I think this graph represents my most significant waste of money over the last 20 years.. and that is saying something given the number of engines I have destroyed.

The cost of cable TV service has outpaced inflation by a significant amount over that timeframe. The service level isn’t the same as the number of channels has grown significantly, however most metrics of quality might not have the same gain.

The trend that Comcast continues to push the price up until you call them to cancel holds true. The large drops in the Comcast areas are all the result of contact and theater. On my last call they dropped the price enough that it was cheaper to keep the television service with the internet than to keep the internet by itself.

The later years of comcast are also slightly polluted by the addition of bundled internet. I subtracted the bundled cost of internet from these figures, so this does represent just the cost of television services.

There is a void between mid 2008 and mid 2011 when I lived in the country where the only television service came over rabbit ears.