(~8 minutes to read)

I have several books of quotations on my bookshelves, although they frequently spend time in the bathroom. I came across the following quotation that both tickled me and resonated with me.

There are days when any electrical appliance in the house, including the vacuum cleaner, seems to offer more entertainment possibilities than the TV set.
—Harriet Van Horne

By coincidence, I did nearly three hours’ vacuuming yesterday (spring-cleaning the bedrooms) and thoroughly enjoyed it. The previous evening, I’d spent over an hour looking on Netflix for something worthwhile to watch.

Canada’s TV service providers were recently compelled by regulators to start offering a basic or “skinny” package for $25.00 or less. The aim was simple—to stop forcing viewers to pay for a bunch of channels that they don’t want and will never watch. The idea made sense to a lot of people.

“These changes will ensure Canadians have the ability to choose the television content that meets their unique needs, budgets and realities,” quoth a CRTC spokesperson in a statement to CBC news. (CRTC: Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)

And so it should have, if the TV service providers had played ball. But what company would willingly eat into its profits to comply with the spirit of a regulation?

In what seems to have been a collective nose-thumbing to the regulators, they released their offerings on March 1st to a fanfare of—gasps of disbelief. Customers noticed that they would actually pay more if they switched to the basic plan plus just the channels they want and currently have.

Skinny—Getting Rid of Fat and Gristle?

Channel-bundling is something like selling pre-packaged meat; the visible surfaces might look wholesome, but you suspect you’re also paying for some fat and gristle that lurk beneath.

A less sensational and more germane comparison is the notion of wanting to buy a couple of really good books and finding that you can’t buy them singly; you have to buy them in a bundle that also contains a stack of remaindered books. And when you check the stack of books, you find that the remaindered books aren’t all different—there are two or more copies of some of them.

As far as I know, booksellers don’t operate this way—although if they read this and then implement such a scheme, you’ll know who to thank (or blame).

But this is how TV service providers operate. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the “fat and gristle” channels were transmitting up-and-coming programs or experimental programs or programs made by independent producers who’ve been overlooked by the mainstream stations. But no—the majority of them are either churning out reality shows on every conceivable topic under the sun or running old shows whose recordings should never have been archived. I mean who wants to watch Partridge Family re-runs?

Okay—I’ll step away from the Rant button now—I’m off-topic.

If I was still a cable TV subscriber (I cut the cord in November 2011), I wouldn’t mind my subscription helping to subsidize and encourage up-and-coming talent—there’s a limit to how long the current crop of writers/actors/directors/producers/etc. can continue!

But I really don’t see that that was where my subscription was going. It was paying for reality channels, celebrity gossip channels and faith-based channels that exist to satisfy certain markets and make their owners large amounts of money for the smallest possible outlay.

Reality TV is not real. Who behaves naturally in an artificial situation, knowing there are cameras everywhere, and knowing there’s a paycheque at the end of it?

Celebrity gossip has descended to collective voyeurism (if indeed it was ever anything nobler or defensible). I have no interest in who is whumping who.

And I’m withholding my opinion of faith-based TV on the grounds that every draft ended up reading like a mega-rant—not something I want “my kind of reader” to read.

Those aren’t markets that I’m interested in, now, or when I still had cable TV and formed my opinions.

So What Does”Skinny” Look Like?

Here’s a breakdown of the channels that my local cable provider offers for $25.00. (A quick look through my local phone company’s TV packages revealed a variation on the same theme.)

• Forty channels.
• Most channels are SD and HD options of a single channel.
• Several channels are French-only. (If I was a French-Canadian, my comment/complaint would be plusieurs des canaux sont anglais-seulement.)
• Two channels transmit programs for “the regional Cantonese, Mandarin and South Asian communities”.
• The plan does not include “HD equipment”, which all their other plans do include.
• The blurb also advises, “additional charges may apply”.
• The plan is not included in any of the advertised TV and Internet bundles or TV, Internet and Phone bundles.
• Additional channels cost from $6.00 to $80.00 per month for bundles of three to ten channels.

