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Letters From North America |
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If you’re as old as me, you can remember back when there wasn’t any cable, there wasn’t any color, there wasn’t any CNN, pay per view or any of that stuff. You had 3, count ’em, 3 black and white channels. You would sit in front of the television when you came home from school and watch the test pattern for an hour of so until the first program came on, which as I recall was Howdy Doody. Maybe that’s why we turned out fairly well as a generation. We got our values from a rather passive looking test pattern, not 175 murders, rapes and robberies in a 4-5 hour time period. Of course, that could also account for a lot of us being just plain dull. I know folks who like going to weekend seminars to learn how to balance their checkbooks. Different strokes for different folks. Anyway, there wasn’t much to choose from, that’s for sure. If you didn’t like The Lone Ranger, Milton Berle or Ed Sullivan, you were just about out of luck. So you had very limited options. Ah, well, times change. We now have a zillion channels, that provoke how many fights over who is in control of the clicker? Now, as I was saying, I get this call from the cable company, wanting to sell me what? Yep, more channels. Now I was getting about 65 or 70. So, how many more can I get? Well, I can now get over 175. Imagine 175 places to check out each night. It boggles the mind. It boggles the finger that’s punching the remote. I tell the Cable Company that I don’t think I want this since it’s got to cost an arm and a leg. No way, they tell me. I can add all of this to my present service for $4.00 more a month. $4.00? I think to myself, "Self? How can I go wrong with this deal? I spend $4.00 on renting a movie from the movie store each time I go. So, look at all of the money I’ll save. How can there not be anything on worth watching? Makes sense to me. So, of course I tell them .."Yes, sign me up. I’m on board." The cable folks have to come out and hook up the new converter, so I’m stuck with this thing, like it or not. Well, let me tell you. We now have over 100 channels of music. Yes, music. You can hear music from the 40’s. The 50’s. The 60’s. And so on and so on. Probably have a channel for music from last week. Big band sounds. New age music. Classical. Bach, Beethoven to Presley. All coming through my television speakers. The other "new" channels are the much needed "pay per view" ones. The only problem with this is that in reality there is only about 5 movies that you can pay to see. I haven’t figured out when they change the titles. Each one is playing on about 25 different channels. They start at different times. About 15 minutes apart. So, I guess that qualifies for something. Problem is, I wouldn’t rent these in the first place. Much less watch them at home. Just what is "The Bride of Chucky " about anyway? So, when you get down to it, I didn’t really increase my ability to view anything at all. If you have 100 channels of music that you don’t want. That leaves us with 75 possibilities. Then we take off the 25 pay per view channels. That gives us 75 to work with. Eliminate the cooking and shop at home stuff, since I never watch them and you are down another 20 to get us to 55. Then we take off the "repeat" channels. These are the fishing shows and the one about the guy catching the alligators. How someone can get paid money for 24 hours of chasing and catching an alligator is beyond me, but I guess someone has to do it. This gets our possibilities down to about 25. Then I have to take off the "sales" shows. You know these. They are the ones that promise you, that if you send in $49.95 for this "secret" sales kit, you can pick up an additional $10,000 or so each month by just placing little tiny ads in small local newspapers. Now this guy has made millions and millions doing just this and wants to share his secret with you for almost no money. He just wants to help you get the house, car, vacation, woman, man, whatever of your dreams. Then I toss the local "crazy" channels. These are the ones on access TV. You know the ones where the guy is reading from something and claims that he’s from Mars or the planet Volta and has a message for all of us Earthlings. That leaves us with the 3 major networks. Seems like I’ve been here before. Maybe that’s why the guy on Nightline looks like Howdy Doody to me. He just got transferred to nights. |
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