Last quarter, every single major cable company (and some minor ones) suffered in this economy. This isn’t because people are leaving the cable companies behind. Every summer is rough for cable companies because that’s the season when most people move and business is typically slower for everything from Paul’s Taxi to Joe’s Donuts. But cable isn’t going away any time soon.

Actually, cable stocks are really popular right now. According to Forbes, “Comcast (CMCSA) raised its dividend 44% in February, and Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) went up more than 16% then. Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) hasn’t raised its dividend since early last year, but its dividend yield is a nice 3.85%. Yields for all of these companies are better than the 1.7% yield on the 10-year Treasury now.”

The way people watch cable in the future could be any way. But one thing’s for sure – people are still going to get incredibly engrossed in some six season storyline and talk about it incessantly until the next big thing comes around. So if cable suffers, it will switch over to something different, like internet, which most cable companies offer. For now, it’s actually cheaper to bundle cable and internet together for most people because then you don’t have to worry about data caps or having to wait the next day for your show to appear in some kind of online queue.

So don’t worry about missing those shows like Breaking Bad or Walking Dead. The industry may be going through some struggles just like every other industry, but you’ll still be able to be entertained to no end. Cheers to that!

Let this be a lesson – don’t rip off cable companies. This could be a huge blow to the city of Glendale, even though they signed an agreement way back in 199 between the two parties letting the city use the network without charge.

But that agreement never happened, according to Charter Communications, and so now the city owes the Chart $100,000 per month dating back to early 2008. That’s approximately $4.8 million dollars!

It’s mostly a blow to the taxpayers of California, who will likely be fronting the bill. But Charter shouldn’t have to pay for it. Maybe they should fire some of the officials who thought stealing from a business was a good idea.

At least the Judge said that because it failed to prove Glendale was wrongfully possessing the property (how is that not the case?) the company is not actually eligible for back pay from the city. So never mind what I just said about taxpayers. Charter is the one losing out.

In fact, Charter has been paying fees to the city! What kind of backwards crap is that? Charter have dished out over $640,000 in access fees in fiscal year 2010-2011. What a strange and stupid country we live in where the government can take your service for free and then make you pay for it. I thought this sort of thing only happened in Mother Russia, but I guess I was wrong.

Here are some other interesting factoids about Comcast’s service that will make it far superior to Verizon. First of all, there won’t be data caps. Second, while there’s no word on pricing yet, Verizon’s service costs $205 per month. That’s insane! Comcast can surely beat that price. If you were to download a movie off Pirate Bay (just kidding don’t do that) it would take about 2 minutes. That’s amazing!

But mostly, this is a PR stunt. Let’s be honest. Comcast is doing such a small increase just to show the world that they’ll always one up Verizon. Verizon has been distracted a lot recently because they’re trying to buy all this wireless spectrum. But this has a long list of government regulators in a tizzy because they all got this strange idea in their head that this will create a monopoly for Verizon and make it much more difficult for others to compete. Now, this whole rivalry between Comcast and Verizon should definitely prove otherwise. No matter what happens in internet speed land, there will always be a fight to be the best. And we all know who that is. 

So I would hate to be a cable TV provider. Their job is highly unappreciated and they are constantly fined by the FCC for silly things, like recently, when Time Warner Cable was fined $25,000 for failing to document their compliance with the Children Television Act.

Now, the CTA is a nice piece of legislation, which limits the amount of commercials you can run in kids programming. Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence and exploration, but if you’re a lazy parent that lets them waste away in from of the boob tube, you might as well limit how many commercials they see all day. The rules state that commercials can’t be longer than 10.5 minutes per hour on weekdays and 12 minutes per hour on weekends. So it’s a nice piece of legislation.

