How quaint that in 1992, 57 channels was considered a massive number.
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I went through a period (about 12 years) of not having TV. No cable or antenna. Just DVDs. I could also find programming through…alternative means. The co-op in which we live now has a cable tv package inclusive with the housing charge, so I’ve technically had cable for the last 3 years but barely turned it on. In 2018 I turned it on once). Finally, this year, I splashed out for a large, fancy TV.
To go with it, I have a 4K Blu-ray player, a region-free DVD player, the cable TV (no choice, it’s included), Netflix, Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel, and (Heaven help me) Disney+. I also have access to Hoopla and Kanopy via the public library and streaming apps from the CBC and CTV. So, a big change.
In the TV-less years, I used to say that I didn’t miss anything good as I could seek out something and see it. Now what I find is that by browsing the services, I do find things I hadn’t heard about that are good. So I definitely was missing some stuff I’d enjoy.
With all the options I have now, I don’t find myself unable to find something in which I am interested. What I find trips me up is the overwhelming choice. So much that I’d like to see, prioritizing it and picking something to watch during the limited time I have to watch is the challenge.
Based on my experience with watching traditional cable TV, though, the rigidity of set time and date to watch something and the commercials really did leave a lot to be desired.
And that’s a decent Springsteen album. Doesn’t get enough love.
Based on my experience with watching traditional cable TV, though, the rigidity of set time and date to watch something and the commercials really did leave a lot to be desired.
I find that having a DVR with my cable service takes care of those problems.
The MG&G one is puzzling. Other than a few premium ones, almost all of the cable channels have commercials.
The Baldo problem is also solved with the DVR. I never click around for something to view, as the DVR already has things for me. I don’t even view the news live anymore.
I was in for a bit of culture shock when I moved from Toronto to St. John’s in around ’73. We went from IDK how many dozen cable channels to two “antenna” channels only. Oddly it almost seems there was more to watch back then.
Maybe it was a case of making the best of it, idk.
Let’s not overstate the case, lazarusjohn. My recollection of Toronto cable channels of 1973 is about two dozen.
That’s not counting the cable company channels, like community 10 and channel 5, which had such poor reception because of the powerful CBC signal that they just put that red/blue/green news text channel on it.
My wife used to have the TV on (and sometimes even watch it) for an hour or two a day — mostly news. My own TV-watching days pretty much crashed and burned some five or six years ago (I realized I’d almost always rather read a “meh” book than watch even a “good” TV how), but we kept the cable contract for her (and for because of inertia)..
In recent weeks, she been first in hospital and then in a rehab center, and I’ve been spending every day there with her. And since I don’t want the house to seem unoccupied, along with leaving some lights on, I’ve taken to on leaving the TV (which is near the front window) tuned to CNN, with sound up fairly loud. Which led me to realize that our cat is now probably watching more TV every day than I do in a month, and is probably better informed than I am on many news stories.
Perhaps I’ll see if the cat would also like to start posting here.
@ Brian in STL: Yep. I sure get the utility of that product. However, I’m not sure I see the value in a device to record shows I’m probably not the interested in either. I do not care for reality shows, game shows, entertainment news, or much of what passes for comedy and drama on network TV. I give passes to The Good Place and Elementary as two network shows which I have found, through my streaming services, I love. But if I had my choice, I’d get rid of the cable entirely. I loathe Rogers. Given my location, I might be able to get a fair number of channels over air with an HD antenna.
Cable TV in Canada is, I think, different in than in USA. The first cable operators were offering a clear signal and increased number of channels. For anyone any distance from the border, getting US stations was a challenge. Even in Toronto, 32 miles across the lake from Rochester, it required a good location and a good antenna. For folks hundreds of miles from the border, they were SOL. Cable gave you clearer, more reliable version of those. It also started adding other Canadian broadcast channels in the region. These would often be local stations of the CBC or CTV networks, so they duplicated a lot of the same network programming during prime time but had interesting re-runs and movies and such later at night. So that’s how the cable man made his way into our homes. Eventually, some specialty channels and pay channels were added. All at extra cost. Nowdays, most of those specialty channels are owned by the few big media monopolies in the country. Unless you start taking on lots of extras, you don’t get a lot of diversity in programming. All respect to lazarusjohn, but getting the St. John’s CTV affiliate included in my cable package adds very little value. Average cable bill, according to the CRTC (the federal regulator) is about $65-$70/month. I know when my dad died several years back, his package was over $90–more than a hundred with taxes. My Netflix, Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel (well worth the money http://www.criterionchannel.com), and Disney+ is $41/month and I’m getting programming that more closely aligns with what I want to see. I’m never going to find, for example, a Charles Burnett retrospective on CTV.
