Cable TV: Do people actually watch this stuff?

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jeffg

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From April to October we subscribe to cable TV, for baseball games, and every year we're astonished at the other programming. Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any worse than it already is, somehow it does.

We turn on the travel channel, and they're either showing poker games or some guy eating bugs. We try and watch HGTV, but the video production (cameras relentlessly panning, zooming, cutting etc etc etc every half second) literally gives us motion sickness within a few minutes. Animal planet? Isn't there anything to learn about animals, other than they attack and eat each other?

And of course the requisite 40 channels of ripoff shopping, fake religion, TV judges, Dr. Phil and Spanish language programming.

So my question is, who in their right mind watches this crap? Is cable TV really this terrible in other countries, or is it just America who's been blessed with moral bankruptcy?
 
No, it's the same here in Canada and it's even worse when you don't like sports either LOL I have 100 plus channels and can seldom find anything to watch. My partner though lives for what I call the Judging hours.. Judy, Joe, Alex and god knows who else one after. I cringe just hearing all those trash people talking even from another room in the house.
Then Sunday evening he's got the set booked for Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters.

Even Larry King is now pretty mucha turn off for me since most of what he has on these days is Idol tripe or some brainless hollywood twit.
 
I subscribed to cable tv a few years ago & had it turned off .
Television shows & commercails today in my opinion are nothing but garbage.

My favorite tv shows are from the 1960`s & 1970`s I watch them on U-tube now days. Example type in the waltons or all in the family or I love lucy to name a few.
 
The UK...

...is just as bad!

Channels that show repeats of old BBC & ITV shows ENDLESSLY.
Channels that show old US programming.
Channels that can only afford to show cheap, bad US stuff, that people in the US don't even bother watching.
God/"Give your money to us - it goes to God and he'll like you" channels.
Asian & African channels, which are unbelievably poor quality, like they are made in someone's shed using a camera phone.
Shopping channels.
Gambling/poker/phone-in rip off "game" channels.

At least in the US a lot of your cable channels make original programmes - their UK equivalents, Discovery, Animal Planet, History, Sci-fi, Comedy Central etc., don't.
We even had an ABC channel for a while that only seemed to have 8 shows, (mostly borrowed from Disney Channel), on an endless loop until it was shut down for good a couple of years ago. It didn't even show any of ABC's US shows, as it had a budget of about 50 pence.

There are a lot of good channels as well though!
 
I wish

that we could pick out the channels that we want to pay for.
For the most part, TV is just not entertaining anymore.
I absolutely hate those "judge" shows, I refuse to watch them.
I just can't believe that anyone with any brains at all would waste their time watching Jerry Springer.
I can't even believe that Jerry Springer himself would lower his standards to have a show like he does.
I would much rather see the old shows on daytime TV.
Like re-runs of the old I Love Lucy Show, Hazel, The Gale Storm Show.
I do enjoy some of the cooking shows but I'd like to see some re-runs of Julia Child and the cajun cook, Justin Wilson and even Jeff Smith, 2 Fat Ladies and some of the British cooks are good too.
Some old cowboy re-runs would be fun to see too.

As it is right now, I'd rather read a book than watch TV.

But, as long as everyone pays their cable bill.....its not going to change.
They have us right where they want us.
Pay your bill or we turn you off.
And there would go my high speed internet connection :(
 
What really turns me off with so many of the shows, whether they're cooking shows or reality is how contrived they really are..
Take Gordon Ramsay on Hells Kitchen for example.. now only a complete and utter fool would be stupid enough to believe that he isn't acting (swearing, cursing, yelling) for the camera and ratings.

Then all these people with umpteen baby shows like Jon & Kate plus 8 those other fools with 18 kids etc being paid up the wazoo to do those shows.

And the worst imho all those Survivor and Lost type shows... talk about phoney and acting. I just don't get it.
 
That's why I don't even bother watching TV anymore. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing worth watching.

I don't care for sports, the "cooking" shows are anything but, the "reality" crap they call TV.....

Then when something comes on that's not completely insulting to your intelligence, you're interrupted every 5 minutes with 10 minutes of blaring, full-volume commercials about pills for you to get a raging boner or calm your Herpes inflamations.

Screw it! If I want to watch TV, I just go online and find the show I want and either watch it on the network's website, or torrent the damn thing. Life's too short for the amount of commercials and garbage that's on the tube nowadays.

Personally I wish there would be another writers' strike. When they stopped "writing" all that crap that's on today, the networks started airing older shows or reruns from previous decades. It was actually kind of nice!
 
