When I lived in Louisiana, I had Comcast cable and LIKED it, more for Internet connectivity but, the TV wasn’t bad either. I don’t remember it ever going out.
My cable never went out when the industry had some analog, that is, before the industry went all digital. Just a note, you may be talking about when cable had some analog feeds, which was only about a year ago.
Today, with all digital, large imperfections in the line are difficult for a set-top box to rectify. A cable company (e.g., Comcast) can no longer get away with too many line imperfections in the cable system. It's like when a DVD is dirty inside a DVD player. The video usually stalls. In contrast, an analog VCR will keep the video rolling, imperfections and all.