And they block your ability to fast-forward.

Dumb. I know why they do it, but my life is too short to fastforward.

Want me as a customer? Then you need:

1) No ads. I will not tolerate ads in my house. I do not want your clown burgers or your overpriced car. if that means I need to pay 10% more, then charge me the 10% more.

2) Ala-Carte pricing. I do not watch sports. I am not going to pay $20 a month for ESPN and a bunch of sports programs. I will totally pay a few bucks for the history channel, or something that has value.

3) Needs to be fully streaming or TIVOed. i.e. let me watch at 6:23 pm or 7:19 pm. No sitting around until 8:00pm so I can watch a show.

Currently do Netflix + HBO and have more TV shows than I can watch. Totally willing to throw in a few more bucks for something of value, but no $200 cable package is going to happen here.

If you're willing to pay 50% more for no ads, they wouldn't let you. Since you're the target.

But they do...with Hulu Plus already. ($8 vs $12)

I agree...either charge me money or show me ads.

Something surprising I learned a while ago is that one of cable tv's selling points used to be no ads.

This is one of those urban myths that refuses to die. I've looked for the supporting evidence and can find none. When we got cable as a kid in the 70s, that was certainly not the selling point. Cable was used by remote communities that were out of range of the broadcast signal. The only channels that existed at the time (i.e. ABC, NBC, CBS) all had adverts.