The FCC noted that none of the broadcasters, cable operators or satellite TV services exceeded the commercial limits, but because several companies failed to document their compliance, they’re in trouble. It’s like, really? Do you have nothing else to do, FCC? Nobody broke any rules except doing your job, which is making sure they’re in compliance, not you. But really, even though a $25,000 fine is more than a new car, most major cable companies make that much money in 12 minutes. At this point, the FCC is just being a bunch of useless jerks. Hope they’re proud of themselves.

But all this is actually a good zeitgeist for you, the consumer. You see, the percentages of homes with pay TV has finally peaked, so now satellite and cable operators are finally sensitive to the prices they’re pushing onto their customers. This attitude is long overdue, but now is as good as ever. And in the short term, this is going to be a frustrating fight, but in the end, everyone should be happier.

Pay TV costs have skyrocketed 60 percent in the last decade, a shocking 7 percent last year alone. Compared to prices of normal things, this is about twice as much inflation. Cable and satellite companies are blaming the programmers for rising costs while programmers are whining that their bills are higher too.

Historically, consumers have shown preferences for big packages over smaller, inexpensive ones but the economic downturn has led many folks to reduce their spending on cable and entertainment. It’s a sad trend (who is going to watch that Kardsashian show? What if people forget all about that family?) but it proves that the whole industry is entering a new phase.

And most of all, this new trend should make you, the consumer happy. Those high costs aren’t gonna stay that way and soon you may be paying just a few bucks a month for you grandiose entertainment schedule. Hallelujah! Praise the demi-god that made all this possible for us.

If you don’t have Netflix (good idea – nothing good is on there anyway, in my very humble experience) you likely have a DVR of some sort so you can catch them on your own schedule or at the very least you can buy entire boxsets of DVDs for the seasons of shows that you love. The temptation to binge is strong with this one.

But you really ought to take it easy. Everything should be done in moderation. Bingeing on television and watching 53 straight hours of some show is very unhealthy. Not just unhealthy for your body, sleep schedule and waist line but also your mental health.

Taking that much information in at once is bad for your brain. Cliffhangers need time to breath. If your devotion to Breaking Bad is so strong it rivals a cult like relationship to an idol than you really should treat it like church. Watch one or two episodes a week, no matter how strong the temptation is. This gives you time to reflect and process and truly meditate on the Holy Word that you are supposedly consuming and it’ll give you time to live your life more fully.

Weekend marathons of a TV show are gross. They shouldn’t even be called marathons, because you just waste away on the couch and yes, that is shameful. You only get one life and seeing how Breaking Bad ends isn’t really as important as spending time with your family or friends, creating your own storylines, dramatic arches and actual memories. Watching TV and bingeing is like being drunk all the time and never leaving your house.

But not watching isn’t the only option. Just watch things less frequently. Take it a little at a time and enjoy your life. It’s the only one you got.

Maybe you remember the days of yesteryear when people first saw broadband internet as something like a free for all or a broken piñata. You can grab as much as you can shove down your pants. But these days, everyone from major internet service providers to folks writing dumb articles in the New York Times are saying you should start thinking about how much bandwidth you’re consuming.

South Texas has an interesting model with Time Warner Cable – basically, if you have the “light” plan of five gigabytes per month, you must pay a dollar for every gig you go over. But if you don’t go over, you get a $5 dollar discount every month. Sweet deal! The company even gives you a special scale so you can track how much you’re using.

That’s interesting because Time Warner’s competitors are moving to a similar model, tiers of pricing for higher speeds and bigger amounts of broadband at home. So basically, they want to move to a model that’s like a cell phone company, where they charge you for how much you use instead of an unlimited service plan. In some ways this is good for you, in some ways, it’s not. If you’re not going to be downloading that much anyway, then it’s a great thing. If you are, too bad for you, it’s gonna cost you something.

This is also advantageous for companies giving you internet to control the digital pipelines. It’s not going to be very good for things like Netflix or customers that use it, because you end up using a lot of bandwidth for services like that. The Justice Department is doing an investigation into whether or not this is a good idea for business or whether it creates unfair advantages for ISPs.

