The Pun Also Rises
(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Super-TV"
It's been a rough month for
television. I don't watch a lot of TV, because I spend all my time
in front of my computer. Same glowing box effect, different shiny
images. To be fair, I have become addicted to a few shows like Heroes.
I'm a big fan of a world where the superheroes don't all have tights,
because I've always thought that some underwear corporation must
be secretly manipulating the costumes. As discussed last week, wearing
pants is super.
Even those Heroes, though, will be hard-pressed to save television
from the triple threat that it has faced in February. First of all,
ratings are down for Lost. Maybe if they had called their show Second
Place they'd have done better. But this was the show that everyone
hailed as the new era of television. I had friends who said that
Lost was the only reason they watched TV at all, aside from the
microchips implanted in their heads.
If one of television's biggest draws has gone from Lost to Losing,
what else can hold people's attention? Well, given the average attention
span of most Americans, nothing. In fact, a recent study showed
that the average attention span of I really like cheesecake.
Sorry.
No doubt, one of the world's greatest nods to our short attention
span is the remote control. But the inventor of the remote control,
Robert Adler, died last week at age 93. One can't help but wonder
if God become bored and changed the channel. I see it as an important
loss for the television culture, and worry that his passing will
go unnoticed. But my friend Danny Gallagher assures me that years
from now Robert Adler will be remembered, when somebody finds his
body fallen behind the couch cushion.
Of course, one channel you won't be able to click to is channel
22. As you may be aware, Time Warner Cable recently announced their
plans to make some "great changes" to their offerings
in North Adams. This includes a plan to move C-SPAN and channel
22 from basic cable into the super-pricey $40 extra per month bracket.
They also had planned to move Boston channel WBZ 4 as well, but
mayor Barrett proved that his first name wasn't Grinand, and for
now channel 4 remains.
Still, the loss of channel 22 does not make people very happy.
From Time Warner's perspective, since we are closer to Albany than
Boston, we should just use that channel instead, in spite of the
fact that channel 22 informs us about what goes on in our own state.
I can see the logic in this, and I'm sure that Time Warner's representative
Mr. Taubkin has a very good point. After all, information is all
basically the same anyway, so it's silly to worry about getting
some particular brand of information when there is a closer source
for it.
In fact, I'm so convinced by Mr. Taubkin's argument that I think
we should make some "great changes" to his own setup at
home. Having multiple sources of temperature information is redundant
and inefficient. It would be much easier to provide one master thermostat
that would show the average temperature of the house, outside, oven,
and refrigerator. It's not as if he really needs updates on local
temperatures from his oven, when there's already a much more accessible
source of temperature information on the wall thermostat.
Also, all of his clocks will be set to the time of an adjacent
time zone. I'd set his TV just to receive WilliNet, but people who
work for a television company can obviously get whatever television
they want.
Really, the choice has to lie with the consumer. Your money talks
louder than words, when it comes to paying for cable. I suggest
you just leave your cable check on your dresser rather than sending
it, because it's closer than the Time Warner home office.
Like Robert Adler, there's
a remote chance it might work. If you stop paying for services that
don't deliver what you want, people will make services that do have
what you want. That's the glory of capitalism, where the almighty
dollar is always there to save the day. And best yet, it doesn't
wear tights.
___________________________________
Seth Brown is the second-place winner of the New England Press
Association's 2006 awards for humor columnists. In spite of this,
he does not wear tights. His website is www.RisingPun.com
All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown.
If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint
it, please contact me first.
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