Let ‘Em Eat Cable

Posted by LK on 3/07/10 • Categorized as Blog, Education, Featured, Film, Psychology

Woke up this morning to the following e-mail news alert from the WSJ:

“Broadcasts of the New York ABC television station weren’t available early Sunday to customers of Cablevision, after Cablevision and ABC owner Walt Disney apparently failed to resolve a financial dispute over monthly subscription fees.”

This is wonderful news. A small but important start; may the stand-off endure. Considering how innocuous pop culture is, how downright destructive it’s been to our national intellect, and the otherwise productive people-hours we Americans waste watching two dimensional reality TV instead of living and enlarging our own three dimensional lives, the positive impact of removing a small but important fraction of the mind-numbing input that assaults us daily is cause for celebration.

And tonight, ABC is scheduled to broadcast the Oscars!

Risky strategic timing by both sides, and hopefully neither buckles under pressure. No red carpets, no designer dresses, no crocodile tears on the podium.

No televised hypocrisy from the Hollywood political dilettantes, who narcissistically spend millions of dollars to pat themselves on the back while the leftover scraps from their post-award events could feed what’s left of the Haitian people for a week. (And to the usual retort that points out the good works the stars’ charitable foundations are doing, one has to wonder whether they donate because their PR people see it as a necessary evil, and whether their donations are as big a percentage of their incomes as the working stiffs who either tithe on Sundays or are moved to send in a larger check to the Red Cross than they can comfortably afford.)

One down, around 500 more channels to go.