The cable in the hotel room only has a few channels for cable. I was flipping through looking for ESPN to watch the LSU/A&M game. Alas, it doesn’t look like ESPN is carried. Due to high carriage fees, I’d imagine. This honestly strikes as an anti-family policy, though. ABC/ESPN should give them a break. After all, we want dads to stick around and accompany the baby for the first couple days, it’s helpful that he’s not missing games. Note, I would not actually let this come between me and time with Baby. But I’m not that hard core of a fan!
Anyhow, they lack ESPN but have a lot of family-friendly channels (Hallmark, Cooking Channel, etc.), which makes sense.
There is one that only makes sense where I live, though. They have a home shopping network… for livestock. Welcome to Arapaho!
Arapaho is indeed in love with its cowboy mythology. All along the walls of the hallway of this place are artful pictures and paintings of the beautiful scenery and, whenever people appear, it’s almost always in cowboy hats. I have difficulty imagining that people are really going to be buying livestock from a hospital. But the channel is free (I’m sure), and I wouldn’t be surprised if admin got a kick out of it.
I’ve been away from the cable industry for a decade now, but… yes, ESPN wants a lot of money for their content. Something’s got to cover the $2B per year or so they pay to the NFL for Monday Night Football. About the time I left the business they also started requiring bundling — you couldn’t buy just ESPN, you had to buy some of the other ESPNs as well, for extra bucks. Who pays whom, and how much, for the various cable channels is incredibly strange.