What Are We Thinking?

When I was growing up, we had four local television stations and lived close enough to Detroit to be blessed with the possibility of fuzzy but available options. Of course we were pretty much limited to the three networks and PBS. That was pretty much it in the way of viewing entertainment. This was before VCR’s and DVD’s. If you wanted to see a movie, you either saw it when it was released or waited until it premiered on Sunday night in a big network promotion. When it was Monster Week in Detroit, I would go to a friend’s house that had the BIG antenna and watch the Godzilla movies on channel 50. It was an independent station. Every Saturday, I would try to watch Sir Graves Ghastly on channel 2 out of Detroit. Some days it would be clear as a bell and others looked like an Arctic blizzard. Whether it was the Mummy, Dracula or Frankenstein, I was glued to the set on Saturday afternoons. What may amaze this generation is the only thing we paid for was the television and the electricity. There was no cost to watch the TV, other than the time and being forced to watch commercials.

Well, we still pay for all of the above items, but we are now paying to watch the television. We are actually paying, to sit and watch commercials. I think that is the major reason I do not watch very much television. I have been caught in the trap of paying for the privilege to watch what passes for entertainment. I cannot believe the garbage they attempt to project into my living room. They are now trying to get us to pay for radio. I am really at a loss for why anyone would pay to listen to the radio. Why don’t we charge each people on a per breath basis?

Now I have figured that (and I’m being generous for mathematical simplification) our TV is on for 4 hours per day. Most of the time there is no one watching it. We are paying $60 per month for cable. If you figure 30 days per month, you get $0.50 per hour of viewing pleasure.

Since we have almost every available channel and there is still nothing on most of the time, (you can ask anybody), just get rid of the cable and go back to the basic, network programming. You can pick them up with an antenna and it does not cost you anything. Well, nothing that you wouldn’t have paid back when TV was free. Am I going to listen to myself? No. Why you ask? Well, my daughters (and their father) watch Gilmore Girls on UPN and it is not one of the “new” local stations. It can be found on the fuzzy stations out of Detroit. Maybe I can find my old friend and my daughters and I watch it on the big antenna.

Icool

Cobb