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An Unincorporated Division of the Anonymous Anything Society     5/22/2013

The Pros and Cons of Cable TV

    90 days ago, I couldn't spell "Kardashian." After resuming a subscription to Cable TV after a two-year hiatus, I still don't know exactly who these people are - except that their names appear frequently in "space fillers,"  once dominated by the doings of the heiress to the Hilton hotel chain. I googled "Kardashian," and was amazed to learn that a cable channel has carried a program, "Keeping Up With The Kardashians," since 2007. After doing some googling in an attempt to catch up to current trends, I don't feel that I was deprived. 

    I do question the capitalization of "The" in the title of whatever it is that they do - as in "The Olympics," or "The Royal Family."

    When the FCC mandated that TV broadcasting stations go to the new "High Definition," digital format, I decided to go back to "through the air," free broadcast Television. I had been paying the cable company about $70.00 a month until I hooked up my two sets to a  $75.00 antenna - one that is only slightly larger than one of those two meter dishes, a foot or two above my roof line. I got excellent reception of a dozen or more local channels in English as well as  two or more in Spanish - all free.

    Only when I desired to watch more University of Arizona sports was I prompted to consider a return to cable. Once I got an offer to "bundle" the offerings of the cable company with telephone service and a better Internet connection, and the total monthly bill was less than what I had been paying for digital Internet service and a phone line through whatever the name this year is for what was once the Bell Telephone utility.  I could hardly turn down the offer.

    In the least technical terms: coaxial cable is capable of carrying a digital signal with greater "bandwidth," than  the "landline," telephone wires, and at a higher digital speed. Optical cable is probably even better than coaxial cable, but its availability is still limited to small areas.

    The only disappointing aspect of the changeover is the poor quality of programming on the vastly overwhelming number of channels.  I'm further dismayed by the announcement of other like "reality shows" in the making.  I saw that there is a new one in production that will follow the real exploits of feral hog hunters. The idea is to steal the many fans of alligator killers, professional yard sale shoppers, pawn shop owners and junk collectors, not to mention the Kardashians.

    I probably can access 400 channels of real bad television shows, old and new pay-to-view movies, plus all sorts of sports, including that one most popular in Afghanistan, where mounted riders beat on each other relentlessly while trying to carry the corpse of a calf to a goal. That is, when they are not killing one another with suicide bombs.

    If it wasn't for repeats of "Mash" and "Seinfeld," pushing at least 398 of the channels to my tube is wasted energy. 

    One upon a time, this bubble gum for the mind was relegated to Monday mornings after midnight. It was the old "Test Pattern," transmitted in order that the Television Engineers could test, tune or replace the transmitting equipment when hardly anyone was watching.

    It's no wonder than I am now on my third channel selector. Once the mute button fails, one should order two more wireless channel selectors, for they are not repairable. I now spend more time researching the TV guides and surfing the channels  than I once wasted watching the wretched idiot box.

    Doing this has promoted my conscience to tell me to send another contribution to the local PBS outlet.

    In the meantime, I still have a TV antenna attached to a ventilator pipe on the roof, just in case.

73,

Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller

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Archive: I am indebted to Jim Bromley of Glendale, Arizona, who has begun an archive of what I consider my best blogs.  They will be added to as I review them, plus contain another link to the current essay.   Click: http://www.arizona-AM.net/K7OS