He or she who controls the television remote controls the kingdom. In our house, my wife is master of the television remote. She rules over it like Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. Oh, Prince Albert may have thought he had a certain degree of mastery, but no. It resides squarely in the hand of, well, the hand. Control is seldom relinquished – most usually if she’s still in bed or has gone to use the computer in another room. In those cases, I wait a discreet amount of time, then cautiously approach the remote, fingers trembling.
We take entirely different approaches to “remoting”, as I call it. I for example will flip through the stations. If I see something I like, I’ll stay on it. My wife, on the other hand, uses the guide to make selections. She relies entirely on name recognition. If she’s never heard of it, it’s not worth watching. That means that something is going on in the background, but you can’t see it. You hear the dialog: “Look at that over there – we have to get out of here.” But, we have no idea what “that” is, what they saw or how they’re going to escape, because we’re looking at every channel’s programming for next three hours. If it’s an episode of “Law and Order”, we’ll have to pause on “info” to see which one it is. After we’ve gone through the entire guide, which is about two thousand stations, she’ll turn to me and say, “There’s nothing on.” That’s usually my cue to pick up my book. Or she’ll say, “Did you see anything you liked?” I may have, but it was fifteen hundred shows back and went by in a blur, so all recall is gone.
I don’t always sleep through the night. At those times, I’m positively giddy using the remote with reckless abandon. Of course, at the times I’m watching, a fair bit is paid programming. (Why am I paying ungodly amounts to see the same air fryer? Has the ginsu knife – you know the ones, that can cut a shoe in half – lost its appeal on tv? Maybe I’ll just Google it, and then the ads will pop up on every site. But I digress.) So I progress through movies that should never have been made – there’s a significant amount of blood and gore on late at night. Apparently the Sci-Fi folks rule the airwaves from 2 – 4 AM. It’s their Prime Time. I might find a travel show, an old episode of House Hunters (see my previous rants), or some historical show that keeps me interested until I fall asleep and I go back to bed. I flip through all the channels, try out some of the functions. On occasion, quite by mistake, l’ll deprogram the thing or inadvertently change the settings. Then I have to shut it off and start again. My system of realignment is usually pressing random buttons until something happens. Not an entirely successful strategy, but at some point, it will return to normal programming. Or I turn off the tv, return to bed, and pretend that it was the nightly auto-update that was entirely at fault. That darned box never works properly.
When our daughter is home, that adds a new dimension, an altering of the television chemistry. We two old people have fallen into patterns of viewing that are not really in keeping with younger generations. For example, we watch shows when they’re actually being broadcast. I know, right? How quaint is that? When herself is in residence, we “binge” – usually shows that she watches and is trying to convince us we will like. “Give it a chance” could be on her coat-of-arms. And often, to our complete dismay, we do get into it. We did that this past weekend, and by season three, we were fully up to speed. Of course, season four won’t be on until next spring, so we’ll have totally forgotten it and be back to our usual programming.
What happened to the traditional television year, I want to know? It started in the fall – usually mid-September, with new shows until mid-winter. You could count on this. If you missed one, the reruns would start about February or March. Then they’d rerun again through the summer. This was a time-honored cycle. There was the cliffhanger (“Who shot JR?”) that would bring us right back in the fall. Now we have the big season finale that will keep us on the edge of our seats until – when? When is this coming back? Did I miss it? Wait – next May? Are you serious? As the attention spans of human beings gets progressively shorter, the wait time for new programming gets longer and longer. We have to shake things up a bit. Of course, we’ve got great new shows in development. Air those for two or three episodes, and if it hasn’t caught on, dump it. Gone forever. If it’s captured a “niche market” or a “loyal following”, that’s the kiss of death. You’ll need to buy the DVD’s, and who even has a player any more.
When Herself was home this past weekend for Mother’s Day, we were out shopping or doing something that involved travel. While in the car, she explained to me the differences among “broadcast”, “cable”, “streaming”, and something else – I forget. PBS is not actually a thing – apparently it’s a “service” because, well, don’t really remember that either but something to do with its charter. I always thought that broadcast was a comprehensive, overarching term for anything I was watching at the time. Not so, say the experts. They’re all different, like coffee – whole bean, ground up, and k-cups. Some I can even watch on my iPad, should I desire a small screen experience. Some folks even watch shows (I can’t call them broadcasts) on their phones. Why one would want to do this, unless you’re driving down a four lane highway and are into really distracted driving, I have no idea.
It’s early, so I’ll just pop out and play with the remotes. We have about five of them. One turns on the TV and adjusts the volume. Another changes the channels. Rumor has it that if you press the right button and speak into it, it will find what you’re looking for. That’s a scary proposition, so I won’t even try. Then, we have three baby remotes that, quite honestly, not sure what they do. I think one operates the DVD player, and the others are merely stage props we keep around to create the appearance that we’re quite tech-savy. It’s distinctly possible that one or two came with devices we no longer have, but the mystique remains intact. I bought a stylish holder to proudly display them all, which has subjected me to considerable ridicule from others in the house.
I’ll just flip through the stations until something looks good or a message pops up on the screen saying that, once again, I have disappointed it, and it’s starting all over again. I should stay tuned and it will be back on in ten minutes. OK, I’m thinking . . . . . . . .no.
I'm Thinking...No! 