My cable T.V. bill should be $.97 a month!

The National Geographic Channel, The Discovery Channel, and Food TV Network...that’s all I need. Oh, and an occasional HBO and Showtime original series. I’ve removed the Travel Channel from my favorites list because of all that poker crap they're running now. Shouldn’t that be on Spike TV or some other testosterone-based network? Beyond that, television, for me, is truly the vast wasteland it was professed to be back in the fifties. This is especially evident when it comes to so-called network television...the original Big Three (CBS, ABC, NBC). I suppose we should include FOX as well now.

The complete and utter fragmentation of television today is astounding compared to just thirty years ago. With so many choices now, who the heck is watching what? Other than a Super Bowl, the Oscars, or other special event where millions of people tune in...how do they determine what to charge for a commercial these days? Soon, there will be a channel for every person in the U.S. Is anyone really watching those terrible WB comedies stacked up during the dinner hours? Does anyone really tune in to American’s Funniest Home Videos any more? Even my daughter Jenifer (formerly the world’s most dedicated fan) doesn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy any more. Are we finally sick and tired of Seinfeld, or King of Queens, or Everybody Loves Raymond reruns?

And how about this...why shouldn’t we be able to pay for our cable and satellite services based on what channels we watch? For instance, let’s say a basic cable plus HBO package with 200+ channels costs $65 a month. If I choose only three of those channels, my fee should be 97 cents a month. If a sports nut (which I am not) needs 15 different sports channels to make it through the week...then he (or she) should pay $4.87 a month, and so on. Why should I (we) have to pay for all those other crappy cable channels, the ones we will never, ever watch?

This pay per view debate has raged for decades. It’s nothing new. But, c’mon...give us a break!

And here’s another complaint. Why do the broadcast networks waste their time running popular moves and cable programs from the not-too-distant past after editing and chopping them up beyond recognition? When they ran Fargo, the hundred or so times the “F” word was used turned into the word “freezing”. Sex in the City on TBS? The dialogue is barely recognizable from when it ran on HBO. Dirty Harry movies without graphic head shots from his 44 magnum? Give me a break! If someone is too gentile for that sort of thing, they shouldn’t be watching it in the first place. Stick to the Cartoon Network, or TV Land. Heck, Rob and Laura Petrie were not allowed to sleep in the same bed back then...they had twin beds! Stick with this stuff!

The Discovery Channel and The National Geographic Channels have certainly changed in the past 20 years or so. Gone are the days of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Today’s nature shows are state of the art, High Definition masterpieces of photography and production. And not only are they technically far superior to their predecessors, they all now have an environmental focus. They have something more to offer than simple footage of chimps munching on vegetation in the Borneo rain forest or macro shots of dung beetles rolling a ball of doo-doo around. Relatives of those same chimps are now “thinking” about what has happened to their habitat...and what they are going to do about it! I’m no tree-hugger, but these programs make us think more now.

Tabling the cable charge rate piece of this complaint session, I suppose I should remind myself of the old radio adage when people complain about what is broadcast: use the “ON/OFF” button if you don’t like it. Or, simply change the channel, ie, don’t watch it.

And that leads me back to my opening paragraph. My cable box favorites list is very small! But, I am a very dedicated, discerning viewer. I actually WATCH what is on the screen. Gone are the days when my television is simply on in the background. Part of that reasoning is due to the limited amount of hours a plasma T.V. has in its life span!

So, kudos to the Discovery Channel and their Planet Earth series...what a monumental, elegant collection of HD images of our delicate (and changing) planet. How can anyone not be fascinated by this compared to today’s collection of mundane, unfunny, and un-entertaining sitcoms?

And yes, I am even burned out on Seinfeld! Poppy was sloppy. But now, he has simply been sloppy in reruns for far too long. Give me “Living with the Kumbai” in HD any day!