Time Warner Cable and Cox Cable finally have an answer for keeping “stay at home” dogs entertained while their owners are away at work or play: DOGTV.

With more than 400 hours of research to win a rating of “puppy approved,” DOGTV will feature dog-sighted views of open car windows, dogs chasing balls around the yard, piano music, and popular movies for Fido like Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

For now, the show is running on both Time Warner and Cox Cable systems in San Diego, and is currently available for free.  Eventually, both cable companies are expected to charge $4.99 a month for the dog-centric programming.

The concept behind the idea for DOGTV is that a lonely pet left at home alone is an unhappy pet.  By leaving a television set tuned to programming that some dog experts believe will be soothing and engaging, your dog’s anxiety level can be kept as low as possible. If you have cats at home, you can buy toys to keep them company at Cat adorn.

Raising the cable bill another $5 a month might provoke anxiety in the rest of the household, however.  But as people continue to spend a fortune on keeping their favorite animal companion happy, it might prove to be the one pay-per-view event some pet lovers cannot live without.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/DogTV Sample.flv[/flv]

A sample of DOGTV’s “relaxation” programming.  (1 minute)

Both sides agree Time Warner Cable needs to add a new music channel, one owned by MSG parent Cablevision Industries, to your cable lineup.

Some suspicious Buffalo hockey fans suspect the real reason for the sudden focus towards a weekend resolution of a nearly two month dispute that kept MSG off Time Warner Cable customers’ screens since Jan. 1 is the fact the New York (City) Knicks are winning some basketball games and player Jeremy Lin is enjoying his “15 minutes of fame” in the national media spotlight.  Both companies announced the latest round of negotiations, held in New York City, have brought an end to the dispute.

Now that MSG is back on Time Warner Cable, neither company is getting a round of applause for finally reaching a deal.  In fact, a key provision of the settlement requires that the cable company add a new network — Fuse — to the cable lineup.  That means Time Warner Cable customers will eventually pay for a music channel they never asked to receive.

The New York Daily News is just the latest newspaper to put fans’ frustrations into print:

[MSG and Time Warner Cable] don’t give a damn about you.

[…] Fans once apathetic over the blackout and the lethargic Knicks are now fired up and vocal. They are calling TWC and MSG. They are making their feelings known inside the Valley of the Stupid, too.

At this point they are having little impact. The two sides said they recently met. How long? Five minutes? The response from the suits at both companies is the same. Their propaganda never changes. They are more interested in gift-wrapping their problem.

Instead of locking itself in a room for around-the-clock negotiating, TWC is taking fans to a Knicks game in Charlotte. Or MSG, catering to the Asian market it suddenly discovered, is throwing a Knicks viewing party at a Chinatown restaurant. This is known as manipulation. These are nothing more than visuals. They don’t change a damn thing.

The song remains the same: TWC says MSG is looking for a 53% increase in subscriber fees, which now, according to industry analysts, average just over $2.63 per customer. MSG responds by saying TWC is lying. TWC says in September MSG agreed to a 6.5% increase. MSG says that’s a lie, too.

Someone is lying. Everyone is lying. That’s part of the spin. Instead of taking it out on both sides for shafting you, they want you to choose sides, identify a bad guy. Don’t. When two lying swines are fighting in the slop, only a sucker would try to intervene.

After nearly two months of cable subscribers complaining they were paying for a sports channel they were not getting, everyone –and– the governor got involved.  But perhaps nothing motivated a resolution more than the sudden media spotlight on Knicks’ player Jeremy Lin, dubbed Linsanity.

“Linsanity helped,” Chris Marangi, a portfolio manager at Gamco Investors told Bloomberg News.  The investment firm owns about 5 million MSG shares and 500,000 Time Warner Cable shares. “Time Warner Cable realistically couldn’t have dropped MSG — it’s too important to too many fans in New York to not be carried. Both sides probably gave a little.”

While state politicians thanked each other for a “job well done,” Time Warner Cable subscribers won’t be getting a refund for a channel missing from their lineup for eight weeks.  But they will likely face a higher rate increase in 2013, in part to pay for a music channel few knew existed and even fewer wanted.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WIVB Buffalo Fans React to MSG Deal 2-19-12.mp4[/flv]

WIVB in Buffalo explores the fallout of Time Warner Cable and MSG’s near-two-month dispute.  (2 minutes)

Frontier Communications faced unhappy investors Thursday after announcing it was slashing its dividend nearly in half in an effort to raise money to sustain the company’s cash flow and reduce its debt.

