557 Channels And Nothin' On

We used to have cable. There were 3-4 roommates at the time, and we split the bill. We had a ton of channels and each paid about $10 monthly. When I moved to Chicago, I had a TV, but didn't want to commit to cable, so I got a great antenna and a DVD player. Although I was tragically out of touch with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, I caught up on some great movies. I forced myself to walk to the movie store (this was before Netflix, obviously), and sometimes Marky and I would get on our cell phones and watch the same movie simultaneously. If Scrubs' reception was bad on a rainy night, it wasn't meant to be. I found something better to do than watch TV. For a person who is this out-of-love with the idea of TV, I suppose I have a very romantic view of the boob tube.

Yes, I believe too many people are too addicted to their shows, and that might make my next statement seem hypocritical. Network television is a right. Even snowy, blurry, network television devoid of vertical hold. True, I get to enjoy the special channels on the treadmill at the gym, but that's only a few hours a week. When we recently made the switch to digital, thankfully Marky and I had the right kind of set. Sadly, what used to be a fuzzy image is now crystal clear about half the time, complete darkness the other. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I know this "upgrade" is the cable companies slowly making TV-viewing impossible without paying the piper.

Today I read an article about NBC being bought by Comcast. Between gaps of black silence, I heard fragments of this story the other night on Conan O'Brien, my favorite host on my favorite network. Surely NBC won't immediately disappear into Cableland. But the insidious crossover is imminent. When I think of the free shows that made a huge impact on my childhood (The Cosby Show, Saturday Night Live, Family Ties), I have to put myself in my parents' and grandparents' shoes. They remember radio shows and first television sets. And that's really where NBC started. Like them, I have no choice except to let broadcasting evolve to meet the needs of its staff and audiences. However, this might just push me further to the left as far as being that audience. Perhaps I will finally have an answer to the oft-queried: "Gosh Bree, where do you find the time to do that?"