We dont have cable service in our area, we have direct tv and it is just as bad, only things I watch are re-runs of Seinfeld on TBS, some movies on TCM and AMC, Army Wives on Lifetime, and Brothers and Sisters. I also like watching re-runs of press your luck, match game, lets make a deal, and card sharks on the game show network.
Otherwise it is an absolute waste
 
Yep.

I pay for over 400 channels on Dish Network and watch about five or six of them.

Must haves are History Channel and History International, TCM, BBC America, and RFD-TV.
 
A million channels to chose and nothing on.........

when I was growing up you only had 2 thru 12, and nothing on to watch....now we have a gazillion options...On Demand...showtime, starz, HBO, cinemax, etc....and still nothing worth watching...and the spice channels...what the hell is that?...soft porn, I get a better show from my neighbors in the pool at night...thank god for binoculars...lol

the only thing I really like is the music channels....a wide selection for almost every taste...no announcer, no commercials, just music, all the time, i just let this play all day thru out the house....
 
Try RTN!

Some of the best programming I've enjoyed lately comes free, on broadcast. It's on RTN, the Retro Television Network. They're in most cities now, as a "side-channel" to one of your major local stations - those "extra" TV channels we were promised as part of the digital transition. For instance, here in Atlanta, WSB is DT 2.1, but a click of the "Up" button on the converter box remote takes you to WSB-DT 2.2, which is RTN.

The weeknight lineup includes Magnum, P.I., Knight Rider, It Takes a Thief, The Rockford Files, Night Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Hitch's original half-hour show that aired from 1955-62), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, the hour-long Hitchcock show that aired from '63 to '65.

Other shows (daytime and weekends) include McHale's Navy, Dragnet 1968, Mike Hammer and Adam-12. While none of these shows (except the Hitchcock shows) represent the very best of their eras, they're head and freakin' shoulders above what's on network TV nowadays. There are old horror movies on Saturday nights, just like TV used to specialise in in the old days. Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood was on only two weeks ago.

You might check it out. They do go to informercials after 2 a.m., but what the heck. And I love their network I.D. graphics, which are based on the CBS new fall lineup graphics for 1970 - I have the original graphics on a Mary Tyler Moore Show DVD. At least RTN shows some decent stuff, which is more than you can say for almost any other channel nowadays, except TCM and Nick at Nite on cable.
 
Thanks all. Somehow, it's comforting to know this problem isn't limited to just the U.S.
 
Thanx Sandy. I loved Adam-12, but I'd be amazed if Comcrap carries RTN. They don't even carry Logo in our area.
 
Jeff:

RTN's California affiliates are:

KRON-DT San Francisco
KAIL-DT 7.2 Fresno
KEYT-DT2 3.2/27.2, Comcast Cable Ch. 191 Santa Barbara
KRET-TV TimeWarner Cable Ch. 14, Palm Springs

RTN tailors its programming for each local market; what I get on RTN might not be what is seen in other areas. But they have access to the NBC Universal catalogue of classic TV shows, which is one of the largest around. So a good amount of retro TV should be available on any RTN affiliate.

P.S.: They show retro commercials too. Comet Cleanser, Charmin and Slinky are just three I've seen lately. Mis-ter Whipple!
 
I like to watch WGN they show Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, The Hallmark Channel for Golden Girls, and of course TVLand, but when the start showing stuff like High School Reunion, The Cugar, and other crap I change the station.
 
After 10 years we gave Foxtel the flick. Too many repeats and the ad breaks were getting more numerous and longer. In the end they fiddled with the movie channels in such a way that one had to pay extra for the latest releases, which used to be free. Plus their customer service staff had a bad case of the 'attitude'.

I did like the Turner Classic Movies, Hallmark, National Geographic, History, Discovery and the Weather channels. Having access to the BBC, CNN, Fox News etc. wasn't all that bad either, but, I get by without and save a pooh load of money.

Commercial tv is pretty crappy as well now, but suffices for what I need and I don't mind going to my local DVD store for the latest releases. They don't show a lot of movies on regular tele anymore either. Now its all just CSI, NYPD, ABCDE and all kinds of dreadful reality shows which just make me switch it off. I don't know why programmers think that people need to see rotting corpses up close and be subjected to images of gratuitous violence against children at al almost nightly. They can also keep their cooking and renovation shows - mega boring and done to death as far as I am concerned.

rapunzel
 

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