i hate cable

i remember when hbo first started. i did not know what the big deal was, mainly because i did not recognize any of the movies (firefox anyone?). well, enter the turner family, nickelodeon, and all the other channels. now you have some entertainment for those weekend doldrums. then something happend. news channels and multiple channel entities (espn2, mtv3, etc).

content expoloded. at a rate, i believe, the public was not ready to except. was someone really yearning for FX in HD? univision i can understand, but espn classic. like there is a market for 'classic' games. its like that channel that plays those 'classic' game shows. i mean... that isn't even reality. you'd be committed if you watched reruns of the lottery machine numbers, but watching press your luck... that's kitschy. i feel like we are conditioned to accept this swill as entertainment, simply by presenting it as an option.

i've been there. rainy day, hungover or on vacation. flipping through the channels, just looking. what! you never know. the channel stops as an image of a chiseled chest dashes across the screen. oh, that's a px90 commercial. fifteen minutes later, your really contemplating ordering it. then you when you realize that you've never ordered anything from tv, you return to the remote, but forget what you were actually looking for. my guess is that most of us, when we are channel surfing, have no idea what we are looking for. going to the grocery store and taking a bite out of all the fruit would be crazy, but spending half hour or an hour channel surfing... that's just normal. and i've done it before. waiting for laundry or a delivery, just clicking channels. watch 5 minutes of the dog whisperer, catch the end of a criminal minds, then highlights from the celtic game, then a preview of the next season of jersey shore, then .......

well, it must stop. my wife and i unplugged years ago and have recently got hooked back in. mainly because of basketball (and torrenting became a pain with our slow as snails computer). admittedly, watching lost day-of, was great. not having to search for a half hour to find a copy of mad men, cool. having community and 30 rock on the dvr, awesome. and the sports, ah, the sports. nfl and nba, passion i lost touch with, but without the old cable box, i would have missed out on brett favres epic game versus the 49ers. i would have missed pitsburghs ncaa tourney run last year or butlers run this year. and the celtics, oh, the celtics. but the season ending this week, that only leaves sports i care little for (no offense) and a empty space on my dvr.

three months ago, the dvr stayed above 50%, now, it barely gets past 30%. i doubt that it will get past 30% this summer (even with mad men, friday night lights and burn notice). so i've been thinking outside of the box (the cablebox). which brings me to the point of this post. espn coming to the xbox live marketplace. hells yes. end game. this plus hulu means FU cablevision/optimum with your weird fees (dvr insurance, installation maintenance). the bigger picture is that the fcc will have to begin redefining terms and language to allow for either, equal entrance into the entertainment market (tv) or tiered development of the information market (phone, internet). very interesting, but what does it have to do with the consumer. well, wouldn't it be cool if you could simply subscribe to shows a la itunes, but your subscription would be with a network, the content provider, instead of a third party. cable is currently the third party with networks, and cable providers are third party carriers for cable tv shows (mad men, breaking bad, dexter). it'd be awesome if i could just subscribe to nbc, like i subscribe to the skateboarder mag, allowing me access to shows, back catalog and all. everyone wins except the cable companies. networks won't have to worry about angling for prime time spots, shows can develop because you could accurately determine production costs based on subscription services (remember trauma and their million dollar pilot?...). moreover, once you get outside the stilted advertising structure of cable, you can explore more creative funding approaches (a la direct tv and friday night lights or grant work like the BBC).

the hope is that once you step away from the content-to-sell-advertising model, to a content that sells content model, you get better choices. we are starting to see that in the music industry. as labels scramble to find their cash cows (ke$ha), consumers are becoming the new a&rs (uffie), as itunes/amazon reviews are carrying more weight than ....huh..... i can't even think of a relevant music publication. i doubt that cable companies will wise up. i mean they are still advertising plug in home phones. who the f*ck uses a plug-in phone anymore. to be honest, my xbox has been kicking my dvr's ass this past month. and with 241 episodes of comedy central presents, fraggle rock, the guild and lost on netflix. my dvr is not going to see much action this summer.

all in all, i think we are gonna give it a year (that's when the contract is up). if hulu and espn work well on the xbox, kiss this cable crap goodbye.

check out this montage from the show arrested development, the best thing to happen on cable since the simpsons. if you haven't seen the show, don't speak to me. ever.