Pay TV You're Not For Me....

Thread Starter

bountyhunter

Joined Sep 7, 2009
2,512
The year was 1963, in Massachusetts there was a voter issue about legalizing "pay TV" so people could see baseball home games, etc......

It got voted down.

To this day, I remember the song the anti ads used:


Pay TV you're not for me,
You'll take away what I get free.


I am one of the people who doesn't have cable TV, so I don't get ESPN. And now, every single major college football bowl game is shown only on ESPN. Up to and including the national championship game.

They were right.... it did take away what we used to watch for free.
 

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Here in Greece, there are subscription services for TV programs, either on satellite TV or via internet streamed on your TV terminal. These bundles include Discovery Channel, History Channel, Fashion TV, Motors TV etc.

As a person who has given up television for 4 years now, I am more and more appalled by shows broadcast on channels such as Discovery and National Geographic. Not only there still are shows such as American Chopper (I think it's named that way) who make a reality show out of a workshop day (why?) but lately there have been shows based on end-of-the-world strongholds and zombies. What is the relation between fiction, gun-craze and high-octane motors and channels traditionally dedicated on documentaries, wildlife and history.

Granted, there still are wildlife documentaries, but they, too, seem to repeat themselves every 15 minutes and trying to give a dramatic tone where none is needed.
 

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
My wife works for our local phone company so she got us set up with internet TV for cheap.

Yep I have to agree. Crap and half on most major channels now. We have disney channel for our daughter and it took me all of about one day of having their live action diarrhea on to want to dropkick them out permanently. :mad:

Unfortunately she pays the bill so I have no say in what channels stay or go which means that I have to put up with dramatic BS and the like shows as background noise regardless of if anyone is watching or not and I catch hell if I touch that remote and switch it off or move it to something halfway educational. :(
 

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Especially regarding kids' shows, such as Disney XD:

They sound so noisy! My little sister was watching it over our stay at grandma's during the vacations and suddenly I felt nostalgic of Bolec and Lolec and Reksio.
These shows didn't even have dialog and they are amongst the most memorable cartoons of my childhood.
 

Thread Starter

bountyhunter

Joined Sep 7, 2009
2,512
You need to stick with the educational shows like "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo".

My mom used to have basic cable. Whenever I visted, I would scan the channels...... over 100 channels and never found anything I wanted to watch.

The cost of cable here is ridiculous, and the better stuff like ESPN is a premium add on. I use over-air antenna and get about 100+ channels. It just bugs me how the massive greed that is professional sports is gradually taking everything from broadcast TV onto pay-per-view.
 

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
I gave up on subscription television a couple of years ago and I have not missed it. There used to be a lot of good shows on the "cable" stations. Back when The Learning Channel had shows that had to do with learning, they had a series called Horatio Hornblower which was excellent. Yeah a mythical figure but still good programming.

I did get hooked on DVRs but now I run Windows Media Center and record everything OTA.
 

strantor

Joined Oct 3, 2010
6,782
Here in Greece, there are subscription services for TV programs, either on satellite TV or via internet streamed on your TV terminal. These bundles include Discovery Channel, History Channel, Fashion TV, Motors TV etc.

As a person who has given up television for 4 years now, I am more and more appalled by shows broadcast on channels such as Discovery and National Geographic. Not only there still are shows such as American Chopper (I think it's named that way) who make a reality show out of a workshop day (why?) but lately there have been shows based on end-of-the-world strongholds and zombies. What is the relation between fiction, gun-craze and high-octane motors and channels traditionally dedicated on documentaries, wildlife and history.

Granted, there still are wildlife documentaries, but they, too, seem to repeat themselves every 15 minutes and trying to give a dramatic tone where none is needed.
I totally agree.
 

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GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
I used to have only free broadcast TV and I eventually got cable because there was nothing but crap on broadcast.

Then I had cable and after two days of the novelty, we realized we had 140 channels of more crap. So we added a few premium channels - and eventually discovered they were crap too.

So we got a streaming subscription of netflix. It was originally great because there were so many movies that we had never seen. Then after about 2 months, there were no new movies added to Netflix portfolio and we only had crap to watch.

I heard Amazon had a subscription service coupled with there PRIME program (free shipping with no minimums) for $75 per year. So now we have that.

I wish I could tell you that we dropped the cable when we aded netflix and we dropped netflix when we added Prime but we didn't. I have two TVs with two DVRs capible of showing me any TV show ever made and it is all crap. For some reason, there is "must see TV" on each of those services that we cannot live without.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I have an antenna on a pole. I like about 4 or 5 TV shows. It's free and it keeps me down to only wasting a few hours a week in front of the tube. Elementary, Person of Interest, Two Broke Girls, Craig Ferguson (sometimes). A couple seem to be educational, and a couple that are just silly. Pretty much defines my interests.:D
 

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
Person of Interest is awesome. Probably one of the best drama series of all time. This past season has to be the best ever. Root is just plain scary.
 

