Maybe he understood what he was talking about but suffered from guilt over the fact that he (and his wife) were so pampered and spoiled they couldn't last a month without cable? Regardless, he was full of it.
He was explaining how he and his wife tried to get by with just an antenna picking up free channels over the air and with Netflix and Hulu to have the cable-like experience and he started talking about Hulu Premium. Right away we were confused because Hulu Premium's monthly fee allows you to watch full seasons (or full seasons so far) worth of show at any time (as opposed to the last five newest episodes that Hulu for free offers) but cable doesn't allow that. What was being replaced by subscribing to Hulu Premium?
Netflix, for at least $7.99, allows you to stream online. Not everything, usually not many new films or seasons of a TV show, but it does have a large streaming catalogue. And one that alternates and changes frequently. (Example, Richard Lester's The Three Mustkateers is no longer streamable this month but Bonnie & Clyde is; 9 to 5 is no longer streamable this month but Sunday In New York is. What's available tends to rotate.) Netflix also (currently at any rate) includes Starz which you can stream online as a channel or whose month of movies you can stream individually when you want.
What really surprised us was the whining. Katzmaier was whining that he couldn't see local sports and we wondered where he lived? A suburb in New York came back the answer. And we wondered how much he or his wife knew about TV?
For example, although the digital switch has left many TV's functioning poorly (the converter boxes have not lived up to their promises -- most Third readers using them have reported missing local channels), it has finally begun to show some value. By that we mean, most major cities (and those suburbs and rural areas that can recieve those signals over their air) are no longer just offering two PBS channels -- say channel "6" and "6.1" -- they're so new channels that are coming along. (NYC has five PBS channels by counting the decimal points -- most major TV markets have at least two.) There's This, for example, in many areas. (Channel 50.2 over the airwaves in Baltimore and DC.) Clicking on that link is supposed to localize it if This TV exists in your area. What's This TV? A free channel that shows old movies and some syndicated TV shows.
And then there's the just launched Antenna TV which kicked off with a Three Stooges marathon on Saturday. Monday regular programming is supposed to start and will include an afternoon or mid-morning movie and syndicated shows such as The Nanny, Good Times, Gidget, All In The Family, Maude, Three's Company, Sanford & Son, The Patridge Family and more.
Two new over the airwaves networks doesn't happen every day. They may or may not end up successful. They may go the way of Pax. We hope not. But look what happened when Pax finally died, it was replaced with ION Television which, today, programs more hours than Pax did during the week and on the weekend. Also, if you have an ION in your area (66.1 in DC), check to see if you've got a ".1" or similar decimal channel because most IONs are offering full days worth of children's programming during the week (66.2 in DC). At a time when The Today Show and stale repeats of Magic School Bus (we loved it in the 90s when all the episodes first aired) qualify as "children's programming" on the Big Three Networks each Saturday, that's something to applaud.
In some rural areas and some suburbs, there won't be that many options and, in fact, that's how cable first started. Long before there was HBO, cable was something you paid for when an antenna on the roof -- like a fiddler -- wouldn't bring in channels.
And that really had us wondering the most about Katzmaier, how many channels do you need? We watch way too much TV and read way too many TV scripts these days but that's due to our covering TV here each week. Prior to that, we did catch TV. We're not critics who thought we were too good for it. When we're on the road -- most weeks -- we also love to turn the TV on in our bedrooms and hotel rooms to go to sleep by when we're especially tired. We're not hostile towards TV. We hope we're not addicted to it, but we're not hostile to it.
We say all that because what does Katzmaier need? He says he needed "local sports." But he only did the experiment for a month and, in fact, not even that because he was gone most of the month (meaning -- though he forgets to admit this -- he was in hotel rooms where he had cable). So those "local sports," it wasn't that he wanted to watch them live, it was that he wanted to have them on DVR to watch when he wanted.
What the hell is that?
How pampered are we?
When we come back from the road, the only thing on the DVR is the network news' evening broadcasts in case a story covered requires us writing up the coverage on all three (plus PBS' The NewHour). A good weekend is when we don't have to go through that looking for material. But the DVR is a bit like the VCR in that people seem to think they have to record everything. We can't imagine why or why people are being so stupid.
"I have to record it all so I'll have it all forever!"
Uh, yeah. We heard that in the early nineties, remember? Nick at Night was airing, for example, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and you could tape every episode! You'd have it forever! And maybe you still have those episodes . . . on videotape.
Do you even have a video player?
Point? Your DVR recordings are going to be out of date in ten to 15 years as the techonology gets refined yet again.
Further point, who wants to live in front of a TV?
How many hours of entertainment do you need in a week?
We can understand TV as a distraction, as background, as entertainment. But as an obsession?
If you're fortunate enough to get the three networks and PBS over the airwaves, we'd say you've got some solid choices. If you have Antenna TV, ION and/or This TV as well, we'd say you're saturated.
At some point, people are going to have to start realizing that the issue isn't a missing TV station, the issue is something missing within themselves and TV's not going to address that -- not even Dr. Phil.
David Katzmaier disconnected because he and his wife were buying a used car and trying to cut back on their monthly bills to swing that. They were spending approximately $100 a month on cable (actually FIOS). When they got a good deal ($35 a month), they were back to cable. So they're saving $65 a month and they consider that to be within their budget.
Many people don't have that option. And that's why we marvel over that segment. We marvel over the fact that David Katzmaier wanted attention for cutting the chord and couldn't even do it for more than a month, and that NPR wanted to put him on the air. Do they not get how many people in this country cannot afford $35 a month to spend on TV channels? Those people would include many of our readers and a few of them wonder why NPR bothered to air that bad segment, they wonder how out of touch NPR is with America and the Great Recession? Like we asked at the top, "How did that ever get on the air?"
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C.I. note 1-2-11: Community member Julie caught an error. In the paragraph on ION, we'd referred to children's programming airing on the Big Three networks on Sunday when we meant Saturday. Thank you to Julie for catching our mistake. I've corrected it and my apologies. Julie, Zach and Charlie also e-mailed to say the Hulu section they understood but it was confusing. Ava and I have added two parentheticals to that paragraph to (hopefully) clarify that. And again, we regret our error of writing Sunday when we met Saturday. Thank you to Julie.