The company’s earnings fell 8.1% as customers continued to leave for the competition, seeking better service and lower prices.

The poor earnings results and the dividend cuts delivered a one-two punch to Frontier stock, which slid to $4.20 a share, down 16 percent in the last three months.

Among Frontier’s biggest challenges remains the quality of its broadband service to customers.  Where competition exists, Frontier DSL continues to lose the speed battle, and recent junk fees padding customer bills, including a “High Speed Internet surcharge,” and increasing modem rental fees have alienated some customers.

Frontier’s chief operating officer and executive vice president Dan McCarthy told investors 83 percent of Frontier’s service area has access to the company’s broadband product.  However, fewer than 20% of Frontier’s customers have access to speeds as high as 20Mbps.  Only just over half can access the Internet at 6Mbps.  Many of Frontier’s customers can only access lower speed service (66% can choose 4Mbps, 76% — 3Mbps, and the rest 768kbps-3Mbps).

“We’ll be investing throughout the year to improve speed-reaching capability in all our markets,” McCarthy told investors on a conference call last week.

In the second half of 2010, Frontier is expected to increase the amount of Ethernet in its middle mile network, which McCarthy expects will allow the company to deliver faster speeds over VDSL2 and VDSL2 bonding as means of driving both speed increases in the residential and the commercial markets.

However, Frontier’s preoccupation with an internal system conversion, to integrate its acquired Verizon service areas with the rest of its network, has stalled much of the company’s marketing.  Promotions, in particular, have been anemic over the last several months and will likely remain that way until later this year.  Where competition exists, cable operators have successfully been picking off Frontier’s customers.

• Broadband and satellite TV additions are down, in part due to the lack of promotions and marketing;
• FiOS video losses continue as the company shuns its fiber video service in favor of satellite TV cross-marketing;
• Line loss rates remain very high: 8.3% of Frontier’s customers disconnected their landline service in the last quarter, 5.9% in areas that were not acquired from Verizon.
• Once customers leave, they rarely return.  Churn rate of Frontier customers coming and going is at just 1.6%.

As with similar Verizon landline sales in the past, initial revenue growth from acquired customers starts out high, boosting revenue numbers and often the value of a company’s stock.  But the heavy debt load incurred from acquisitions and ongoing line losses to the competition eventually take their toll, and Frontier’s revenue now reflects the reality of a company trying to sell more services to a declining number of customers.

Morningstar notes the company’s debt problems are significant:

Frontier has struggled to bring leverage down and hasn’t successfully placed new debt since closing the Verizon transaction in 2010. Management has talked about taking care of the $580 million maturity it faces in early 2013 for the better part of a year, with no result to date. Yields on the firm’s existing debt have increased over the past year, despite the sharp decline in Treasury rates.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services reduced its outlook on the company from stable to negative, noting the competition is increasingly hurting Frontier’s capability to raise revenue.

The company’s decision to slash its dividend in an effort to reduce debt has created consternation for some investors who stuck with the company when the share price was above $7 and the dividend was declared safe for two years.  Neither seems to the be case any longer.

CenturyLink runs specials on their website that offer extra savings when ordered online.

Your $50 monthly broadband bill has been burning a hole in your wallet and you think there should be a cheaper price available somewhere, right?

The answer is, for most of us, there is.  You just have to look.

The most expensive Internet access around comes when you buy broadband-only service from a provider.  Both cable and phone companies have been incrementally punishing their “broadband-only” customers for years, tacking on $5, $10, even $15 to the price because you have chosen not to bundle broadband with other services the company sells.  It is not unusual to see some cable companies charging $55-60 for standard Internet service.  When you call to inquire, they are sure to begin aggressively upselling you to a bundled service package, arguing you can add cable TV and phone service for $20-30 more a month.  That sounds like a better deal, unless you honestly don’t care about either service.

Welcome to the world of marketing, where the “value perception” is key to driving the average revenue collected from each subscriber higher and higher.  You end up buying services you probably would not have considered, but because they seem so inexpensive when compared with the price of the service you are interested in, why not?

Phone companies do the same thing, but many of them also love to bury hidden charges in the fine print and commit you to 1-3 years of service to guarantee the advertised price.  Companies like Frontier Communications may pitch DSL service for just $15 a month, but keep reading and you will discover the taxes and fees raise that price substantially.  In fact, that particular phone company is notorious for charging substantial modem rental fees and what they call a “High Speed Internet” surcharge.  To get the lowest price from them, you will be a Frontier customer for at least a year, depending on the promotional offer selected.