Brownout

Joined Jan 10, 2012
2,390
Not only there still are shows such as American Chopper (I think it's named that way) who make a reality show out of a workshop day (why?)
For lots of good reasons. First and foremost were these awesome machines being hand-built. I loved seeing them come together starting from a bare frame. Next is the hand fabrication of many of the parts. We got to observe a craft that's pretty much gone in the age of automation in manufacturing (even better were the shows where the parts were being hand formed, an even more rare craft) Next is the engineering aspect, making all the systems, power, suspension, handling, etc. work harmoneously together for a good riding experience. Then to witness the whole creative process from concept through design, fabrication, paint, assembly and finally to see the machines fire up and go down the highway. To see the fusion of design and functionality and watch is all come together was more then worthwhile. And finally, to watch how this was made into a successful business, the marketing, managing the various vendors and customers, dealing with profit, loss, financing, etc.

As the series wore on, it became less and less about the bikes and more about family drama, and thus was far less interesting. One thing I enjoyed was watching some of the players break off and do their own things, especially Junior. The last thing I watched was the build-off. Junior made a bike that defies description. It was simply one of the most beautiful machines ever created.

I don't watch anymore. I'm no longer interested in what OCC does. It was a great run, and I do look forward to the next time such a creative small business/service is featured in a series-documentary.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
You need to stick with the educational shows like "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo".

My mom used to have basic cable. Whenever I visted, I would scan the channels...... over 100 channels and never found anything I wanted to watch.

The cost of cable here is ridiculous, and the better stuff like ESPN is a premium add on. I use over-air antenna and get about 100+ channels. It just bugs me how the massive greed that is professional sports is gradually taking everything from broadcast TV onto pay-per-view.
Why should it bug you? It is called "professional" sports for a reason. It is a business intended to maximize the profit and pay of its participants and investors. If players are going to be paid hundreds of times what they used to be, then the industry has no choice but to find ways to generate hundreds of times the revenue that they used to.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
With one small exception, all I've ever had since leaving home is broadcast TV. In college and in the service I had neither time nor access to TV, by and large, which broke the addiction I had fostered growing up. When I moved to Colorado Springs in '95 I was focussed on getting out of debt and so didn't get cable. Thus I just had the three broadcasts stations I could receive at my home. In '96 I got cable because I was interested in the Atlanta Olympics, only to find out that NBC had the exclusive coverage contract. But I had it, so I figured might as well enjoy it -- except that even the channels that I had really enjoyed such as Discovery and History were now largely crap and there was mostly pure crap on all of the other channels as well. So I cancelled it. I developed a habit of only watching videos (and later DVDs) at home and almost never tuned in to broadcast TV, so when I moved to our current home, which as absolutly no broadcast TV reception at all, it didn't bother me a bit. I still don't have a TV that can even receive the new signals and never got my government subsidized converter box.

When I travel I used to look forward to being able to catch something good on Discovery or History or whatever, but that got to be such a disappointing effort that the last several trips I've taken I haven't even bothered to turn on the TV in the room.

In some ways this is good. I'm not spending hours and hours watching the boob tube and not spending a hundred bucks a month, or whatever it would cost, to do so.
 

Metalmann

Joined Dec 8, 2012
703
"Originally Posted by Georacer
Not only there still are shows such as American Chopper (I think it's named that way) who make a reality show out of a workshop day (why?)"



Why?
One good reason is that hopefully, some kids will be interested in building something from scratch.
Building, fabricating, using your brain and your own two hands; is something of a lost art nowadays.

Today, it is coming to the point that kids do not have much common sense, they were weaned on clean jobs, like typing/playing on a keyboard.

Most do not have callouses, or ever learn how to do even mundane tasks like fixing things; instead of tossing them, and buying new.

Some, were not taught how to properly use basic hand tools.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
"Originally Posted by Georacer
Not only there still are shows such as American Chopper (I think it's named that way) who make a reality show out of a workshop day (why?)"



Why?
One good reason is that hopefully, some kids will be interested in building something from scratch.


Is that what that show is supposedly about? I've only seen parts of a couple episodes while on travel and both times it seemed like the show was only about everyone griping about what everyone else was or wasn't doing and going out of their way to do the opposite of what they had said they would do. Didn't see much building of anything.

Building, fabricating, using your brain and your own two hands; is something of a lost art nowadays.
Can't argue with that -- I wholeheartedly agree. And, to be honest, it is just a continuation of a trend that started well before my generation. Some of my favorite shows on the History channel were ones where a team of people would try to figure out how something was done in ancient times and then, through analysis and lots of trial and error, recreate the techniques that were possibly used. Sometimes the focus was on something that was done as recently as a century ago but the techniques were already largely lost to time.

Today, it is coming to the point that kids do not have much common sense, they were weaned on clean jobs, like typing/playing on a keyboard.

Most do not have callouses, or ever learn how to do even mundane tasks like fixing things; instead of tossing them, and buying new.

Some, were not taught how to properly use basic hand tools.
"Some"? I would venture that most were never taught how to use hand tools at all and very, very few were taught how to use them properly, even the basic ones.

For the most part, we are simply victims of our own technological success. But that success has unintended consequences that are already coming home to roost.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Brownout must have seen episodes of American Chopper that I didn't see. I don't like American Chopper because it never had any content about how to build anything when I saw it.
 

Brownout

Joined Jan 10, 2012
2,390
You had to see the earlier episodes. It wasn't step by step how to, like the instructables. It showed the crew doing it, and you had to pay close attention.
 
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