BTW, I seem to have found a correlation between how much work I have to and the length and frequency of my posts:
-not much work: regular posting
-a fair amount of work: infrequent, short posts
-quite a bit of work: frequent posts
-a very heavy workload: frequent and lengthy posts
A bit like Pascal [citation needed]* then: “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter”.
The first known instance in the English language was a sentence translated from a text written by the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. The French statement appeared in a letter in a collection called “Lettres Provinciales” in the year 1657 [1,2,3]:
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Here is one possible modern day translation of Pascal’s statement. Note that the term “this” refers to the letter itself.
I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.
—
Notes.
1. 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section: Blaise Pascal, Page 583, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)
2. 2006, The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, Page 119-120, St Martin’s Griffin, New York. (Verified on paper)
3. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations edited by Elizabeth Knowles, Section: Blaise Pascal, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press. (Accessed March 27, 2012)
Yep. I sure get the utility of that product. However, I’m not sure I see the value in a device to record shows I’m probably not the interested in either.
The quality of content is a separate issue from the ones you mentioned, those being rigid schedule and commercials.
That was more aggressive than intended. In my case, I’ve not been adding a lot of new shows, but I still have a decent selection. A good portion of the DVR space right now is now occupied by stretching exercise programs from PBS. Many of those don’t get deleted after the initial viewing. I did go through and remove about 1/3 that I didn’t find as useful.
Interestingly, for those of us living south of Lake Ontario, we could get Canadian channels over the air (I watched Canadian Sesame Street on TVOntario because it came in better than Rochester’s PBS station) but not on cable.
Rochester’s broadcast stations used lower-power transmitters than those in other cities like Buffalo. Or so it seemed to my family, living between the two.
In New York, we had some local channels in addition to the three networks, so it was seven channels. But if there was nothing good on, we just watched the least bad, we didn’t turn it off.
“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Cable TV” song from 1985 is full of comic exaggeration such as:
“It costs me fifty bucks a month…”
“eighty-three channels of ecstasy”
“I’ve seen Porky’s twenty-seven times this week”
“I get to watch the stock report in Korean”
“The news and weather from Peru”
All of which have been totally plausible aspects of cable television since the mid-90s. Things like 83 channels and $50 per month charges seem like quaintly normal, if not low, figures.
Speaking of which…
Comics I Don't Understand 
I went through a period (about 12 years) of not having TV. No cable or antenna. Just DVDs. I could also find programming through…alternative means. The co-op in which we live now has a cable tv package inclusive with the housing charge, so I’ve technically had cable for the last 3 years but barely turned it on. In 2018 I turned it on once). Finally, this year, I splashed out for a large, fancy TV.
To go with it, I have a 4K Blu-ray player, a region-free DVD player, the cable TV (no choice, it’s included), Netflix, Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel, and (Heaven help me) Disney+. I also have access to Hoopla and Kanopy via the public library and streaming apps from the CBC and CTV. So, a big change.
In the TV-less years, I used to say that I didn’t miss anything good as I could seek out something and see it. Now what I find is that by browsing the services, I do find things I hadn’t heard about that are good. So I definitely was missing some stuff I’d enjoy.
With all the options I have now, I don’t find myself unable to find something in which I am interested. What I find trips me up is the overwhelming choice. So much that I’d like to see, prioritizing it and picking something to watch during the limited time I have to watch is the challenge.
Based on my experience with watching traditional cable TV, though, the rigidity of set time and date to watch something and the commercials really did leave a lot to be desired.
And that’s a decent Springsteen album. Doesn’t get enough love.
Based on my experience with watching traditional cable TV, though, the rigidity of set time and date to watch something and the commercials really did leave a lot to be desired.
I find that having a DVR with my cable service takes care of those problems.
The MG&G one is puzzling. Other than a few premium ones, almost all of the cable channels have commercials.
The Baldo problem is also solved with the DVR. I never click around for something to view, as the DVR already has things for me. I don’t even view the news live anymore.
I was in for a bit of culture shock when I moved from Toronto to St. John’s in around ’73. We went from IDK how many dozen cable channels to two “antenna” channels only. Oddly it almost seems there was more to watch back then.
Maybe it was a case of making the best of it, idk.
Let’s not overstate the case, lazarusjohn. My recollection of Toronto cable channels of 1973 is about two dozen.
And my research shows 21.
https://www.vintagetvguide.ca/tv-guide-channels-listed.php?Edition=TorontoLakeOntarioEdition&Date=November101973
That’s not counting the cable company channels, like community 10 and channel 5, which had such poor reception because of the powerful CBC signal that they just put that red/blue/green news text channel on it.
