<< Barkley the Retarded Dog | Main | Happy Mom Learns About Me Smoking Day >> September 06, 2005 >> Television One of the things I always hated most about watching TV were the commercials. I realize that this is not a particularly profound declaration: it's not like anybody sits in front of the television set, gyrating and touching themselves, until the pesky programming takes a backseat to Mr. Canadian Tire Guy and the newest incarnation of his paternal garden smugness. Nobody mutes CSI until the Rightguard commercial FINALLY comes on. It just makes sense, it's understood - advertising is the repetitive horror we force ourselves to endure between segments, eyes dilating wildly as we try to remember what happened before the 'short' commercial break. I hate that. I hate having to pull my brain away from something it's interested in at regular intervals, to detach myself from a story and then forceably reattach after five minutes. It makes for bad storytelling in my opinion, poor progression of narrative. It's like reading a book and stopping after every single page to go stare at pony porn on the internet for a bit. The pony porn may be mildly tantalizing, but you'll have a lot of trouble piecing together the book at the retarded pace you're reading at. Enter the Internet. At least, I THINK that's what it's called. This invisible network doohickey we're cyber-talking on. Now, not everybody knows this, but the Internet can be used to "download" things called "DivX files" and these "DivX files", when opened, often show magic pictures that are virtually identical to my favorite TV shows with one exception: NO COMMERCIALS. The commercials are edited right out! Needless to say, I am not so much watching the Real, Live Television anymore. Let's weigh pros and cons here:
So is this the future of television? Are more and more viewers becoming dissatisfied with the current system of delivery and willing to turn to illegal downloads for their Fix? Will the networks begin twisting the Internet into a revenue-friendly distribution source for media content somehow?
Will my international cyber-piracy eventually piss off the networks? Will they sue the pants off every ghost they see - like the RIAA and MPAA - or will they learn that strong-arm tactics won't necessarily work with something as nebulous as the Internet? Perhaps the widespread availability of products like TiVo have already shown that Television will be a different battleground from Film and Music. I'm interested. ...in Joey. Posted by Chris at 01:05 AM >> Commentations (3)
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