Rogers Communications - A Disintegrating Business?

You can replace lies with truth: but myth is only displaced with a narrative.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed Of Procrustes, p.20

At the time of this writing the time showing on my Rogers cable box is 'dnld'. It has been doing that all day. What a nightmare piece of shit that purchase turned out to be! And of course the Oracle of Ottawa was stupid enough to actually buy his own box! At the time of the purchase of the Sony HD flat screen, the Cisco Explorer box cost me a whooping $225.00. To replace it today, it will cost over $300.00. Screw that, and Screw Rogers!

HDTV is free! Don't pay for it from Rogers

It was a  little over two years ago that the Oracle of Ottawa finally upgraded, and at first the Oracle truly enjoyed it. You could then surf through the channels at lightning speed. It was great value and a great experience. Then on last Labour Day weekend, it was a Friday, I remember it all so clearly, the Oracle returned home to see 'dnld' on the digital box screen. I turned the set on, and the nightmare started. You could no longer surf through the channels at lightning speed. All the cool information that was once on the set top box screen vanished. And you could no longer do a channel set up. With the cable package that the Oracle of Ottawa has there was about 200 channels spread out from 1 to 999. Try surfing through 1000 clicks to get to the channel you want to get to! The channels that you don't have you could once block out with an automatic set up. Now you have to suffer through an on purpose time delay installed pause in the new software that tells you that you don't get that channel, and to call to get that service! Screw that! And Screw Rogers!

When the Oracle of Ottawa called in this problem in he was in a total rage. What do you think happened Dear Reader? I had a third world packie piece of shit Temporary Foreign Worker actually laugh at me! Screw that! And Screw Rogers!

What would the sense be in replacing a $225.00 digital set top box with a $500.00 set top box that is still a piece of shit worse than the $225.00 box? If you don't believe the Oracle of Ottawa see any of the Rogers Forums online.

But there is an answer Dear Reader. Just quit giving Rogers and the adjoining scum your money, that's right, cancel your cable. And don't even think about that "wireless" (it ain't...) TV from Bell, if there is any communication company in Canada that is lower than Rogers, it is Bell Canada. The answer Dear Reader is to go OTA, which stands for Over The Air. The Oracle of Ottawa first discovered OTA while at my local Sears store. I asked the young lad where he was getting that awesome HD signal that was on a huge 65 inch Sony flat screen and he pointed to the TERK rabbit ears and adjoining Yagi array! The Oracle of Ottawa could not believe it! The reason that OTA is so much better is that it is not compressed. There is nothing as pure and as perfect as uncompressed HDTV. You can't buy it from Rogers at any price. The Oracle of Ottawa was inspired.

The next day the Oracle of Ottawa went to a local Home Hardware and purchased a Northvu NV20 PRO antenna. Took it home, hooked it up and put it in the window and scanned. Much to the Oracle of Ottawa's amazement, he got 15 pure HD channels! And you could surf through them like greased lightning. And of course uncompressed HD is just beyond words. Try it for yourself. The Oracle is planning to get the booster amp, and that will be all the Oracle of Ottawa requires.

Milos Raonic Loves Canada?

The most painful moments are not those we spend with uninteresting people; rather, they are those spent with uninteresting people trying hard to be interesting. 
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed Of Procrustes, p. 11

It was a Friday night in the August just passed that the Oracle of Ottawa was really looking forward to watching the Oakland Athletics at the Toronto Blue Jays in Rogers Centre. It would no doubt be very nearly sold out, that is over 40,000 people were going to be there to see the awesome low dollar team of Money Ball. (Not to mention the millions of Canadians from coast to coast that would be watching on television...) Immortalized by the great writer Micheal Lewis. The Montreal Cup tennis crap was also happening at the same time, but the Oracle of Ottawa was confident that with his cable package from Rogers Communications which has 5 Sportsnet channels, that surely they would step down and allow the baseball to be shown. Especially since Rogers Communications owns the Toronto Blue Jays!

Milos Raonic - Canadian or tax dodging fraud?

 But Dear Reader it was not to be. It was tennis on every channel, the same crap on all five channels at the same time. The Oracle of Ottawa was livid. A call was placed to Rogers and after about 15 minutes, the Oracle of Ottawa was told by something with a thick East Indian accent that "Sir, you cannot complain"!! I then asked for a number at head office with someone in programming and / or content and again the Oracle of Ottawa was told; "I am so sorry Sir, you can't complain". You can't make crap like this up. And for anyone reading this from Canada, that has Rogers for cable knows the Oracle is telling the truth.

