Things I Don't Get: Time Warner Cable vs. CBS

 If you are like me and live in one of the zones where Time Warner Cable and CBS are fueding, you know that your cable television lineup now no longer includes CBS.

Now, my question is, why don't television and cable executives understand that no good can come of their feud?

Anyone who has any interest in following the evolution of entertainment, knows that the ratings system and structure of broadcast television is changing faster than the antiquated system can keep up with.  Viewers now have options to record or stream content at any hour of the day with many of their favorite programs, or sometimes delay gratification for an entire season and the gobble shows in binge-viewing.  So, needless to say, this does affect an already faulty ratings system that depends upon randomized viewers with boxes recording viewership of live programming.

So, with declining viewership to begin with, what good does it do to play chicken over ridiculous profits? Both sides need to get a clue that the only result will be customers driven away to getting most of their programming other ways.  Either people will get fed up enough that they switch to DirectTV or AT&T U-verse and switch off the cable entirely.  Then once they do negotiate, undoubtedly Time Warner Cable will end up offloading the ridiculous amount that CBS offers onto paying customers who will no longer be able to pay and will quit.

In the meantime, we all have to suffer through radio ads where CBS encourages listeners to call up and demand that Time Warner Cable cave and bring back CBS.  Meanwhile, those of us who have heard the other side, know that CBS is demanding a new contract with a 600% fee increase.  No wonder Time Warner Cable refused to pay.

Normally I wouldn't side with big cable, but when CBS also feels too big to fail as the most watched television network, maybe we all need to reconsider when television and cable networks get too greedy for their own good and send a message to both by fleeing in droves.

For a business model that doesn't want to change, they are only enabling consumers to start an even bigger revolution whether they like it or not.

Things I Don't Get: Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo

To get me back in the blogging spirit, I am launching a brand new segment I like to call:

Things I Don't Get

I am happy and proud to be American. I love our independent spirit. When freedoms are taken away I take it a little bit personally.  All that aside, there are many times when I wonder if I was secretly born in another country and planted here, because I just don't understand aspects of my own uniquely American culture.

As a lover of television, I don't have any problems admitting that I watch a lot of television.  I do watch  some unscripted "reality" programming, but I am definitely picky.  When it comes to reality shows, I would much rather watch The Amazing Race, or shows like The Hero over shows that just generally titillate our voyeuristic side.  I like shows that improve lives, like HGTV where they renovate, or Bar Rescue or Restaurant Impossible where dying businesses are given a new lease on life.

What I have yet to understand is a show like Toddlers & Tiaras.  As exploitative and creepy as dressing children up and teaching them to act sexy and dress like adults is in the first place, the broadcast of such a culture on television is opening it up to an even wider exploitation.

However, this one child who they nicknamed Honey Boo-Boo is even more weird of a phenomenon.  Toddlers & Tiaras was apparently too small for her, so they gave her a spinoff show that follows her and her family.

The poor girl is definitely one of the homelier children I have seen.  Everyone should know their strengths and play to them, and while I don't argue that she has some personality that she could nourish with an adequate education, at this point in her life she is not a model.  Yet she is paraded around as though she was the most beautiful little girl in the U.S.

To make matters worse, the whole culture of the show seems to be to highlight bad behavior and the strangeness of her family.  As they ramp up for their second season, I was shocked, grossed-out, and utterly appalled by the ad campaign.  You see, to make you feel like you are truly part of the show, the premiere episode for this season has available a "Watch 'n' Sniff" card.

Because really, who wouldn't want to smell bad milk or fish while watching the episode?

The end of the commercial features Honey Boo-Boo farting, just to class up the whole affair.

Is this what America is all about now? Is this an image that we as Americans want to be proud of?

I just don't get it. It is a massive cultural disconnect.  If that is American culture I feel like a woman completely displaced.