My wife used to have the TV on (and sometimes even watch it) for an hour or two a day — mostly news. My own TV-watching days pretty much crashed and burned some five or six years ago (I realized I’d almost always rather read a “meh” book than watch even a “good” TV how), but we kept the cable contract for her (and for because of inertia)..
In recent weeks, she been first in hospital and then in a rehab center, and I’ve been spending every day there with her. And since I don’t want the house to seem unoccupied, along with leaving some lights on, I’ve taken to on leaving the TV (which is near the front window) tuned to CNN, with sound up fairly loud. Which led me to realize that our cat is now probably watching more TV every day than I do in a month, and is probably better informed than I am on many news stories.
Perhaps I’ll see if the cat would also like to start posting here.
@ Brian in STL: Yep. I sure get the utility of that product. However, I’m not sure I see the value in a device to record shows I’m probably not the interested in either. I do not care for reality shows, game shows, entertainment news, or much of what passes for comedy and drama on network TV. I give passes to The Good Place and Elementary as two network shows which I have found, through my streaming services, I love. But if I had my choice, I’d get rid of the cable entirely. I loathe Rogers. Given my location, I might be able to get a fair number of channels over air with an HD antenna.
Cable TV in Canada is, I think, different in than in USA. The first cable operators were offering a clear signal and increased number of channels. For anyone any distance from the border, getting US stations was a challenge. Even in Toronto, 32 miles across the lake from Rochester, it required a good location and a good antenna. For folks hundreds of miles from the border, they were SOL. Cable gave you clearer, more reliable version of those. It also started adding other Canadian broadcast channels in the region. These would often be local stations of the CBC or CTV networks, so they duplicated a lot of the same network programming during prime time but had interesting re-runs and movies and such later at night. So that’s how the cable man made his way into our homes. Eventually, some specialty channels and pay channels were added. All at extra cost. Nowdays, most of those specialty channels are owned by the few big media monopolies in the country. Unless you start taking on lots of extras, you don’t get a lot of diversity in programming. All respect to lazarusjohn, but getting the St. John’s CTV affiliate included in my cable package adds very little value. Average cable bill, according to the CRTC (the federal regulator) is about $65-$70/month. I know when my dad died several years back, his package was over $90–more than a hundred with taxes. My Netflix, Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel (well worth the money http://www.criterionchannel.com), and Disney+ is $41/month and I’m getting programming that more closely aligns with what I want to see. I’m never going to find, for example, a Charles Burnett retrospective on CTV.
BTW, I seem to have found a correlation between how much work I have to and the length and frequency of my posts:
-not much work: regular posting
-a fair amount of work: infrequent, short posts
-quite a bit of work: frequent posts
-a very heavy workload: frequent and lengthy posts
A bit like Pascal [citation needed]* then: “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter”.
—
*Citation: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
The first known instance in the English language was a sentence translated from a text written by the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. The French statement appeared in a letter in a collection called “Lettres Provinciales” in the year 1657 [1,2,3]:
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Here is one possible modern day translation of Pascal’s statement. Note that the term “this” refers to the letter itself.
I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.
—
Notes.
1. 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section: Blaise Pascal, Page 583, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper)
2. 2006, The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, Page 119-120, St Martin’s Griffin, New York. (Verified on paper)
3. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations edited by Elizabeth Knowles, Section: Blaise Pascal, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press. (Accessed March 27, 2012)
Yep. I sure get the utility of that product. However, I’m not sure I see the value in a device to record shows I’m probably not the interested in either.
The quality of content is a separate issue from the ones you mentioned, those being rigid schedule and commercials.
That was more aggressive than intended. In my case, I’ve not been adding a lot of new shows, but I still have a decent selection. A good portion of the DVR space right now is now occupied by stretching exercise programs from PBS. Many of those don’t get deleted after the initial viewing. I did go through and remove about 1/3 that I didn’t find as useful.
Interestingly, for those of us living south of Lake Ontario, we could get Canadian channels over the air (I watched Canadian Sesame Street on TVOntario because it came in better than Rochester’s PBS station) but not on cable.
Rochester’s broadcast stations used lower-power transmitters than those in other cities like Buffalo. Or so it seemed to my family, living between the two.
In New York, we had some local channels in addition to the three networks, so it was seven channels. But if there was nothing good on, we just watched the least bad, we didn’t turn it off.
“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Cable TV” song from 1985 is full of comic exaggeration such as:
“It costs me fifty bucks a month…”
“eighty-three channels of ecstasy”
“I’ve seen Porky’s twenty-seven times this week”
“I get to watch the stock report in Korean”
“The news and weather from Peru”
All of which have been totally plausible aspects of cable television since the mid-90s. Things like 83 channels and $50 per month charges seem like quaintly normal, if not low, figures.
The saying returns in today’s Funky: