Fifty-Seven Channels
This afternoon, I did something intensely un-American. (Certain websites just woke up and took notice, I’m sure.)
Gave up television.
Well, nearly. I cut my cable TV package down from nearly a hundred channels to about a dozen. Eighty bucks a month becomes twenty. Pow. And I’ll try that for a couple of months, and see if maybe it’s not a great idea to Throw The Baggage Out.
This would be easier for some than for others. I thought it was going to be difficult for me until I thought hard about just how much teevee I actually watch. For the last several months: far less than I thought.
(True, I’ve made a name for myself, for jumping onto the local social media engine and doing the ol’ live-blog thing during high-profile and much-watched events like the Olympics, the Tournament of Roses Parade, and the Super Bowl, which could only be achieved by turning on the telly. I’ll figure something out…)
“Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on,” sang Bruce Springsteen all those years ago; at the moment, the update might be “nine hundred fifty-seven channels,” but still, relatively speaking: he would still not be wrong.
In fact, on several Sunday evenings last fall, I would sit down to watch Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison visibly loathe each other, while commenting on the NFL game highlights of the day. And I would realize that the last time I’d put the TV on … was the previous Sunday when I had turned on NBC to watch them hate each other. No wonder I didn’t have to change the channel.
So I made an assessment of the TV programming that, without benefit of cable-TV service, I would not be able to watch, and would therefore kinda miss – and the programming that I thought I would miss but whose absence, as it turns out, might not make that much impact on me – and the programming that I could access elsewhere.
And I got a window into, among other things, how running-scared the television industry really might be nowadays.
News?
National broadcast network news operations are now mainly overseen by network entertainment divisions, which oughta give you an idea. With few exceptions, local network-affiliate news operations are at least as full of fluff pieces and corporate-media-approved content as they are full of actual substantive reporting on local current affairs. With very few exceptions, there aren’t many reporters on my local stations who are actually from around here, which might lend a little depth and perspective to their work.
I’ll pop over to the BBC News website and be perfectly happy, I think.
C-SPAN: worthwhile … but again, I rarely dive for the TV when a House Judiciary Committee hearing is on. Which might say more about me than the Committee. But in C-SPAN’s zeal to present events unedited, without commentary or analysis, an awful lot of politically-expedient but factually-deficient stuff is allowed to pass, unremarked-upon. Here’s a campaign speech, totally un-fact-checked! Fun! To paraphrase Winston Churchill, C-SPAN might be the worst idea for a TV channel except for all the others that have been tried.
Once, MSNBC was my default. The erstwhile “Countdown with Keith” was required viewing. Melissa Harris-Perry’s weekend roundtables are refreshingly full of the kinds of people you never see on the stodgy ol’ “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” news chats. I’ll miss the ham-handed Chris Matthews or Rev. Al Sharpton not at all. I will miss the hyperkinetic Chris Hayes and and the arched eyebrow of Lawrence O’Donnell some; but given the current efforts to gradually rein in MSNBC’s left-leaning programming, those gents may not last long either. I know where to download podcast versions of kindly Doc Maddow’s flagship program, and that’ll do.
I bailed on the Weather Channel when they started naming storms, when the actual National Weather Service asked them not to. I can run to the National Weather Service website for forecasts (don’t even have to wait till “weather on the 8s”); and if I need a human to present and interpret the weather, I’ll dial up the website of New England Cable News’ Matt Noyes, who may be the best teaching meteorologist on TV.
Education, and Culture?
PBS, and specifically WGBH, one of public television’s “Original Six” -grade local affiliates? Well, NOVA. And Great Performances, when they’re great. “Downton Abbey” hasn’t grabbed me, but that may not be its fault. Public broadcasting needs to survive, because it has a better chance of presenting material that commercial sponsors might not consider worth supporting. Opera at the Met, and little tiny creatures of the Barrier Reef! Cool! … But how many times in the last decade have I specifically aimed to watch an episode of NOVA? A handful, at best. PBS’ website is full of archived wonderfulness. It’ll get traffic.
The Discovery Channel, History Channel, Learning Channel? Lately they’ve become largely mis-named.
Food Network: pardon my jump-the-shark whining: a decade ago, I could spend an evening doing teacher prep accompanied by Alton Brown, Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef (the original Japanese version, thank you): three hours during which I might actually learn something about food and cooking. Now, thanks to the (how to say this?) non-subtle Guy Fieri and the suits who run FN, it’s all Dives, Diners and Cupcake Contests, all the flippin’ time. Pass.
