's the threat of the channel disappearing from that cable company and a lot of pissed off viewers. I first saw this in September of 2007 as the World Series was getting ready to start and NBC and Time Warner went toe to toe. NBC went off the air here in Austin for a few weeks and the one show I was keeping tabs on at the time, 'Heroes', was missed and I never went back to it. This happened again recently with the Big 12 Championship and this weekend it's ABC and Cablevision in NYC while the Oscars are on tonight. I don't believe in coincidence anymore so just like strikes that happen at the worst possible time this seems like a ploy to me and not just some random 'Oh, the contract's up now and someone won't budge'. The big three networks, barely hanging on for dear life up against cable channels and putting out crappy reality shows and zero good sitcoms anymore are charging higher and higher fees to the cable companies to run their networks. But these cable companies have money falling out of their ass, yet they put on the 'poor me' mask when this happens as if they couldn't afford the fees. The cable company is really just a middle man created after network television wasn't 'free' anymore and this just got worse with the digital tranfer from a couple of years ago where NO channels are free and you HAVE to view them via some sort of cable company...sounds like more strong arming to me by you guessed it, the monopoly cable companies. These companies don't really care about the viewers, but if the networks go bankrupt and all the shows that are still watched by America, and this includes the Super Bowl, the Oscars and still a few damn good shows like 'Lost' then who really loses here?