I want my GOLTv!

I rolled out of bed today at 8:20 to watch the Liverpool-Reading game, only to discover that FSC was suddenly "not authorized" on my cable system. I switched the channel to GolTV to check on the Bundesliga match (Hamburg vs. Dortmund) and saw that I wasn't authorized to watch that channel either.

Watching live soccer on Saturday and Sunday mornings is one of the highlights of my weekend! I started watching the premier league a couple of years ago when I got digital cable and discovered FSC, then late last year I discovered GolTV. It's another all-soccer channel that shows games all the time, including live matches from the Mexican League, German Bundesliga and Spanish Premier League (La Liga) every weekend. GolTV is broadcast in Spanish, but you can receive it in English by setting the SAP button on your cable box. Now even if there's absolutely nothing on television, I can always tune to GolTV for a few minutes of Real Madrid vs. Valencia or Pachuca vs. Americas or some other batch of guys in blue and red jersey kicking a ball back and forth in some part of the world.

And now Comcast was trying to deny me one of my life's simple pleasures. I called their customer service this morning to discover that FSC and GolTV were just moved to the "sports tier", for $5 more a month, along with the NFL Network and NBATV and a few other sports channels (Fox College Sports, ESPNU). Curiously interesting that they chose to make this change on a Saturday (an EPL/La Liga/etc. match day and the day before selection Sunday) when they could get the most sports addicts to pay for it. From the sound of the customer service rep, they'd been fielding quite a few of these calls this morning.

Five bucks a month is just a little more than a pint of Fuller's at the Englander (where I'd have to go watch the EPL games if they weren't on my TV) and a drop in the bucket compared to the $120 I already pay for cable (internet and TV) so I opted to get the sports tier. The upside is that I now have the NFL Network, the NBA Network, and many more channels, and the downside is that I'm contributing five more dollars every month to the evil cable company. 

At least I have my FSC and GolTV again. I'm going to make a point of cancelling the sports tier after the FA Cup final in May, and won't reorder it until the Premier League resumes in August.

That's fifteen whole dollars that Comcast won't get from me!