 Canada has never been, is not now, and will never be in the future a tennis superpower. Tennis is for the 1% of the New World Order. As a rule of thumb, any sport that can be watched from a "verandah" is pretty much a wipe out in Canada. That also explains why we suck as a nation at golf, cricket and tennis. But why would Rogers cut the nose off their face and lose all that advertising revenue from MLB? Tennis is not a spectator sport. If it was, the Center Court at Wimbleton would have more than 11,000 seats wouldn't it?
And that endless flogging of this character Milos Raonic, that claims to be a Canadian, but speaks English like a country club gigolo. What is up with this insanity? The Oracle of Ottawa has decided to investigate.    

Brett Lawrie - A real Canadian sports Star!!

  The Oracle of Ottawa was just floored at all the neat stuff that he has found out. The Oracle of Ottawa has provided a link to the information. First, Milos Roanic is not a native born Canadian. (He is the spawn of economic migrants.) He was not even born in Canada, he was born in Titograd, Montenegro, formally Yugoslavia! Of which you can be sure he has a passport to. Yet Rogers sells him to us as a "real Canadian". To the Oracle of Ottawa, a real Canadian sports star at present is Brett Lawrie, who was actually born in Canada and lives in Canada as much as he can, no matter how much money he makes. 

 Second: Milos Roanic seems only to live in Canada when Rogers ponys up the money for him to pass himself off as a "Real Canadian". Otherwise he stays at his present home in Monaco! Which is a pimple of a tax haven on the arse of France.  Can you believe this avarice? How come Rogers does not tell that to the Canadian people in the endless Raonic ads? Why doesn't Rogers tell the truth and admit that Milos Raonic is simply a Canadian of convenience?

Third: Milos Roanic's siblings really do believe in Canada. That is why they have left it to return to their "home" country. 

Fourth: Mols Roanic has a hard serve! That is like a young baseball pitcher that can throw a one hundred mile an hour fast ball. Both are essentially useless, if you cannot control them.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, .....

Fifth: Milos Raonic has earned $3,006,227 in prize money since turning pro in 2008. The Oracle of Ottawa can only say that it all has hardly been worth all the trouble, perhaps Milos should have tried baseball as a kid...

Rogers Communications - Twilight Of A Titan?

A man of parts would often be at loss without the company of fools.
Francois duc de La Rocheffoucauld, Maxims, No. 140

It is hard to believe that once upon a time in Canada Rogers Communications was one of the most loved companies in Canada. If memory serves, it always made the top 100 Canadian Employers List. If you had a tech or billing problem there was no long aggravating voice mail tree, someone actually answered the damn phone and took care of you right away. And back in the days when Ted Rogers ran it all, you hardly ever had to call.   

Ted Rogers - Spinning in his grave?

Now all telecom companies in Canada are totally despised and dreaded. Rogers doesn't seem to have any real employees any more, but rather an army of minimum wage contractors and temporary foreign workers, that know nothing about your problem and couldn't care less. But you can be sure the marketing never stops. As the price keeps creeping up on your cable package the quality of the content seems to slipping the other way in rather perfect proportion. A thousand channels and nothing on.

It was just before the last Labour Day weekend that the Oracle of Ottawa noticed that his Cisco cable box had been re-programed with what appears to be software for the new Rogers PVR, version 3.0, that can tape 8 shows at once! (Who wants that??) The Oracle of Ottawa was not amused, but there was no way you could do anything about it. There was a two hour wait time to talk to a tech rep that weekend. Which makes perfect sense. Force crap on the customer and then send all the tech reps home for the long weekend so you won't have to pay for overtime. Meanwhile, we are stuck with cable boxes that are as slow as a fat pig in thick shit.   

Meanwhile there is no baseball on due to faggot tennis, again! There is no one to call on this either. The Oracle of Ottawa tried one night recently, and was told by a thick East Indian accent, that; "Sir, you cannot complain"!! You can't make this stuff up. When my cable box was re-programed, the Oracle waited a very long time again to find out that I couldn't complain, but while I was waiting the Oracle heard that stupid PVR pitched endlessly. 

Rogers Communications has a lot of serious problems. The first and largest, is poor management. The second is that they are in too many business's that they don't know anything about, such as production and content creation. This goes equally for all the giant telco's in Canada at the time of this writing. Have you ever tried to watch the Discovery Channel lately? And where did all the baseball games go that the Oracle always used to enjoy? Note to executive suite: Yachting is not a sport!

