Cable Tee-Vee

'I remember when MTV used to play music videos' has become a cliche of the same sort as 'when I was a kid we had to walk to school, uphill, both ways,' but at some point the generification of American cable networks becomes something of a sad joke as cable continues to die a slow death.  Perhaps the internet would have inevitably killed cable TV anyway just as it seems to have killed off not just much of the print media, but most of the field of journalism outright.  But could it have been different, if instead of giving their customers an ever more crowded field of hundreds and hundreds of mostly pointless stations, the cable companies had given in, and acceded to long standing demand and offered a la carte programming ?  If stations got a cut of the profits based on subscription numbers rather than relying so much on maximising ad. revenue ?

Fuck, I remember a time when A&E (Arts and Entertainment originally of course) used to show opera and ballet instead of the endless marathons of Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars they have now.  When at any time of the day, any day of the year, I could turn on CNN or Headline News and get actual news, turn on the Weather Channel, and see a weather forecast, watch documentaries on the History Channel pulled from the pages of history rather than those of the supermarket tabloids.  And what the hell happened to what used to be The Learning Channel (TLC) ?  At least when The Nashville Network gave up the fight for country music fans to their lesser competitor CMT they were honest enough to change their name (from TNN to Spike) at the same time.  With their main competitor gone, you'd expect of course that CMT today would be all Country all the time.  Well, no, of course it isn't.  Even the networks that seem to vaguely adhere to their original remit during business hours, turn into a vast zombie wasteland after hours and on weekends.  I know someone must watch the cold case programmes on HLN and the endless prison documentaries on MSNBC, but how many episodes of this shit are there, and how many times can you watch them ?

It would be some consolation to think that at the end of all this, in our Netflix and Hulu futures, we could at least be rid of wretched companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast, but they retain their internet monopolies of course, and, since the asshats at the FCC apparently saw no possible conflict of interest in letting Comcast buy up one of the nation's biggest and most famous broadcasters, now they're a content provider.  Comcast.  That Comcast.  The one who tried to rebrand their Internet service, as their name is so universally loathed.  Fuckers.

/rant


Now, negative infinity points for originality: The Boss.  Fifty-seven channels.  I remember when it was that many channels.  It was heaven.