Page 34 - Discover Spring 2023

Charlie's Chatter CONTINUED

visit theaters when movies were first released. the broadcast outlets realized that they, too,
They also became accustomed to paying a could provide their own individual streaming
monthly fee in order to ditch the antenna. platforms… for which they could each charge
That’s when commercials began appearing on “just a few dollars a month”.
cable channels. Yes, they were hoping that we
Now if you want to watch something
wouldn’t notice.
on Netflix, you have to pay for the whole
We did. service, even if it is just one show that you
want to watch. The same is true for all the
By this time, cable offered many more
other services. So yes, we have cut the cord…
choices than broadcast TV. So most of us bit
in favor of a different cord… and to watch
the bullet. Now instead of having a handful of
everything you want to see (even though it’s
things to watch, we had hundreds of channels
only a few different things)
– but only watched a handful
you have to pay each of the
of them. Soon, the original
services… and the worst of it is
$7.00 a month cable TV bills
sports programming.
morphed into bills of $100
and upwards. If you’re a fan of a
particular sport, there is no
What’s a frustrated
one source for all of the games
viewer to do? Simple. Cut
that you want to see. Some of
the cable, and get a satellite
them are on one service, and
dish. They had even MORE
some are distributed among
channels that you didn’t
other services. These folks
want to watch, but you still
are very clever. They keep
had to pay for all of them if
inventing new ways to see just
you wanted any of the ones
how much people are willing
in the “package”. We kept
to pay for programming that
paying more, but we still
they will never watch. Even
only watched a handful of
when you pay for mlb.tv to
channels.
watch baseball, there are always games that
Finally, someone had a brilliant idea: are “blacked out” for different reasons, which
To provide a streaming platform from which requires you to have access to alternative
people could watch TV over the internet. providers. God bless America.
You got to watch what you wanted, and also
As for me, although I limit myself
WHEN you wanted. And it was only a few
to literally just a few dollars per month, I
dollars a month. (Where have I heard this
still stream what interests me, subject to
before?).
availability. The rest of my free time is taken
Best of all, you could watch old TV up in more fruitful pursuits.
shows and movies, and also the new ones…
just not the ‘first run’ ones. Not to be outdone,

32 Discover Smith Mountain Lake SPRING 2023