But the lads at Rogers have a monopoly. Where else are the proles going to go? Well, would you be surprised if the Oracle of Ottawa told you Dear Reader that it is quiet possible that the whole business model of the Rogers monopoly could be shortly just a bad memory? The Oracle of Ottawa has noticed the marketing of the first HD TV wireless TV boxes by Bell at his local mall. Hmmm... a wide area network otherwise known as a WAN. No infrastructure to maintain. No large barriers to entry. How long will it be before someone simply sets up a dish and just re-brodcasts what is in the clear on the aether? The Oracle of Ottawa can see very much inexpensive choice on the very near horizon. Think about it...

The Oracle of Ottawa certainly does not own Rogers stock. And if you happen to be an owner or a manager of a very large holding in a portfolio, the Oracle of Ottawa strongly recommends that you start getting rid of it all in the very near future. With the advent of the wireless HDTV box and very many providers Rogers, Shaw, Telus, and Bell are shortly going to be Titans without a business.... Like video rentals, remember that?

Could it soon all be gone, like it never existed? Good riddance!!!

Where O Where Is My Greg Zaun?

The product on the field is the players, it's the game,  it's not the ownership, it's the players and the game, and there the ones that deserved to get paid, and that's whats going to happen in this case.
Greg Zaun, Sportsnet Connected segment, commenting on NHLPA talks,  on or about September 09, 2012.

The Oracle of Ottawa knows it can only be bad news in Canada when you go to tune in for your favorite on-air personality and he or she is not there anymore. And you can be pretty sure it is final when the new on-air personality(s) act like that person that you tuned in for was never even here, ever. The Oracle of Ottawa wishes that the corporate over-whores would explain the absence of an on-air personality. The Oracle of Ottawa can take it! If you fired the person for cause, let us know! We are the viewers. We own your five something or other ragged media asses! You really shouldn't ever forget that. Ever.

Jamie Campbell(left) basks in Greg Zaun's immaculate light...

 It has been a great summer for the Oracle of Ottawa. Free from all the old bullshit. I had time to watch the most baseball that I have ever watched in years. And, the Oracle of Ottawa really liked the frank and edgy commentary of Greg Zaun! No Blue Jay game is really complete unless it starts with Greg Zaun's "Three Ways To Win" segment in the pregame show! And the Oracle of Ottawa could really tell that no corporate whore fart catcher/communications type, could get Greg to go to a "How to Dress for TV" course! Only an old school dude such as Greg Zaun could wear what he wore, and actually get away with it, and not look stupid like Don Cherry! I will bet he even had on the two-tone water buffalo brogues!!  Ya, it was a hell of a good summer, until earlier this week, and no more Greg! And to be replaced by somebodies sweet Latino boyfriend, (Jose somebody....) ever so accommodating, that I swear I could feel little Jamie Campbells love-hole winking.....  Shudder.....

What ever could the reason for the sudden absence be? The Oracle searched and searched, and discovered a very frank segment on the recent NHLPA talks, that looks like from here, the beginning of a long cold grey winter. Could it be that Greg Zaun was a little too pro labour for the corporate over-whores at Rogers Communications, that also just so happen to also own the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team? The part where Greg states with full confidence that Donald Fehr did not come out of retirement to lose damn near  busted my gut!

Well whatever the outcome is, whatever happens, the Oracle of Ottawa can be certain that when Greg Zaun draws his last breath, his last words certainly won't be "I wish I had said that....". In the Oracle of Ottawa's book Greg Zaun is a stand up guy.

Could this be the reason why Greg Zaun is no longer on Sportsnet?

Screw The 'Harper Government' - I'm Watching The Bluejays!

One thing a writer has, if he is fortunate, and I have been fortunate, is a partnership with the years. 
Roger Kahn, The Boys Of Summer, p. xxi

Re: Memo from the Sports Desk....

Well dear reader, if you thought this piece was going to be on the Oracle of Ottawa's impressions of the latest 'Harper Government' interview with the Fuhrer himself, on the state broadcaster of the CBC, you are going to be disappointed. The Oracle of Ottawa was watching the Toronto Blue Jays  just whooping the Chicago White Sox on Sportsnet. But during the commercials, the Oracle of Ottawa checked in briefly, and came to the realization that I could miss 90% of it and still cover it for my adoring readership.

Rogers Centre - The wealth of summer...

The Prime Minister states that he doesn't pay much attention to the Canadian media! The Oracle of Ottawa was very surprised when the pig-eyed little man's nose didn't explode out of his face! He doesn't pay attention to Canadian media? If that is true, why wasn't he wearing his favorite Do- Me Hot Pink lipstick, in double high gloss? Is it because some one in the Prime Ministers Office picked up my wicked trashing of it in this blog? You can rest assured dear reader that that is the case. The Oracle of Ottawa collapsed in laughter when the Great Man mentioned that we are "running out of runway"! He should have listened to those young punks in the NDP and not have closed it!

