A Return to Rabbit Ears Television: a review of one year without satellite television or cable television.

by James K Sayre

Just over one year ago, I finally tired of paying for the Directv satellite television service. The final straw was when they replaced their pleasant audio music channels provider with the obnoxious relentlessly self-promoting XM radio service. Anyway, Christmas Day, 2005 was my last full day of satellite service, so I taped some Christmas jazz.

Without any satellite TV in January 2006, I decided to explore the local over-the-air television offerings in the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California. Twernt much. My best discovery was the offerings of KMPT, Ch. 32. They offer a mix of international news broadcasts from Germany and Russia, along with one-hour segments of the Classic Arts Showcase, which airs vintage clips of grand opera, ballet, classical music, animation, old films and some jazz. In the evening, KMPT offers mostly Asian news and Asian dramas. I did get hooked on the Green Rose drama, which stars the beautiful and talented Miss Lee Da-hae.

In other over-the-air TV news, one of the local "public" television stations, KCSM-TV, channel 60, went digital last spring. Their over-the-air broadcasts from San Mateo, which had been on the air for many years, went dead. Now KCSM is a digital TV broadcast, on channel 43. So if you don't pay for satellite TV or cable TV, you can no longer get KCSM without spending a couple of hundred dollars for a digital television receiver... Of course, the FCC, under the Bush regime doesn't give a flying fig about poor people being squeezed out of being able to receive "public" television broadcasts that have gone into a high-tech digital format.

So do I miss cable or satellite TV? I no longer can watch the TCM old movies, but fortunately I taped several hundred of their best movies offerings in the five years that I paid for DirecTV.

Maybe the new Democratic majority in the House and the Senate will produce enough fireworks in investigative hearings into the activities of the Bush gang than CSPAN will become interesting again; interesting enough to pay for cable television or satellite television again?

End.

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Web page last updated on 4 January 2006.