The national obsession with playing with balls got in the way of watching a science fiction show again.
I don't care how you waste your time, but don't expect me to enjoy the same things you do.
Television scheduling is something we have to share.
The game wasn't going into overtime. Yet, somehow, AGAIN, it ran into the next show for almost an hour.
You'd think that after decades of television and football that someone at a network could figure out that football games take three hours for an hour of game time to pass; not two.
Once they admit that, then they could schedule the TV I would like to watch and have no interference with the Sportsball.
Wanna bet that the teams would drag their feet less if they knew that at 8pm EDT the television coverage ends regardless of is play is done.
Never mind that you can find near 100 channels dedicated to your particular flavor of Sportsball that run 24/7.
If you speak Spanish, and have the right international channels, there is (or was) a freaking Jai-Lai channel!
I am also offended that I have to subsidize these channels with my subscription to Dish. I really cannot pick another carrier to escape it.
I'm numb to the bullshit that I have to know about "the game" last night and be able to quote stats on command or be ostracized from normal society.
I want to see their faces if we pre-empted the precious football game for live coverage of Jerry Pournelle's funeral. Or live coverage of a Money Magic the Gathering tournament.
I'd love to have someone not be able to participate in office discussions because they can't tell the difference between a Cleric and a Druid or explain why flight with the "much touch surface" limitation is superior to clinging.
As far as I am concerned being proud of being a football fan is as close a declaration that you're a fucking moron as I can come up with. I've been observing you from the outside for a long while.
It does occur that a main reason I stopped watching TV was the constant interruption from things I had no interest in.
I don't want to watch "the game" so I don't tune it in. But time and again, when I tried to find what I was wanting to watch, there's "the game" still running.
TV needs me a lot more than I need it. If sportsball were sufficient to keep the lights on, there wouldn't be other programming at all. But they keep forgetting that non-sports fans have so many other options than their channel now.
Gone are the days when it was ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and maybe two or three UHF channels.
Gone too are bars where you can be free of the game as the sportsbar paradigm took over. If "the game" is on, there's fans cheering "the team" on. Making it impossible to have a conversation. Gods forbid if the people you're with get more interested in "the game" than talking. Might as well just go home and talk to myself than socialize with someone who's nearly at church so rapturous is their attention to the TV above the bar.
I'd really feel more left out, if I was at all interested in the subject and was being excluded. I'd be welcomed as a fellow fan, if I could find the interest to watch the game and talk about it with them.
I'm an outsider because watching sports is repetitive to me. It's not entertaining or engaging for me.
I'm equally sad that my interests in non-sports things don't spark any interest at all in most of my friends. Too many people ridicule these interests, and assign value below that of watching a millionaire play with an inflated bladder.
Click here to submit $0.00 US for a lifetime subscription
Posts
Comments
Cut the cord and get a plug in device. I've got a Chromecast. There's half a dozen others. Between over the air, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and every network having an app I watch what I want.
ReplyDeleteThis sort of thing is why I have only basic cable, and that mainly because it's part of a package with my landline (which I will relinquish when they pry my cold dead hands off it) and my Internet service.
ReplyDeleteAnd one of the big, big, huge problems with sports is how they've corrupted higher education. Athletes at a lot of big colleges live lives that are about as far from "ordinary students" as the Kardashians are from the Sisters of Charity. They have special dorms, often special places to eat, and are basically allowed to pretend to be students while concentrating on playing feetbrawl or bakkabawl. The Ghods have mercy on any professor who dares to flunk one of these apes, even if it is semi-literate at best and can barely function at junior-high level!
And if they get into trouble, the school supports them 110%, even (especially!) in cases where an ordinary student would be flung straight out of school and into jail. Why we let our universities (paid for by taxpayer money, remember?) to be turned into support systems for farm teams for pro ball is beyond me.
Separating school and sports strikes me as a good idea. Preach it, brother!
I especially hate subsidizing channels that I don't or won't watch just to get the ones that I like. Contrary to what the cable company tells you, the technology is there to allow you to get only the channels you want a la carte. They just don't want you to purchase their service that way because they make oodles more money selling expensive packages. I went on a bit of a tirade about this a few years back when a Comcast rep called and tried to talk me into renewing with a higher tier package. I told her that I am forced to pay for too many channels already that I object to. X-finty Latino. I don't speak Spanish. OWN. I despise that fat, racist bitch, Oprah. 27 different versions of ESPN. I don't watch sports. A number of different versions of C-span. Who in the hell watches all that government crap? A bunch of MTV channels with inane shows on them that have nothing to do with music. And don't get me started on LOGO (the fag channel). The rep informed me that if things weren't packaged as they are that some of these channels couldn't be shown because they couldn't support themselves. Well, isn't that the way of free enterprise? Let them die. If someone wants to watch a program in Farsi, let them pay extra for it. Don't charge me more because these people won't learn to speak English. If they miss hearing the mother tongue so much then the can move back to the God forsaken hole that they came from..................
ReplyDelete