The good news is, if you care about this, your country probably isn’t currently plagued by riots or looting, and some ISPs will start to offer their own versions of Netflix that won’t count against your bandwidth usage. Yay!

Let’s go back in time, all the way back to 2003, when Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler stared in a (at the time) original movie where a man with low self-esteem and a bad attitude learns to stand up for himself after being pushed over the edge one too many times. Now, Charlie Sheen, in his first role since being fired from CBS’s “Two and a Half Men” is playing the doctor that annoys the crap out of his patients until they learn that anger is a gift.

And this show clocked in 5.5 million viewers when it premiered last Thursday. Incredible, even if it’s less than half of what Sheen was used to back on CBS. That 5.5. million mark makes “Anger Management” the most watched scripted primetime comedy series premiere in cable history, if you don’t count Children’s Programming.

It’s also the most watched series premiere in FX history, so good by them. The age range was what you’d expect – sophomoric and cutesy 18-49 year olds. The second episode drew in ever more viewers – 5.74 million, to be exact. The network drummed up excitement for the show by airing a “Two and a Half Men” marathon, with episodes hand-picked by Mr. Sheen himself.

But just because something is original doesn’t mean it’s good. Russel Brand’s new show, “BrandX” only had 1.1 million viewers and it’s a pretty lame talk show format that’s been overdone a million times before. Perhaps 1.1 million times before.

But now there’s a new approach – the recently established Center for Copyright Information combines the forces of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and five of America’s largest ISPs: AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and Cablevision. This new organization hopes to streamline how digital copyright infringement is handled.

Here’s how it works – if you are dumb enough to get caught downloading media illegally, you’ll be flagged by the copyright holder (the record label or movie studio in question). You’ll still be anonymous, but your IP address will be detected. Then, they’ll tattle to your ISP, who will email you a copyright alert, informing you of the infringement and directing you toward legal avenues to acquire movies or music. Isn’t that kind of them?

There’s a six-strike rule with this program – get two strikes and both times you’ll get email warnings. The third and fourth time you’ll be forced to confirm that you received the notice through a landing page or pop-up window. On the fifth strike, you’ll get mitigation measures. Your internet connection will be slowed to a crawl and you’ll be forced to watch educational videos (gasp!) or even call the ISP office to explain yourself. These actions are left to the ISP to decide.

Once you run out of strikes, you’ll be taken out of the CCI’s system. Don’t cheer yet, because now you’ll be at the mercy of the content providers, who will more than likely sue you.

Keep this in mind if you’re going to be stealing content on the internet. Trends in internet piracy have dwindled over the years, so really, maybe it’s time to consider just buying the entertainment you consume.

In fact, A&E is so psyched (pun intended… I guess) about this, they skipped the pilot process. If you’ve never seen Pulp Fiction, lemme reiterate what Uma Thurman taught us – TV shows get a test run, one episode made and that’s called a pilot and they play that for test audiences. If the audience likes it, it’ll get made into a full-length show. If they don’t, it gets canned and never sees the light of day again.

But “Psycho” is such a classic that the revamped cable version, titled “Bates Motel,” has skipped that whole laborious process. Carlton Cuse (of Lost fame) and Kerry Ehrin (of Friday Night Lights fame) will be executive producing the series. Great job.

“We are proud to be partnering with Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin on their thrilling reinvention of one of the most compelling characters in cinematic history,” said the network in a statement. “It’s a provocative project from two of the best storytellers in the business and we’re looking forward to getting started.”

The Bates Motel series will tell the formative years of Norman Bates, his weird relationship with his mommy and the strange world they share. It’s sure to be filled with backstory (and hopefully blood splatters everywhere) all about how Norman’s mother Norma shaped him into the most famous fictionalized serial killer in Hollywood. A&E ordered up ten whole episodes, which will get tossed on the air in 2013.

At least this looks like it’s going to be miles above and beyond the Vince Vaughn remake of the same type. Why did anyone even waste their time with that turd?