- Remote Possibility
My husband and I are becoming perilously close to cancelling our television service. Since there is no cable in Oysterville, we have a dish. For too many years we paid the big bucks for the “preferred package” and eventually realized that there was seldom anything we wanted to watch. So, ever-mindful of our shrinking disposable income, we switched to the “basic package.” As expected, there isn’t much change in the choices that we consider viewable, and although it costs less, it still doesn’t seem worth the price.
It galls me to think that with all the technology at our disposal, there isn’t a way to customize an individual’s viewing package. Actually, there probably is a way, but it must be all about cost effectiveness or some other bottom-line factor. Even so, it irritates me to be forced into paying for all of those channels that hold absolutely no interest for me. The shopping channels, the religious channels, the music channels, the sports channels – great for some folks no doubt, but not for us.
On most nights during our viewing window, there are only two or three programs we are interested in seeing. And even those have become iffy. It’s the commercials. Last night during one program, I took notes: in a 30-minute period there were 28 commercials! Only two of them were repeats and all of them were what I would consider of the “sound-bite” variety – assaulting but not really informative.
According to one bit of research I ran across, in the 1960s a typical hour-long show ran for 51 minutes, excluding advertising. These days, a similar program is only 42 minutes long. That means if you were trying to enjoy a rerun of a sixties show such as “Star Trek,” nine minutes would be cut from the original program – to make room for the advertising sound-bites!
And so, in our house we are discussing options. Perhaps an investment of yet more money in a TiVo or other digital television recorder? Or perhaps bag the dish entirely and rely on Netflix? Or just revert to reading a book or playing a board game? Those options seem less and less remote (so to speak).
American TV and commercials go hand in hand. I dislike commercials. Ok, dislike was a polite word for HATE. European TV has far less and somehow they make money. The only channel I want to watch is OPB, but they keep having commercials to give them money. I can’t stand them either because I already gave them money. We hardly ever watch TV anymore. We get the news from the internet, I love the LA Times on the net and Huffington Post, (and also the Irish Times and Japanese Times) and if you are dying to see the talking heads on MSNBC you can watch it on the internet. Myself, I just love reading the news silently to myself. As a matter of fact, Bob is reading the Stars and Stripes and I am reading Sydney’s post, so what we hear is the paper crinkling as Bob turns the pages and the wind gusting outside our patio window and that’s it.