Entertainment?
At no time in the last decade have I subscribed to HBO, Showtime, or any of those premium pay-cable channels. I am content to watch them during my occasional visits to hotels. I won’t miss them … because I haven’t yet.
FX, USA Network, TNT, TBS? Packed solid with hour-long dramas that occasionally catch my interest, and with World Broadcast Premieres of a lot of movies that I didn’t spend 18 bucks on, at the theaters, to begin with. (Occasionally it’s nice, and faintly ironic, to sit for a complete three hours and confirm that I’m glad not to have spent money on any of the “Transformers” flicks.)
(I will confess that my current rather serious Marvel Cinematic Universe fixation was aided and abetted by my sudden ability to see Captain America and Iron Man and Thor upon my little teevee set. Not to mention “Agents of SHIELD” and “Agent Carter”, about which I’ll ramble in future posts. There is, however, this neat little invention called the public library, and the DVD section therein. Local, convenient, … free …)
Comedy Central: If I need to see a “Daily Show with or without Jon Stewart” segment, I can be sure that a link to the video will appear on my Facebook news feed. No worries. Syfy: now that the “Battlestar Galactica” reboot has ended (yeah, guy: several years ago!), all they’ve got are “Ghost Hunters” and complete weekends of rampaging giant alligator movies. No great loss. Game Show Network: if I need reruns of “Match Game”, or other brief glimpses of 1970s fashion disasters via “Password” or “Tic Tac Dough”, that also is what the YouTube is for.
The frantic, hyperactive Disney Channel? For me, just one thing: the new “Star Wars Rebels” animated prequel series, which is not nearly as cheeseball as it could have been … one of whose assets is the really intelligent use of adaptations of John Williams’ musical score from the original trilogy … and I can watch that online.
BBC America I kinda miss, since my cable provider inexplicably took it away from my TV set several years ago. I miss the “Doctor Who” reboot, and “Top Gear”. But again: the public library.
Sports!!…?
The local pro sports teams on TV … are also on the radio, wherein I can use my imagination. If I need video highlights, they’re often posted on YouTube almost immediately. Big game with playoff implications? That’s what sports bars are for.
The Golf Channel: … yeah, I might miss spending wintry Sunday afternoons watching folks shoot rounds of golf someplace that looks very warm and sunny. I’ll admit that.
Now, the elephant in the room:
As a kid, when I visited my grandparents in their new Florida home, I discovered the amazing invention of cable TV. No more adjusting rabbit-eared antennas: a perfect picture all the time. You kids, you have no idea that this is a big deal; but it is. Another big deal was this subset of the new invention: something called ESPN. All sports, or sports reporting, all the live-long day.
For a long time, even if ESPN had been nothing but Sportscenter all day long, I’d have watched. This was the equivalent of being a Star Trek fan and finding a channel that showed nothing but. This is gold, Jerry! Gold!
But at some point, something shifted. Might or might not have been precisely when the ABC/Disney corporate conglomerate bought it up; I’m not sure. But as soon as corporate America gets its hooks into you, your priorities are made to change; either that or you’re made to go away forcibly.
And so has it been with ESPN. Presenters? For a great long time it was Bob Ley, the late Tom Mees, Charley Steiner, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, the late great Stuart Scott, and yes, the early version of Chris Berman. Somehow, ESPN’s idea of on-air talent became the smarmy Kenny Mayne, the bumbling Lou Holtz, the insufferable Stephen A. Smith, the positively nasty Skip Bayless, and a cast of Sportscenter anchors doing pale impersonations of their forebears.
The actual content? Well, since forever, commercial sponsors have been part and parcel of TV presentations, and radio before that (including “Texaco Star Theatre” and “Philco Radio Time” – and daytime TV dramas got the “soap opera” nickname from the soap companies that originally bankrolled them). Got that. But if I have to sit through another round of the “GEICO Halftime Report”, “Coors Light Cold Hard Facts”, “Bud Light Freeze Frame”, “GMC Keys to Victory”, “Budweiser Hot Seat”, or “Gatorade Cooler Talk”, I will in fact scream. At what point does it cease to be sports journalism and become commercial lip service?
In fact, so much of what passes for televised entertainment is decided upon by the suits in corporate America, bankrolled by the suits in corporate America, and sponsored by the suits in corporate America. Come to think of it, so is most of what passes for televised information – the news.
