Well, let me tell you. I love AMC shows. I am a Dish subscriber. I was really looking forward to the new “Hell on Wheels” season, and I am pretty p***ed off to have been robbed of shows I actually watch on channels I actually like (as opposed to the zillions of channels I’m forced to buy in order to view the 19 I actually watch).

AMC invites me to switch TV providers to solve my problem.

But here’s the thing, AMC. I am in a TWO-YEAR CONTRACT with Dish. It costs me a LOT of money to simply dump Dish and switch to my other option, DirecTV (I live in the mountains and can’t get cable TV).

Would I do that, if I thought this was a one-time problem? You know, I might.

But here’s the thing, AMC. For a couple of years, I had both DirecTV and Dish Network at my house. During that period, both of these distributors blacked out channels that I had paid for and should have been receiving while they engaged in pissing contests with content providers like yourselves who wanted to raise rates. From what I read in the papers, this is a trend that is not only going to continue but worsen over the next several years as the distributors gets squeezed harder and harder.

So tell me, how does it benefit me, a powerless consumer, to switch providers to solve THIS problem, when three months down the road, DirecTV will be blacking out some other channel I care about for some unknown period of time? You — the content providers and the distributors — have made it abundantly clear that you don’t give a crap about the consumer. You force us to pay for content we don’t want by shoving bundles down our throats instead of letting us buy channels a la carte … force us to pay for content that we DO want even when we’ve been cut off from it while you try to strong-arm one another … and during all of this, you continue to jack up the cost (to us!) of participating in this madness.

I’ve about had enough. My husband and I are talking about downgrading our pay TV subscription now to the most basic package we can buy, and supplementing that with movie rentals from Netflix, Blockbuster, or Amazon. We’ll still be paying for content, but at least we’ll only be paying for content that (1) we actually want and (2) we actually get.

Guess we’ll catch this season of Hell on Wheels next year when it comes out on DVD, if we still care about it then.

AMC needs to stop trying to bundle those other channels no one watches. In fact everyone needs to stop forcing bundles. Everyone says that it would result in a higher bill each month. But it seems like every year someone renogotiates they try to force new niche channel bundles which ends up in higher bills anyways.

Anyways being a cord cutter i’m glad I don’t have to go through all this drama.