Every summer my husband spends interminable lengths of time watching the list of television programs crawl over the screen. “There’s nothing on,” he says of our hundreds of available channels. “I’m thinking of canceling our cable.”
“Remember when television was free?” I ask, recalling the days when the antenna mounted our roof pulled in the three major networks and one weak signal for PBS.
“We could go back to that,” he says.
I wonder. Our neighbor, who has no cable and an older model television, set herself up for the big changeover from analog to digital by installing a converter box. She received five good, clear, channels in those few minutes before her screen went blank. A technician came out today. He pushed a button and told her all was well with the equipment, but that the local stations were having trouble with their signals. Thousands of people, including my neighbor, are apparently surviving quite nicely without television. Of course there has been an upswing in local crime lately.
And when I think back to the “free” television of my youth, I can also remember rabbit ears festooned with aluminum foil. My father running outside to turn the antenna. This way for Youngstown stations. The opposite way for Pittsburgh stations. My mother lamenting that we would once again have to call out Mr. Quinn, a humorless man who took off the back of the television set to fiddle with those mysterious glowing tubes. My father resorting to a resounding smack of his palm against the cabinet when the vertical/horizontal buttons failed us.
“That’s all you pay for cable?” our daughter asks her father. “That’s a bargain.”
Oh.
Somewhere between free television and mega-cable channels, there must be a happy medium, but we have yet to discover it. Besides, how can my husband possibly find contentment with only five channels to surf?
“Remember when television was free?” I ask, recalling the days when the antenna mounted our roof pulled in the three major networks and one weak signal for PBS.
“We could go back to that,” he says.
I wonder. Our neighbor, who has no cable and an older model television, set herself up for the big changeover from analog to digital by installing a converter box. She received five good, clear, channels in those few minutes before her screen went blank. A technician came out today. He pushed a button and told her all was well with the equipment, but that the local stations were having trouble with their signals. Thousands of people, including my neighbor, are apparently surviving quite nicely without television. Of course there has been an upswing in local crime lately.
And when I think back to the “free” television of my youth, I can also remember rabbit ears festooned with aluminum foil. My father running outside to turn the antenna. This way for Youngstown stations. The opposite way for Pittsburgh stations. My mother lamenting that we would once again have to call out Mr. Quinn, a humorless man who took off the back of the television set to fiddle with those mysterious glowing tubes. My father resorting to a resounding smack of his palm against the cabinet when the vertical/horizontal buttons failed us.
“That’s all you pay for cable?” our daughter asks her father. “That’s a bargain.”
Oh.
Somewhere between free television and mega-cable channels, there must be a happy medium, but we have yet to discover it. Besides, how can my husband possibly find contentment with only five channels to surf?
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