The theme emerges: beyond the Roku- or Hulu-esque services that I haven’t even investigated yet, I suspect that online resources will more than make up for the lack of pictures flying through the air in my living room. I happily pay for Internet access every month; as the FCC recently suggested, the Internet really is a genuine utility now. It truly pays for itself, by the time I’ve used it to communicate with people, research topics, track down information about local businesses, generate route maps for road trips … and track down information and entertainment over which television used to hold a monopoly. It’s possible that I’m the latest one to this party … but I made it in the door, finally.
The loss of one lone person’s cable TV payments will not affect the corporate suits or their bottom line a bit. It’ll affect mine, though; and that more than seven hundred bucks a year could come in handy somewhere else.
It’s something small I can do. Occupy My Living Room!
What Have We Learned?: Sochi Edition
And so the 2014 Winter Olympiad has come to a close. Its latter half happened to coincide with my school vacation week … which meant that all those pie-in-the-sky thoughts about how productive I could be went straight out the window (in the manner of movie heroes, which is to say with a battle cry and a shattering of glass). “What’d you do on your week off?” Olympics, and naps. Period.
And, as many of my Facebookian friends noted (with varying degrees of sarcasm), I couldn’t seem to accomplish the sports-watching part of vacation without expressing myself on social media.
And now that the Fortnight is concluded … time to assess. Here I offer my badly incomplete list of answers to the question “What Have We Learned?”, using as circumstantial evidence a selection of my social-media contributions, snarky and otherwise…
[1] I am capable of holding to disparate ideas in my head at once. On the one hand, it’s yay sports! On the other hand … this set of Olympic Games had more baggage than a 767 cargo hold.
“I hate that my Olympics-watching is going to have such constant and overwhelming subtext, this time ’round.”
“NBC is walking the tightrope this fortnight… the Sports division needs these Olympics to get great ratings and so must sand down talk of controversy and stupidity that may occur… and the News division (if it’s still that) will have to report on it. All under one corporate roof. Hmm. Brown water or gold medals?”
“I would hate to think that Bob Costas’ tantalizing open about spending air time on the controversies … might turn out to be a head fake.”
“Here’s a weird one for you: given all the stories of brown water and roofless hotels, and even though so many of the Sochi photos I’ve seen appear to be in grayscale even when they’re color photos… I was relieved and weirdly comforted to hear John Williams’ and Leo Arnaud’s brass fanfares played correctly.”
[2] The Olympic community … or at least the community of Olympians … made effective commentary about the various Russian laws pertaining to our LGBT brothers and sisters. There was at least one American car commercial that contained small visual clues about just how much the world may be shifting in this regard. (Cynically, one could suppose that the ads were done by rather large corporations that perhaps were seeing which way certain winds were blowing and decided it was in their best business interest to give those winds a nod. Hey, whatever works.)
Prior to the Opening Ceremonies: “Just thinking of the possible musical accompaniment choices ahead tonight. So many great Russian composers. I can’t help noting Mr. Tchaikovsky’s, um, orientation.”
During the Opening Ceremonies, the German team enters Fisht Stadium wearing undeniably rainbow-hued warmup suits. “Because,” I noted with a gentle air of snark, “all those colors are in the German flag somewhere.”
[3] And speaking of which … the Parade of Nations is still my favorite part of any Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I love the Parade of Nations. So much can go wrong, and right, and not just in terms of national-team clothing choices.
“Parade of Nations wooooooooo! (Thumping Euro techno soundtrack not so much wooooooo.)”
“I do intend to be something other than snarky, during this Olympic fortnight. So let me put it this way: I’ve discovered a circumstance in which I will appreciate NBC’s choice of background music. #EuroTechnoRave #makeitstop”
“Bermuda! … … … shorts.”
“Get me a closer look at the outfit of the Kazakhstan flagbearer. Intricate stuff. Neat.”
“All the Olympic Christmas sweater jokes have been done.” But, not long after that post … “I’m going to go right ahead and give the Ugliest Opening Ceremony Outfit Award to Team USA, even before seeing the remainder of the nations. Now that I’ve seen everybody who came in beforehand, it’s fair to wonder ‘who greenlit that project?’”
“I would hate it if the country of my heritage marched in while NBC was in commercial. Especially if the whole Ceremony was *on tape delay anyway*. (Turkeys.)”
