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What happened to good 'ol TV? (Can you tell I'm getting old(er)?!) I struggle figuring out what show is where... and why do I need to spend oodles of money for this service, and oodles of money for that service to watch the shows I enjoy?
Seriously, just think how much better off we oldsters were when we had 13 channels and UHF. We had plenty of choices of things to watch.
We didn't spend hours trying to log in to a service, only to find out that the show we want isn't on that particular one, so we spend more hours logging into another service. When we were young (once our families had a TV), we stood up, walked all of the way to the TV, and turned the channel. (Additionally, we never lost the remote, had to find batteries for it, or had the dog chew it up!)
We had to wait until the following week (or worse, the following season) to discover what happened next in the series we were watching... we didn't have the opportunity for instant gratification, nor the excuse to spend hours/days binge watching a series. Moreover, we could go through the TV guide to pick out and highlight the shows we wanted to watch.
Families often had only one TV in the house, and enjoyed watching TV together. Did they realize at that time how rich and precious those experiences were? The shows (to my recollection) were wholesome and endorsed good clean values.
I did embrace new technologies. I loved the flexibility afforded by our VHS player/recorder. Oh, and movies you could rent at a local store. And then, the variety of shows available on cable TV at many different times during the day. I was an early adopter of technology, having my first personal computer, a VIC-20, in 1980. Heck, I taught 6th graders who all had their own laptops in an innovative program in 1986. And connecting to the Internet become more feasible for more and more people, in more and more places. I've been riding that technology wave, trying to keep on top of things. But....
PS: We live in a "hollow" amongst the ridges in this area of Florida. Thus, despite a TV antenna reaching over our roof, we can't pull in TV signals from either of the two larger towns near us. Thus, we don't have the option of selecting local channels.
I remember, not so long ago, wishing that instead of having to pay a big cable bill for a zillion channels, when I only watched two or three, that I could buy my channels "ala carte". That was a lesson in be careful what you wish for. Ha! My subscriptions cost almost as much as my cable bill did back in the day. My sister found a "super box" (that's what she calls it) that replaces all of the subscriptions. It is expensive, about $300, but it's a one time purchase and she gets everything she wants/needs. It only works for one TV, but since that's all we have, we've been looking at getting one.
ReplyDelete$300 one time sure beats the monthly charges of all of the different streaming services.
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