Word: dish
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...cable subscribers. But that percentage is going in the same direction as the coaxial cable: down. A new study by J.D. Power & Associates identifies a clear trend: every year cable loses another 2% oftotal viewers, and satellite picks up the slack. In 1996 only 5 million viewers owned a dish; today the number is closer to 17 million...
...past, consumers balked at the high monthly bills that came with a dish. But these days cable and satellite costs are practically indistinguishable. The average monthly cable bill is $47.08 - and rising about $3 a year - according to J.D. Power. Satellite sets you back an average of $50.71 per month, but that number is holding steady. If the trend continues, the price difference will disappear by next year...
...same time, however, the world of satellite TV has got itself in a bigger mess than Oscar Madison's bedroom. The only two U.S. providers - DirecTV (owned by Hughes) and DISH Network (owned by Echostar) - want to merge. But the Federal Communications Commission has blocked the marriage on the grounds that it would create a monopoly. It's possible that Hughes and Echostar will resolve that impediment by selling some of their business to a third company, Cablevision, which would then enter the satellite market, but that's far from certain...
...answer depends mostly on the situation in your local TV market. Prices and channel packages vary wildly. Cable companies are in the midst of multibillion-dollar fiber-optic upgrades, which means that some places have better service than others. Meanwhile DISH and DirecTV say that unless they merge, they can't offer local channels - NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox affiliates, for example - to every American...
...That may be true, but it's mostly a negotiating ploy and not necessarily a reason for you to hold back on satellite. As long as you live in or near a city, it's more likely than not that you can already pick up local channels via satellite. DISH offers them to 60% of Americans; DirecTV does slightly better, at 67%. (As for your chances of picking up the satellite signal, that's more like 99%, unless you live in a canyon or in the shadows of skyscrapers...