[4] My opinion of Russian president Vladimir Putin did not start out especially high, and over the course of the opening evening it did not improve. The longer the Opening Ceremonies went on, the more often the cameras cut to him, and the less I liked him.
“Mr. Putin’s applause for athletes of Ukraine was … tepid. Compared wth, oh, everyone else in the joint. Hmm.” And then, shortly thereafter: “Oh. My mistake. Putin applauds for everyone like that. (‘Ho hum; you’re not ME.’)” … “With every new view of Vladimir Putin on the TV this evening, my admiration for him diminishes further. Sorry, all.”
“Here’s the thing about all the protests against Russian policies about LGBT folks (uniform choices, sign waving, clever TV commercials, government leader absences, etc.): ultimately they have a chance to make a difference everywhere except the actual Russia… because *Putin doesn’t give a wet slap what you think.* That is his real ‘schtick’.”
[5] NBC, by merely covering these Games, opened itself up to Media Criticism. Inevitably, whatever they did was going to be admired by some and detested by others.
“I suspect NBC hired the same color commentator for cross-country skiing as it did for track and field. No need to shout and bellow, guy, no matter how hard a charge that racer is making. You have a microphone to help make it seem like *we’re right here next to you.*”
“My only beef with Mike Emrick as a hockey play-by-play guy? Every shot, *every* one, is a potential overtime game winner.”
“Biathlon (featuring staggered starts, therefore staggered finishes) announcer: ‘Garanichev is first across the line and he has the lead!!’ … I can well imagine.”
“Maybe I’ve been watching at the wrong moments… but I have yet to see an actual medal ceremony. Is it just bad luck here?”
“Today’s curling announcer is a more secure person than last night’s: he’s willing to suggest that some shots are good shots. Last night everything was a disaster and Announcer Guy wouldn’t have made *that* decision.”
“Pretty high GE points for the NBC announcers Emrick, Milbury and Mlescko (sp?). They’re a hoot together.”
“Different announcers for ice dancing tonight than earlier today. Lipinski and Weir were oddball fun, but whoever this is … is actually informative.” … “When Sandra Bezic is announcing the ice dancing… I feel like I’m *learning something* about the sport.” … “It’s not often– no, I take that back. I have never before agreed with every single thing a skating commentator says, all night long. Sandra Bezic makes total sense to me.”
Oh … yes … the actual athletic competitions.
[6] Some winter sports will not end well if I try them myself.
“I just discovered another Winter Olympics sport that I would have zero aptitude for: slopestyle. Zero zilch nada.”
“I don’t think I’d like to be *either one* of a luge doubles team.”
“If I want to do seventy miles an hour on a downhill grade… I will also want a car around me. Have to admire these lunatic skiers.”
“When I spin around and around and around, I get dizzy. Figure skaters and freestyle skiers and snowboarders appear not to. How IS that?”
[7] I renewed my attraction for ice dancing. (Not since Torvill and Dean, etc.)
“Full disclosure: my dad was an ice dancer for a while.”
“Why I like watching ice dancing but not so much regular figure skating: if figure skaters fall, it’s no wonder. If ice dancers fall, the world has ended.”
“Goodness. The US ice dancing Shibutanis, cuurently (via tape delay) look Very Very Young.”
“Maybe this is wishful thinking. But it looks as if these Olympic ice dancers actually, y’know, *like* each other.”
“I know I’m supposed to be rooting for Meryl Davis and Charlie White, and I am. Go USA and all that. But Virtue and Moir are just too cute. Hee hee.”
“So tonight we’re up to about ’47th Street’ and ‘Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing’, I think. Makes you appreciate [Davis and White’s short-program musical choice] ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ that much more.”
“Virtue and Moir ice-dance *close to each other* (i.e. how it’s supposed to be done) better than almost anybody. Bravo.”
“Meryl Davis and Charlie White appear to be (gasp) actually having fun out there. Yay kids.”
“‘Their temperament is a bit more… artistic,’ says Sandra Bezic of Virtue and Moir. What’s that a euphemism for, I wonder?”
[8] I still have what for many of my friends is an inexplicably dogged interest in the sport of curling. Which, admittedly, is a little like chess on ice.
“Norway men’s curling: PANTS.”
