Most digital cable and direct broadcast satellite systems offer interactive program guides. Even DirecTV, which is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, offers the ability to create a customized version of the program guide that includes only the channels you care about. It's not quite as user-friendly as Dish Network, but it can be done. Details on how to do this after the jump.
Side note: Should I suggest that current DirecTV customers participating in the bailout switch to Dish Network? Sure! Dish kicks DirecTV's ass anyway, regardless of what you think about News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch.
The details on how to do this is at: http://tech.dishnetwork.com/... The short version follows:
- Press the Menu button on the remote to open the Main Menu. Depending on which receiver you have, you may have to select Preferences before getting to the next step.
- Select the Favorites option.
- Select the desired Favorite List.
- Select Modify List.
- From the channels list, highlight and select the desired channel(s). This may require a hardcopy of your program guide, but you should be able to recognize the abbreviations of most of your channels. Channels you don't get will be in some color other than cyan, so you won't be adding those to your favorite list.
- Select the Save option to save all changes to the Favorite List.
This has the added benefit of being able to also exclude the fifteen shopping channels, the twelve or so Republican Jesus TV channels, Fox Reality, Fox Business, and any other channel you never watch, never want to watch, and would rather not waste time browsing through when looking to see what's on.
So now you have your favorite list all set up. To switch to it, just keep hitting your guide button until it appears. Doing this will flip through all your menus until you get the one you want. Congratulations, your house is now Fox-free! You can now pretend to be blissfully unaware of the existence of Fox News except when Keith Olbermann mentions it on his show.