I would love to see some competition against these guys. Maybe someone with lots of capital can run their own lines and offer cable TV and internet at lower rates.

Where I live it's a bonified monopoly. Local officials decide who can have the monopoly based on revenues(kick-backs). It's kind of like a Mafia arraignment! Guess who picks up the tab for lousy service!

its called directv and they are crushing them

The startup costs would be PHENOMENAL. The local cable companies own the cable that runs from the office to each home. They lease space on the poles from the local phone company. All of that infrastructure is already in place. For a startup to try to break into that market, they would have to lay their OWN cable network, and probably on their own poles as the phone company won't want to get in the middle of the battle between their current lease customers and the newcomer. Getting permission to erect a whole new set of phone poles to run the new cables would be daunting at best. So, the local cable companies do constitute a de facto monopoly, which is why they are so heavily regulated.