“US men’s curling captain John Shuster wasn’t exactly the Charlie Brown of the Vancouver Games four years ago… but he wasn’t far off it. Today… he got a win. And so begins the winning streak, yes?…”
“US vs. Russia in men’s curling. The Russians are wearing these *pink paisley* disaster-area pants. C’mon, guys, you’re a lot of things but Norway you ain’t.”
“One of the US curling women is this year’s oldest US Olympian. Age 45. Younger than I. #hadtohappensometime”
“I never want to give any nice lady cause to yell at me with the force [with which] those curling women give each other advice.”
[9] Short-track speed-skating is just as nuts as I thought.
“Small but crucial suggestion for next Olympics’ US speed skating suits. Aerodynamics aside… can we not have contrasting-color crotch panels? Looks like something important gave way.”
“Oh yes, I remember now: the 5000-meter short-track relay race is the one that looks utterly, irretrievably *insane*.”
“Short track speed skating seems an exciting but exceptionally cruel sport: train for four or eight years, and have it all taken away in half a second by the yahoo next to you who can’t keep *his* balance.”
[10] I already opined in this space about Bode Miller’s post-bronze-medal-winning-race interview experience. Later in the week, I had occasion to acquire a bit of perspective.
“For the record, you gotta hear Christin Cooper comment on the *actual skiing*. She knows her business and can point out details that’ll teach you something new.”
[11] The earning of a silver medal, in certain Olympic activities, requires an individual or more often a team to be great for most of two weeks, and then to have their final act be a defeat. With regard to the US women’s hockey team, yes, you will see an equally dejected bunch of athletes – every time anyone loses the gold-medal match in anything. Whether that match featured controversy or not.
“Give credit to Canada… down 2 goals with 3:30 to go, and they didn’t give up. Also be honest… that was two separate [Canadian] 5-on-3 power plays in the same *overtime* period… in the *gold medal* game. Words may indeed fail me.”
[12] Not long after that, I found myself watching medal-round matches and pulling for (in no special order) the US hockey women and men, the Great Britain curling men, and the Swedish curling women. And I began to sense a pattern. They all lost. To Canada.
“Advisory to all participants in Winter Olympic team sports: if I root for you, you … are … doomed. (Just so we’re clear.)”
[13] Apparently, nothing happened during the Sochi Games, in spite of my early worries about security and geopolitical matters (read: terrorists) and such, to disrupt the competitions and other events. Certainly nothing that rose remotely to the level of the horrible days of the Munich summer games in 1972. Assuredly the NBC coverage showed none of the protests that were reportedly occurring in and near Sochi. But …
“This has nothing (at this time) to do with political leanings. Just a question: I wonder what it would be like to be a Ukrainian athlete at the Olympics right now?”
NBC did not follow through on its promise to spend significant air time on the various controversies that surrounded the Sochi games. But they did take one moment, late in the Fortnight, to note that while the Games had gone on as planned, security-wise, they wondered whether the competition had really fully rid itself of the spectre of the still-repressive nature of the Russian government and its laws and policies: “Interesting to listen to Bob Costas ‘poke the bear’ a little bit there.”
[14] But through all the political controversy, and all the speechifying full of platitudes about international sportsmanship and cooperation that are set to rest by even one silver-medal-winning skater grousing about the judging or the coaching or the ice conditions or something, … I find that Olympic competition is great for at least one reason: with the not-insignificant help of the home-country media, one can discover (or be helped to discover) athletes whom one otherwise would never have heard of, whom one may find admirable. During the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, for me it was US crew coxswain Mary Whipple. In Sochi last week, it was unquestionably the US’ youngest gold-medal-winning skier, Mikaela Shiffrin – a stable and humble head on her shoulders, and two very slippery skis beneath her.
“Glad to see that puff piece about Ms. Shiffrin, before she rocketed her way down the hill just now. Seems like a decent kid.” … “And in a post-race interview she makes a *funny*. Dang.”
Two years to Rio. In the wake of which we will probably not see all the “low-income housing” areas of town on the teevee coverage, but we’ll probably end up watching the whole thing anyway. I want to say something like, “and that’s okay,” … but it certainly won’t be.
This world is no more or less complex or controversial than it was in 1972 Munich, or 1968 Mexico City, or 1936 Berlin. But this much is true nonetheless, I think: Games like this can create opportunities for athletic people to parlay years of training (often accompanied by great personal and financial sacrifice) into Great Moments in their lives, whether they win gold or just skate in the rink.
[15] That, at least, is enjoyable to see.
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