Die, TV... die

Television as we know it is dying, and I, for one, am thrilled.

I am frustrated by the following things when it comes to television... 24-hour "news" networks, blackouts of sports programming, paying for channels that one never watches, and, oh, yeah, 3-6 minute commercial breaks.

Insult to free speech: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.
24-hour "news" networks are an abomination. I will come right out and tell you that I use the internet (because I can read a story and then quickly read something else) and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report when I feel like keeping up with the world. "Oh, but Bernard," you politely jest, "aren't you just a nerd? Nerds watch that stuff. TV isn't hurting anyone." I may or may not be a nerd, and, if I am, I'm not a very good one in that I have never once played "Magic, the Gathering," don't pass time by doing Calculus for fun, and don't speak Klingon (though I do, it is true, know what all those things are). The reason that I watch TDS and TCR is because they do not pretend to be what they are not. They inform us and entertain us at the same time. They do not have so-called "news room" segments that are nothing but some family bitching about mistreatment by a company. And, for the visually-oriented, it's not like one cannot watch video clips of hurricanes online.

I believe that news channels, and modern journalism in general, is more entertainment than it is who, what, where, when, how, and why. "Just the facts, Jack" is boring to many. "Sex sells" in advertising and movies, but opinions and stance-taking sell in journalism. We like to converse... we seemingly live off of it. We eat up columns, rankings, polls, video clips and photos because we like to connect with others, whether through arguing or agreeing. We want to know what people think. Journalism is entertainment. Older journalists can lament the loss of good journalism, the honest observer who comments from afar and lets the consumer make his/her own judgments, and I see their point, but those days are not coming back. Modern journalism is trending towards news entertainment, and, in my opinion, what makes the 24-hour news shows so evil is that they are pretending to be something that they aren't. Call it entertainment! Stop making your millions off of people who have not learned to know what you are up to.

Note: To be fair, understand that I, as well, believe that my column is entertainment for you. It's for your reading pleasure, your agreeing/disagreeing pleasure, as well as for my own sake. By joining the blogosphere, I openly declare myself as an observer and commenter who hopes that you will enjoy his writing style, tell all your friends to read my work, and that I will maybe, someday, be able to make enough money or gain enough popularity such that I will be able to pay off my student loans and travel around the world. I've done myself a disservice by waiting so long to get started with a writing career. I ask you to support me in this. If I am not entertaining you, let me know what I can do better.

Blackouts
I'll sum up my feelings for blackouts with a quick pretend condescending comment by a network executive:
No, little boy, you can't watch that Royals-Rockies game on the Altitude channel in Denver even though the game is in Denver. Fox Sports Kansas City is not showing the game, so you don't get to watch it."

My loathing for commercials
Yes, it's true that I love the new DQ "Hiking" commercial, so much so that I recorded an audio tribute clip to it on phone, but, on the whole, I can't stand the damn things. I don't mind the occasional commercial while I watch a TV show online... I usually have to watch about 6 fewer minutes of commercial per half-hour show. When I sit down to watch something, I want to watch that, and nothing else.
Besides, long commercial breaks are nonsensical in that they are very unlikely to achieve their goal of increased sales by people seeing their promo... folks just leave the room and come back 5 minutes later.

What bugs me perhaps more than any of this stuff is that there always seems to be an excuse. "Oh, it's to get fans in the stadium." ... "Well, people keep watching, and we keep making money, so we'll keep the channels on." Blah, blah, blah. It's about money. As long as they keep making money, they will keep doing things the way that they have been doing them as long as they can still turn a profit. (They being the corporate bureaucrats who make decisions.

All of this said, I comfort myself by noting the following trends currently going on, leading me to believe that the role of regularly-scheduled TV broadcasting.
1. Movies being on demand at home.More and more people use Netflix to watch movies. Imagine that most in the country pay the same price for a monthly subscription to Netflix as they do for one ticket to a big-screen movie (or less, especially for a 3D movie). Watching movies on TV channels that show commercials during the film is about as frustrating as being an Oakland A's fan, waiting for your team to score runs to support the awesome pitchers.
2. Sports programming being available online. One can watch pretty much every single major league baseball game of the entire season for $120... for the entire season... Why would one pay $35-90/month for DirecTV if the main reason that he got it was to watch baseball? People of the younger generations are less intimidated (or not at all) of the internet than the older folks, which leads me to...
3. The passing of the older generation.Trust me, I'm going to miss my grandmother when she dies more than anything in the world... I will be more heartbroken than if the Royals left town, the Jayhawks quit playing basketball, Sam Brownback became president, all the cocoa-producing plants in the world suddenly all died, and both Dream Theater and the Goo Goo Dolls broke up... all at once. That said, older people have always relied on TV and newspaper for news and entertainment. If you will suffer me to give you a quick anecdote, read the following: once, I got so frustrated with a TV broadcast from one of the ridiculous 24-hour "news" channels, I asked Grama point-blank: Why do you watch this crap? Her response? "I like to know what's going on."

Of course, HD TVs are all the rage now, but, as the economy continues to struggle, and energy prices continue to soar, perhaps fewer and fewer people will buy the expensive, though brilliant, TVs, and maybe just buy hi-def monitors instead. As this happens more and more, perhaps all of those things that I hate will die, and the internet can lead a joyful revolution.