Frontier redefines "value": This attractive looking offer "fine prints" the $6.30 modem rental fee, is for service "up to" 1Mbps (so much for "high speed"), has a one-year service commitment with a $50 early termination fee, and does not include unspecified "taxes and surcharges" which run extra.

You can break free of the marketing circus by concentrating on finding the best possible deal for the service(s) you really care about.

1. Check advertising offers on television and in newspapers, but always read the fine print;
2. Visit the website of each local provider and look for “Internet-only” offers that may deliver extra savings, but only when you order online;
3. Call providers and ask them about their various deals and inquire “is this the best offer you have right now?;”
4. Use search engines and type in your provider’s name and words like “deals,” “offers,” or “promotion.”  Third party authorized resellers may have an offer that works better for you.

Sometimes you can get excellent results playing providers off each other.  Try contacting the social media representatives of different providers in your area to unlock hidden deals, and more importantly, customer retention offers.  One Rochester reader of ours got Time Warner Cable to open negotiations to keep his business with this tweet:

Getting ready to schedule my @TWCable disconnect after rate increase – should I go with @dishnetwork over @DirecTV or vice versa?

He received a substantial retention offer within hours of alerting Time Warner of his discontent (he’s also a rabid hockey fan, and the ongoing MSG-Time Warner Cable dispute made satellite an attractive alternative.)

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KNXV Phoenix Which broadband provider saves you the most money 2-7-12.mp4[/flv]

KNXV in Phoenix helped residents in that Arizona city figure out who was cheaper, CenturyLink or Cox Cable.  And what about using mobile broadband for a home broadband replacement?  (3 minutes)

TWC TV for PC (and Mac too!)

Time Warner Cable this morning introduced a “beta version” of Time Warner Cable TV for PC, the latest iteration of the company’s “TV Everywhere” project.

TWC TV requires a current cable television subscription, a Time Warner Cable My Services registration, and a home computer with a current version of Silverlight (if you do not have it, it will likely prompt you to download it).  You do not have to use Time Warner Cable broadband to access the service.

In addition to streaming live TV to the desktop, you can manage DVR listings and remotely change channels on your set top box — the ultimate in laziness if you’ve misplaced the remote control.

We’ve been testing the service here at Stop the Cap! headquarters this afternoon, and so far the service works as described with few glitches.  The channel lineup is similar to the company’s streaming service for Apple’s iPad.  Missing are local channels and cable networks with whom Time Warner has yet to secure streaming agreements.

Video quality could stand some improvement, however.  Netflix and Hulu appear to use higher bit rates than Time Warner is using during its beta test.

Here’s the full list of features:

1. Live TV – Users scroll the “channel browser” to see a list of available channels with listings displaying network logo, show name, and episode name.
2. Guide – Up to 7 days of listings data. Option to filter guide display by “favorites only,” “HD only” or ”available to watch on PC.” You can also set channels as favorites from the Guide.
3. Set-top box tuning – “Watch on TV” button within the program description to tune an MDN/ODN set-top box directly to the channel.
4. PC tuning – “Watch on PC” button within the program description to tune PC directly to the channel.
5. DVR management – Schedule one-time and series recordings on MDN/ODN DVRs directly from the Guide’s show pages. Click on the “DVR” tab to see a list of all upcoming recordings and make changes or cancel recordings.
6. Search – Ability to search the Guide by show title, episode and/or by person.
7. Settings – Ability to manage Favorite channels, link to set Parental Controls, choose the Device (STB/DVR) to which you are connected for STB/DVR management, and turn on/off Closed Captioning on the website’s video player.

This will work for both PC and Mac. Here are the supported browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0 and up
• Firefox 4 and up for mac and windows
• Safari 5 and up for mac and windows
• Chrome: Latest stable release which is 17

You’ll need to download or possibly upgrade Silverlight to version 4.

(Customers with iGuide set-top boxes and analog video customers cannot tune their TVs using the TWC TV apps or website. Analog customers and those with iGuide and SARA boxes won’t have access to the TV tuning or DVR features, but are offered a basic program guide based on the zip code on their accounts.)

[Updated 9:09am 2/15/12 — Thanks to our readers, we now know “you have to be connected to a Time Warner Cable network connection, with a modem on your account to connect to live TV.”  We stand corrected.]