Growing up we had three channels, or four if you count the french channel, later on in life it increased to 13 channels. If you had a T.V. you just needed to pay for the power and adjust your antennas accordingly. The shows we watched were good, we all enjoyed them and some of the commercials in between shows were pretty funny. Satellite T.V. was around back then but the dish was so huge that not to many people could afford them or had a spot for such a monster.
T.V. was free at that time, no monthly fees, no contracts, and the shows were longer than the commercials. Something changed, and we started to get billed and had to buy plans, the commercials got longer and the shows got shorter, T.V. companies start to milk their customers. T.V. series that used to be 24 episodes in a season get reduced to 12 episodes or even 8. Now we live in an era where you buy a plan from your service provider and they claim that you get 200 channels! And guess what? You do! BUT....On those 200 channels is the same show on ten of them, the same sports, on ten and so on, so maybe you would get 20 shows total and maybe you might watch ten of those channels that you really enjoy. All for a low price of around 200 Dollars! More commercials than ever, and the same ones repeating over and over. We pay for this?
I get that you have to make money and that those companies provide a service. My real gripe here is, that if I have to pay for your service, it should be commercial free. I should be able to watch whatever show I want, when I want to, at the time I want to. We have that technology.
We get free radio stations in this city, and there are a lot of them. How do they make their money? The Commercials!!!! Every day there something you can win, or get free money from the radio stations, and it's all FREE, we don't pay a cent but somehow they can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as give out free money, trips, hockey tickets, concert tickets, and much more on a daily basis. When is the last time your T.V. Station gave anything back? They do but not very often and we pay for that service.
Close to 1,000,000 people live in Edmonton Alberta, if they pay 200 bucks a month for T.V. service that is 200 million dollars a month, plus we don't know how much the local T.V. station charges for putting up a commercial. You do the math.
If you pay for T.V. you should be enjoying a commercial free experience at the very least.
Why do you think there are so many people out there pirating movies and TV shows? Why did Netflix become so popular. Other streaming sites are doing very good as well. Soon we will see the end of local TV services, and that is kind of sad, thousands will lose their jobs, all because these companies became greedy and people are moving to a new medium.
But hey, That's the Price of Entertainment.
Scott Goerz
