Sitting here after a long work day, and trying to relax with a little entertainment.. I can't help but think back to when "cable television" was fairly new.
One of the draws to having cable television was it's claim to be "commercial free!". After all, the money you spent in a monthly cable bill was to take the place of paid advertisements. I know for my folks, that was a HUGE draw. Uninterrupted, no-commercial television and movies appealed to many people back then.
Of course, this was back when Mtv really was "all music, all the time" and where all the movies shown on HBO were new and not the same sad reruns from decades past. Back before Showtime, Starz and the 80 bazillion 'specialty' channels or the reality shows that are aired ad-nauseum these days.
Now we pay a pretty penny for commercialized sub par programming and aren't getting close to our money's worth. Do we have ourselves to blame for this? Perhaps if subscribers demanded better programming, less (or better yet - NO) commercials.. would that have overridden companies like Time Warner's, greed?
And now that everything is digital and they've done away with analog broadcasting, we don't really have a choice NOW.. do we. Either pay for basic cable or buy a crappy box to decode a signal so you can watch three local channels.
Wow. We've really screwed ourselves, haven't we.
I believe so. We have become so apathetic toward so many things, that we really have ourselves to blame for not demanding more for our money.
If the people are willing to pay for crap... they will continue to get crap.
One of the draws to having cable television was it's claim to be "commercial free!". After all, the money you spent in a monthly cable bill was to take the place of paid advertisements. I know for my folks, that was a HUGE draw. Uninterrupted, no-commercial television and movies appealed to many people back then.
Of course, this was back when Mtv really was "all music, all the time" and where all the movies shown on HBO were new and not the same sad reruns from decades past. Back before Showtime, Starz and the 80 bazillion 'specialty' channels or the reality shows that are aired ad-nauseum these days.
Now we pay a pretty penny for commercialized sub par programming and aren't getting close to our money's worth. Do we have ourselves to blame for this? Perhaps if subscribers demanded better programming, less (or better yet - NO) commercials.. would that have overridden companies like Time Warner's, greed?
And now that everything is digital and they've done away with analog broadcasting, we don't really have a choice NOW.. do we. Either pay for basic cable or buy a crappy box to decode a signal so you can watch three local channels.
Wow. We've really screwed ourselves, haven't we.
I believe so. We have become so apathetic toward so many things, that we really have ourselves to blame for not demanding more for our money.
If the people are willing to pay for crap... they will continue to get crap.