Yeah I subscribe to HBO:
Sopranos, From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, The Wire, Taking Chance, Gathering Storm, Conspiracy, Citizen X, Fatherland, Stalin, Truman, etc., etc. Fine entertainment all produced by HBO. That’s not to mention Gran Torino, Taken, The Dark Knight, etc. I have ON Demand and in Hi-Def for about $12/mo. Yeah I could go to Netflix, but they have even more crap there so if I rent Soraya M there I’m still supporting a company that purveys crapola. Blockbuster is the same thing.
ABC? Won’t release path to 9-11
NBC? owns Universal which put out… The Green Zone.
CBS? David Letterman on nightly
FOX… mostly infantile crap like Family Guy and for all this talk of Rupert Murdoch I wouldn’t trust his judgment in viewing taste as far as I can throw him. For all of our talk of FOXNews, etc. FOX has done just as much, if not more to coarsen the culture as ANY corporation in our history — FOXNews especially. I love Brit Hume, Bret Baier, et al., but I have to flip that channel for my kids more than just about any other channel on TV.
Do I wish I didn’t have to go to these folks for entertainment? I guess I could go off the grid totally — probably not a bad idea given that any of these are somehow compromised morally or culturally.
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Sturgeon’s Law has always applied to entertainment. The real problem is that these days, the percentage of deliberately harmful, malicious or duplicitous material has increased dramatically. I don’t mind mindless drivel, but when it comes with a message, one that basically has contempt for the audience when it’s not downright hatred, that’s when I give up and stop paying for all the crap.
Been cable-free since I moved last August, and don’t miss it. Spending those dollars instead on the stuff they never seem to play (W.C.Fields and Marx Bros. movies, “I, Claudius”, ‘Fawlty Towers” and Looney Tunes so far this year.)
I’ve got to get I, Claudius. I break out my Fawlty Towers DVDs every six months or so. My other standby is Arrested Development.
Mrs. Firefly and I just started watching “Arrested Development.” We are enjoying it. Half the cast of “Juno” is in it.
Every character on that show is a gem, Rufus. And Jason Bateman’s performance holds it all together.
And, to tie this into the post we’ve hijacked, Ron Howard produced and narrated it, and it stars Ellen DeGeneres’s wife and the bald guy from Mr. Show, whose political beliefs are not at all to my taste.
But the show’s funny.
(For that matter, I don’t like John Cleese very much either, but I’d never give up my Fawlty Towers DVDs.)
Cleese is a huge Harpo Marx fan!
The mom is fantastic!
I am happy for you, and I agree about the main TV stations.
Problem is, I have no choice except for cable where I live. In order to get HBO, I also have to subscribe to the digital package, and the HD box, and it ends up being over $120.00 a month.
I loved ROME and The Wire. Got ‘em afterward as downloads. I have no complaint with the quality of HBO’s work. It’s a financial thing for me that just ain’t happening till August or so.
Respects,
Well some of HBO can be a little wrong. However I wouldn’t have Showtime in our house if I was promised 300 billion in stimulus money. N FN WAY!
I despise ABC. I despise CBS, and NBC is a given. Don’t watch enough FOX accept for Family Guy reruns on other channels to have an opinion. Yes I watch Family Guy and I also watch South Park….shoot me now.
Anyway we should do a remember when thread about the main broadcast networks before they went compeltely off kilter. Like when CBS made cool shows like Magnum PI and NBC had Remington Steel. When our intellect and values were not truly ridiculed and mocked and when the people who ran cared about content and giving people good value? I mean I even miss the adverts. I see old videos tapes of TV shows and see MnM’s ads and I get misty eyed. What do kids growing up have to look back on with a smile? Ren and Stimpy? Sponge Bob? Freaking Kendra?
Nothing wrong with Southpark but I can’t stand Family Guy. It’s a one trick pony that has forgotten it’s trick. Movie channel wise your only safe bet is Starz which seems to be completely void of political bias.
Stephanie,
The Little Fireflies span both genders, and there is cool programming for kids. “Hannah Montana” and “The Suite Life” had a few years of good episodes. They both jumed the shark when the leads started dating and the episodes devolved into 30 minutes of teens swapping spit (as all kid-themed shows eventually do). “That’s So Raven” was funny. My sons do like “Spongebob,” and it is good. My kids like shows like “Modern Marvels” and “Mythbusters.” My sons both went through “Pokemon” phases, which I could not bear to watch, but probably no worse or better than “Speed Racer” or “Johnny Sokko.” They also watch a lot of cooking shows.
SPONGEBOB IS AWESOME!!!
I have a dream where GI Joe go on a mission to kill Sponge Bob.
In certain movies, yes, I have to agree…
Rufus,
I tortured my parents with Pokemon too.
Of course, when I look back at it I go: WTF?!
Been “off the entertainment grid” for years. Got 2 sony 400 disk DVD carousels and make my own programming. Easy on screen selection and saves a ton of space on DVD storage.
I’ve been looking at doing something similar with all my videos on hard drive. Right now I’ve got 1.5 terabytes but I don’t have a real serviceable user interface. Thinking about maybe building an XML driven flash player.
I’ve been thinking about going off grid but I can’t get Mrs. Turbo off her junk food TV and I do loves me some NFL Network… and Turner Classic Movies… if the days were here when we had real choice I’d pay for maybe 20 channels and that’s it. That may be more expensive perhaps…
I wish they would offer ala carte cable. The demand is there but the cable companies (or usually company since there tends to be monopolies) won’t allow it because they know 8 out of 10 channels no one wants. I think in Europe they offer it ala carte.
The two European countries I know of; England and Germany, both charge a tax per screen. In other words, if you’ve bot two televisions in your home you pay twice the tax. They literally have auditors that check on how many screens you have. And you pay for computer screens too. That’s what BBC1, BBC2… are. They are television stations funded by taxing British citizens. Most Germans I know also have satellite, but they still pay the tax for their screens, whether they watch the state television programs, or not. I’m pretty sure Ireland does the same. Don’t know about the others.
Yup… the only reason I have cable is for the NFL.
I would love to have the ability to buy stations, a la carte. If we could do that my guess is ABC, CBS and NBC would perish on the vine.
We watch the Sy FY network, Discovery, History and all of its offshoots, CN when it shows the classics, TCM, AMC, NFL, Outdoor and VS, FOX News, TBS and TNT occassionaly and SPIKE. Haven’t watched the networks in years because after the 90s is became truly lame.
The only shows I watch on the four networks are Lost and The Office. (The Big Bang Theory looks good, but I’m always afraid I’ll catch a bit of 2 1/2 Men if I watch it.)
Other than that, it seems like it’s all reality shows and smut for teens.
The ONLY thing I watch on the four networks is sports.
Having worked for a cable company, I can tell you that most programmers, especially the popular ones, want to be next to, or on the same tier, as other highly watched shows/networks. To break up the tiers into an “a la carte” offering would create an engineering (read: “expensive”) nightmare. At least, that’s what the chief engineer in our office said.
Yeah, I’d like to be able to pick and choose the channels I pay for, just like when I go grocery shopping. Unfortunately, the grocery store business model doesn’t translate well, if at all, to the cable industry.
The problem isn’t that they can’t offer “a la carte”; the problem comes when it’s time to pay the bill for doing it.