“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?”

When I turned on my TV the other day for my daily morning news fix, I got a cable company house channel  (channel 1) instead. This puzzled me because I never watch that channel, so I knew I hadn’t left the TV tuned to it. Curious, I changed the channel, waited a few minutes, turned the TV off, then turned it back on again. Back to channel 1.

Then I realized what was going on. The cable company is locked in a death match with satellite companies and phone companies offering TV services. They’re trying to counter the competition by pushing channel 1.

They’re running lots of commercials touting the fact that they have the channel and nobody else does. So, they’ve now programmed the cable box to automatically default to channel 1 when the TV goes on.

Trouble is (at least for me), I never watch channel 1. I have no idea if others do, but the point is I want to watch what I want to watch, not what the cable company chooses for me. Yes, I can easily change the channel, but why should I have to?

Like the witch in the story, the cable company is focusing only on what it wants, rather than what its customers want. Are you selling what’s good for you? Or what’s good for your customers? Are you differentiating yourselves with something your customers find valuable, or something they think is worthless?

Photo: dbking