At least the “skinny” package doesn’t include a shopping channel.

In a seemingly perverse tactical ploy, the “Help me choose which plan” feature lumps Reality TV and Educational programming together in one checkbox.

Really!? That seems to me to be worse than offering all Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ campaign speeches in a single boxed set of DVDs. At least dispassionate observers might be interested in comparing and contrasting Trump’s and Sanders’ campaigns, although I’m sure the market would be limited. But who would be interested in a plan that includes access to shows with titles like Flaunting Fat is Funny or Large Sibling—Troglodyte Edition as well as to documentaries about advances in organic food production or analysis of megalithic science? The two demographics don’t seem congruous.

Oh dear. I’m really not able to keep away from the Rant button, am I?

How Has TV Survived?

TV, watching TV, and TV content quality have attracted derision almost since TV was invented. Here are a few quotations I’ve dug out from my books and from online quotation sites, notably The Quote Garden, which seems to be a well-researched site run by a passionate lady.

Television? No good will come of the device. The word is half Greek and half Latin.
—C.P. Scott (Editor, Manchester Guardian, 1872–1929)

Television is an anaesthetic for the modern world.
—Astrid Alauda (No clue who this person is!)

The television set in American homes is like the toaster. You press a button and the same thing pops out almost every time.
—Alfred Hitchcock

Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows or we wouldn’t have anyone to look down on.
—George Clooney

TV There and Here

There seemed to be more scorn aimed at American TV than British TV. I’d like to think that it’s because the BBC was given the money and resources to make quality content, thereby obviating the need to compromise for the sake of sponsors, advertisers, viewing figures and so on.

The BBC’s output is respected and sought-after around the world. Nobody would claim that they’ve not created any duds, but for the most part, the programmes don’t insult the intelligence (or at least, that was the situation when we emigrated in 1994). These days, I read about resistance to the TV licence fee (which is currently £145.50 per year) and wish those detractors could live in North America for a year and sample the quality of the majority of content here.

Choice, Quality, Quantity

We have lots of choice, but we’re choosing from a basket of bruised apples. The sad thing is that for whatever reason (apathy? laziness? hopelessness?) we are choosing instead of rejecting. We should be paying someone to pick the best apples from the tree instead of scooping up the windfalls. Windfall apples are used as pig food; I don’t want to be fed pig food.

So in the name of choice, we are getting quantity, but not necessarily quality.
The subscription and pay-per-view models seem to me to be a sensible way forward. Netflix is doing it; Amazon, iTunes, Shomi… the list goes on. These models still have less predictability than the TV licensing model where income is concerned, and the companies involved are all in it for the money, but it’s definitely a step up from the paid-for-with-commercials model.

There are good arguments for and against the various funding models, but the topic is large enough to merit its own article, which I will likely publish on April 12^th.

Summary

Art and business aren’t, for the most part, good companions. There are many philanthropic business people who donate to the arts as their legacy, but outside of the Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), I cannot recall any philanthropists who sponsor quality TV content; and even that isn’t content creation.

Since art is not necessarily motivated by profit, business people introduce elements that will return that profit. Overwhelmingly, those elements have been sponsorship and advertising.

There are better ways.

As for content delivery, the “skinny” TV packages have not achieved their purpose, it seems. Perhaps the TV service providers are too powerful to take on at this time. Certainly they have done a good job of limiting the consumer’s options (cable companies and telephone companies are now sharing the same set of markets and therefore “competing” with each other). Unless governments nationalize one or both utilities (thereby removing the profit motive), I see no prospect of the situation improving. And since I see little desire for and no prospect of nationalization, I see no prospect at all. All we consumers can do is to support the organized consumer lobby organizations.

Or we can learn to entertain ourselves (with or without a vacuum cleaner) instead of being mesmerized by the one-eyed monster in the corner of the room.