So here is a common massive rant that all viewers are aware of...you missed your favorite show because the network changed its time at the last second. Because you have to go out and earn that cash the cable company and advertisers so desperately need, you totally missed the advert telling you where it went and it totally slipped your mind to spend every waking hour paying attention to any changes. But no problem, you have a PVR and your buddy has the new improved expensive version as well, so you got all your bases covered. However, the network didn't send out a "new" signal for the show or some other electronic curse prevented it from recording your show the second time around. So when your watch day comes up a week later, there is no sign of the season ender you'd really like to watch. |
| Just in case you don't know what Beta or VCR is, this is what I grew up with as a kid. It was back at this time that networks and advertisers tried to make it illegal to record shows; though they lost in the supreme court they still long for the day that you quite your job and stay home to watch their shows, because they really need you not to fast forward through their commercials that they claim don't actually influence your purchasing decisions with the money you don't have because you stayed home to watch their shows. Hypocrisy never changes. |
Now if my PVR was a VCR or Beta back in the day and I missed my show, because this problem is far from being new, I would have to wait for repeats or be completely screwed. But this isn't the 80's, its the 21st century, I got the internet.
So loyal to my show and truly wanting to legally support it with my money, which I honestly have tried to do, I go to the network site a week or two later and get my favorite thing as a Canadian, "this show is not available in your region."
Ahh, Bell and Rogers, our two biggest cable outlets, I smell your monopolization spraying all over the concept of consumer choice and buyer beware. What makes me sad is the ads on the sites are pretty much exactly the same on TV, the same company in both the US and Canada, so why the block, your still being paid. But they want you to go to the site of the Canada network they purchased, you are not allowed to watch the show from its original producer that has put it up legally for free.
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| Ok I will watch your commercials...doing house cleaning or laundry. Or should I tie myself to my couch my lord telecom? |
But the site is really bad for auto play side ads that interfere with the show, unskippable ads measuring 5 to 10 minutes long and eating up so 90% of my CPU memory when I go there. So time for Adblock sadly, however they have a adblock blocker, so my show will not come up.
So options: wait and pay for it on I-Tunes, wait for Netflix (Canadian so probably not), take 2 hours to watch a 1 hour show on the regional site, use a virtual IP to watch on the original site (which our cable companies are fighting successfully make illegal and perhaps serving more time in jail than actual fraud for violating), hope for a rerun that may never come, or download it illegally.
And like so many, you can guess which option we had to go for. And honestly I actually felt bad about it.
Its sad, because this is the death of TV that has always been marching on for the last 30 years. Or is it? What is odd that some of the best produced shows in history have occurred in the last few years at least in my opinion. In the late 90s and early 2000s reality TV and networks not wanting to pay writers more than fast food workers, plus the rise of truly illegal copyright issues almost killed TV...but it survived.
While many smaller networks took hits and here in Canada where absorbed by big telecom companies in the most glorious example of conflict of interest in my life time, TV came back. While procedural crime dramas still dominate the market and reality TV is used to justify the higher channel numbers, there are a number of show that really try to make an effort of being actually good. So in a weird way TV has sort of had its second coming, but well it last?
Now in real free market capitalism, I the consumer have the right to choose what I purchase and from who I purchase it from. So naturally I really would love to get rid of the channels and networks that have filled the air with what I consider crap and only keep the stuff I like. But, since the beginning cable packages have forced me to take one good network along with a list of stuff I don't care for.
Here in Canada, cable companies have been arguing against the consumer choice and the free market, claiming that we should not have the right to choose individual channels or even individual shows. At the behest of the CRTC companies here where forced to make skinny cable packages. And the result was a below bare bones package of crap and an a la cart system that is terrible. And to "promote" this new system and their own streaming services the big companies have pushed to restrict Netflix here in Canada and increase its cost. They, like telecoms in the states, have also been pushing to get rid of net neutrality and honestly sometimes sound like that consumers need to be forced to buy their products. Of course this is to maintain revenue, but it is the typical hypocrisy you see when the free market affects them.
So what is the future of TV and internet viewing in Canada than? Is TV dead? No, because the free market's reigning in (by the companies that claim to live by it) well force it to continue and prevent new models from replacing it. Without change, here in Canada will be dominated by less than ethical consumer methods, and cable TV well be bundled in such a way to force us to take it or live off the grid. Television will become stagnet, but unable or unwilling to change or natural die off...becoming TV purgatory.
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| The future face of Canadian media consumers |