Now the Oracle of Ottawa knows that somebody in the Prime Ministers Office will have read this piece within twenty four hours of this 'umble blogger pushing the "publish post" button. And the Oracle of Ottawa has two serious observations to be taken into consideration. The first is; stop buying the Great Mans suits at Walmart! Second; if that is his old Walmart suit, someone had damn well better book him into the DND medical Centre for a cat-scan! It appeared to this blogger that this man has lost at least 15-20% of his body mass in a very short time of about a week! Or has he had a near death experience in the form of a very frank chat with, say, that nice American Ambassador to Canada, whereupon the 'Harper Government' was confronted with the facts of their nuts deep depth (debt?) to the Peoples Republic of China, especially relating to a recent certain "tele-com" deal? Ya, those frank discussions can be near life or death, can't they?

Yes dear reader, the Oracle of Ottawa sensed like Peter Mansbridge, that something was deeply troubling the Fuhrer. What ever could it really be? Hmmmm.... But back to the ball game...

It seems that the "syringe era" of Major League Baseball is over. The Oracle of Ottawa has not seen one guy so far that looked like a comic book character. And watching baseball in full 1080HDi is just like watching a shiny  baseball card in full motion! Baseball is so real in HD. The Oracle of Ottawa is again enjoying the great game. The Rogers Sportsnet coverage of the Blue Jays is just the best out there. The commentary isn't Harry Cary, but is the best I have seen and heard so far. Could it be possible that the corporate lads in Toronto still have some semblage of a soul left? There may be hope for Canada after all... 

What is the definition of  great character team? Even when they lose, you can't stop watching! Hats of to the corporate overlords at Rogers Communications! (And please don't screw it up!!)

WPBS Reception Problem Solved?

It may be true that we cannot detect occasions of illusion and error at a glance. That is what makes them illusions.
Simon Blackburn, Think,  Knowledge, p. 23-24

One of the best viewing choices offered in the basic cable television packages by Rogers Communications to the viewers in Ottawa, Ontario is WPBS from upstate New York. Those of us of the "Lefty" bent really enjoy our Masterpiece Theater, Frontline and especially Charlie Rose. But for some reason, the Oracle of Ottawa just can't comprehend, it seems that Rogers has a real "thing" against WPBS. They tried desperately to remove WPBS from the package under the subterfuge that the over the air signal was not of the quality that Rogers had randomly set. Then there was that big public uprising that raised the money to get WPBS the required dedicated fibre optic cable so that Rogers had to relent again and allow WPBS to be seen in the Ottawa area.

"All The Gold"

With the fibre optic feed you would think that the problem of poor reception would be a thing of the analog past. Wrong again. And for the poor tech guys on the American side you can give up the search, the problem is not on your side! About a year or two ago the Oracle of Ottawa had a similar problem with Rogers and the reception of my beloved BBC. The audio track of the feed was delayed just long enough to make the station totally unwatchable. This caused a "service" call by the Oracle of Ottawa to customer service. The Oracle of Ottawa is very ugly when he is pissed! It is never pretty, and for the poor putzen at the receiving end; life changing and un-forgettable.Many things were mentioned. My federal member of Parliament, who was at the time a cabinet minister, my buddy at the CRTC and friends at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council were lightly mentioned. Result? Lo! And behold! The reception was corrected as I hung up the phone!

The Oracle of Ottawa will let you in on the secret. It is not a technical problem, it is a greed and money problem. It is all about the advertising, and how Rogers can maximize the revenue from said advertising. Shocking isn't it! It all dawned on me recently, well, last night as a matter of fact. I was trying to watch Charlie Rose and there was that break up of the picture and that intermittent lose of the audio feed, that made it just impossible to watch. Then at 12:00 a.m. at the start of Tavis Smiley just before the Walmart commercial, the whole situation rapidly came back to normal! Total coincidence of course! Geez and there are a ton of skanky Walmart stores in Canada, most of them in Ontario, the parts of Ontario that Rogers serves. I mean, how weird is that? Upon reflection, all the shows that I was dying to watch did not have the "right" advertisers! It is just a coincidence, one must not jump to conclusions. The militant right wing is not trying to remove every thing that speaks against it. That of course is just crazy talk. Isn't it?

In closing a few questions for "management" to ponder....