I hate to brag, but I called it – the massive escape from YES (and HOT, which we used in the past and was no better). Check out this story from Arutz 7:

Current customers of the HOT and YES cable and satellite TV services have been jamming the companies’ phone lines since Thursday morning, after a ruling by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Forum that customers have a right to cancel their service for the next three weeks without having to pay a substantial cancellation fee. The fee has been waived because of the closure of the Hallmark Channel, which has decided to stop broadcasting in Israel.
It should be noted that the number of those seeking to cancel the services substantially outnumbers the customers of both services who actually watched the channel.

Looking for alternatives? Look right here and here – at my blog post and Jpost article on Saying “No” to YES!

You know those TV shows (I’m thinking Oprah) where they tell you how much money you can save if you stop smoking? Well, I’m saving money now too – not by giving up smoking, but by giving up Big Corporate Commercial TV!

Actually, I’m not giving up TV – not by a long shot. What I am giving up is subscription digital satellite TV, better known in Israel as “YES.”

Yes, this post is about saying no to YES (the truth is I thought of that line a long time ago, but I promised to give Jameel credit. We like Jameel). YES was costing me NIS 290 a month ($77 a month in current shekels!), an astronomical price for much of what turns out to be content (upwards of 80%, I would say) I can get for FREE, using an alternative satellite decoder that subscribes to the hundreds of free to air TV stations broadcasting in the Middle East.

I’ve been investigating the idea of dumping YES for awhile, so I did quite a bit of research on alternatives – and I knew exactly what to expect with the one meter dish I had installed, aimed at two satellites, Israel’s Amos, which has the six Israeli stations and Middle East TV, and Nilesat, which carries about 600 channels. Yes, most of them are Arabic, but there are enough English language one to make getting rid of YES worth it.

Until very recently, YES and HOT (the cable provider) had you over a barrel, because it was the only way even to get Israel Channel 10 (Recently Channels 1 and 2 went digital, and now you need a terrestrial decoder even to watch those). Now, if you want to watch any TV at all, you need a terrestrial digital box, which costs a couple of hundred shekels (I think) But for not much more, you can get a satellite decoder which you can attach to your YES satellite dish connection, if you’re already a customer (when you cancel your service, YES leaves the dish in place). The YES dishes are 80 centimeters, and most people I know who do this are able to use them to get the Nilesat broadcasts. If you want to be “sure” you’ll have access to the wide range of stations on Nilesat or don’t have a YES dish, you can get a one meter dish (like I did) for a few hundred more shekels.

I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say that on Nilesat, there are about 25 English language channels – news, sports and entertainment – all broadcasting free to air. From what I’ve seen so far, the programs on the free channels are equal (if not superior) to the YES content; the Dubai MBC English language movie stations (there are three of them), for example, all have the same movies that YES was charging 40 shekels a month for customers to watch as part of the “movie package.” There hasn’t been a decent program on the YES entertainment stations (channels 12, 13, 14) for a long time, imho, but the programs on the two MBC entertainment channels, as well as Fox Series (where you can watch The Simpsons 10 times a day!), along with a couple of other light entertainment channels, more than make up for YES’s offerings.

In fact, YES can thank MBC for making me a non-customer – it just highlighted the greed of the company. As I mentioned, the MBC channels are all free to air – meaning that YES could rebroadcast them without it costing them a nickel. But even worse; the one Arabic language MBC station is part of their “premium” Arabic package! Not that I watch Arabic TV (although I have plenty of opportunity to do so now!), but if you’re going to rebroadcast one of the MBCs, why not all of them!? But of course they wouldn’t – because then you might not order their “premium” entertainment package! Why pay for what you can see for free?

The truth is, it wasn’t even the money that got us to cancel. What we really hated about YES were, believe it or not, the “promos.” At all hours of the day and night, YES would broadcast promos for the most depraved programs – running the most depraved clips from the programs! And while I wouldn’t care if they did it at night, during “adult time,” I couldn’t take how they insisted on doing it during the afternoon, between shows the kids watch! I know quite a few people who felt the same way, but I’m sure they got the same reaction I did when I called YES to complain – double-talk, accusations that I was hallucinating (true story!), and being ignored.

They just don’t care – until you call to cancel. Now, I’ve got service reps left and right begging me to stay. By the way – don’t try to quit if you have a contract (ie wait till it runs out, because it will cost you at least NIS 400 to break it!). I haven’t had a contract for awhile, so theoretically I should be able to call up and cancel immediately. No way, though; I have to wait for a “senior service person” to call me up and “confirm” that I want to cancel (no doubt I will have to endure some sales pitch). But that’s to be expected, too – they learned it at the “nickel and dime” school of making money, quite common among many Israeli companies. This way, they can keep me on the line for another week or so.

Meanwhile, I’m quite happy with my 35 or so watchable stations (supplemented, of course, by iTunes podcasts and downloaded shows – but that’s another post). I’m thinking I should get someone to back a show I might produce about How to Save Money By Cutting the Cable (or the DBS dish). I bet they won’t show it on YES, though!