We're being shafted by the cable industry.
"Pay TV" was originally hyped as a superior alternative to over-the-air "Commercial TV." You would pay a monthly fee to receive quality programming, commercial-free.
That's right. The big selling point for pay TV was -- no commercials. Commercial TV was being received by antenna, over the air, free of charge, but with those pesky commercials -- including the three networks, Fox, and local PBS programming (which substituted pledge drives for commercials). Pay TV sold itself to us by promising the following: To eliminate the need for commercial interruptions in exchange for our subscription fee. One way, the sponsors paid for the programs; the other way, we paid for the programs in our monthly subscription.
When cable first came to town they told the city government they needed extra money, just during the set-up phase, while the cable was laid. But the price never came back down. Then the cable company claimed they needed extra money for a while longer, in order to lay fiber optic cable. Again the price never came back down. Meanwhile, more and more channels turned up on pay TV with commercials. At first, it was just the "superstations," commercial channels riding free on the cable signal. But then came commercials on cable's own product --Not just commercials -- MORE commercials. REALLY BAD, LOW CLASS, ANNOYING commercials. Worst of all perhaps, channels that used to be commercial-free started interrupting their programs with commercials too.
A funny disconnect occurred -- Cable companies gradually began keeping ALL the fees you gave them for themselves, and started letting -- you guessed it -- SPONSORS pay for the programs. Just like the rabbit ear days. God help us. Meanwhile, that basic fee krept up, from about twenty bucks to fifty bucks a month. That's a car payment for some folks.
Now, of course, cable is a sinkhole of commercials, a ghetto of interruptions, a junkyard of hard breaks -- with rare exceptions like Turner Classic Movies. They're hoping we've forgotten where we came from. I have not.
What's even worse is that the baseline product from cable isn't keeping up with progress. The basic cable you may be paying for isn't even square with technology. Signals are available in digital, but unless you're paying Comcast extra, you've still got analog. Cell phones went all-digital years ago, of course, but cable is behind the times. Your new TV set will shortly have to have a digital signal, and its receiver will no longer be robust enough to receive over-the-air signals -- but basic cable's digital signal will still be priced as an option. In a few years, the FCC says all television broadcasts must be HDTV -- yet cable will, I guarantee you, want you to pay a surcharge for that new HD signal as an "option," even when it's the national standard and there is no more analog or low-res digital to be had.
Keep in mind that hard-wiring went out the first time with the telegraph. A wire hanging from a tree or buried in the ground is NOT the most modern way to transfer data. And now that cell phones are in, land line telephony is going downhill. With the rise of the direct link satellite dish (which really replaces the old rooftop antenna in a satisfactory way), cable is now well on its way to extinction.
Cable could have wired every TV set in the country by now, but, strange as it may seem, they don't want to. If you ask your cable representative why their utility now costs as much as your gas bill, and has more accessory charges than the sticker on an American car, they will inform you that despite the hundred bucks a month you're paying, they are NOT a new utility; they are a luxury option. Yes, your TV has become a non-essential, folks.
If you ask them how, with an attitude like that, they manage to provide service to places like Appalachia, they will tell you that isn't what they are in business for.
They will even insult you (I know firsthand) by saying that if you don't like their prices, "you can always go back to rabbit ears." Hmm. I wonder if the city fathers who contracted for them to wire our town know about this option to go back to rabbit ears.
Yes, we all thought that cable was the modern replacement for the old antenna. When our city contracted with Comcast to string wire throughout the town -- twice -- we sure THOUGHT it was a utility -- a means to upgrade our television signal-- a grid, like the power, gas or phone company. But no.
So now that Comcast has its vampire fangs poised over our throats -- I'm bolting. Who needs telegraph poles when you can grab what you want off a satellite? We're already using them for everything from GPS to OnStar. So why pay a hundred a month -- or more -- to Comcast for something that used to be free? That is, COMMERCIAL TELEVISION?
No reason in the world. I can live without the golf channel, trust me. I don't have the time or the need to spend three hours watching a 2-hour movie. And if I want to watch a movie, DVDs are cheaper, they come in widescreen, and there's not a commercial interruption in the whole disk.
Oh, and I'm going to encourage local producers to start up another over-the-air channel or two, or three... We need them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment