So What Changed?

[ihEARDtHAT]

I know that local cable outlets sell advertising and insert these commercials on most if not all of the channels. In the past, it seems that the switch to a local commercial vs the one carried by the individual channel was almost seamless. I've noticed over the last few months, that Cox cable has been bad at missing the start of the commercial slot so that I would see the beginning of the channel's commercial and then get the Cox commercial to start 2-5 seconds into the original.

So what has changed in the way Cox inserts their own commercials?

 

[desertskies]

I know that local cable outlets sell advertising and insert these commercials on most if not all of the channels. In the past, it seems that the switch to a local commercial vs the one carried by the individual channel was almost seamless. I've noticed over the last few months, that Cox cable has been bad at missing the start of the commercial slot so that I would see the beginning of the channel's commercial and then get the Cox commercial to start 2-5 seconds into the original.

So what has changed in the way Cox inserts their own commercials?

I don't want to say "you're just noticing that?", so I'll refrain.
I noticed it a few years ago. Cox had a nasty habit of starting commercial breaks late (about 5 - 10 seconds late) to the point of up-cutting programming. I understand that some of the spots they cover are barter, but as with you, I don't understand why the late starts occur. For a variety of reasons (the late comm start among them) I dropped Cox in favor of Dish...and I was getting cable at a sharply reduced cost! Overall, I see Cox as having weak production values in their spots and presentation. A number of their commercials seem to be from a college production level. Perhaps they too use the same production writers who like to say "we're open 24/7...nights and weekends too!".
I have a choice, Cox Cable is my LAST choice for entertainment, under OTA, Dish and DirecTv.

 

[landtuna]

I agree with Desertskies. Cox is a distant last on my choices of electronic entertainment. But late commercials wasn't the reason why.

I started with Cox some years ago and was fairly satisfied with their service until they began having outages that, in two cases, lasted an entire weekend. There was never any announcement or contact to tell me what the outage was or when it was expected to be fixed or even to report it as an outage. After the second full weekend of no service I turned in my equipment.

I then went to DISH. Their service was fine but when I attempted to terminate my contract, which had reached its legal limit, I was told I would be charged another $240. I told them to stuff it and walked away making a note to self never to do business with them again. After about five years the collection notices stopped coming.

DirecTV offered a similar service to DISH but at a more attractive price. I had no issues with them at all except that, eventually, i determined that I was watching only a very few services which was not worth my $70/month bill.

So now I am OTA with antennas just like back when I was a kid. I miss TCM but that's about all. And with $70 extra bucks in my pocket every month I can buy a whole bunch of classic movies on DVD. ;D

 

[ihEARDtHAT]

Desertskies - no I didn't just notice it, maybe this weekend just finally touched the nerve.

It just seems strange with all the automation that has been incorporated into broadcast media that this doesn't run better. I still remember the "old days" where you could see the signal in the upper portion of the picture to tell the stations to begin the commercial in X seconds.