{"id":5190,"date":"2008-12-09T10:13:54","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T18:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=5190"},"modified":"2019-12-23T13:28:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T21:28:16","slug":"utilitv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/12\/09\/utilitv\/","title":{"rendered":"UtiliTV"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[]'><\/div>\n<p>As long as I&#8217;m babbling about the boob tube and whining about cable pricing, I might as well toss out my pie-in-the-sky, never-going-to-happen concept for what <em>I<\/em> want as an option. I actually have two possible concepts, both of which seem like they&#8217;d be very doable in the present or soon-to-exist all-digital world.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>A-la-carte:<\/strong> Get rid of these ridiculous &#8220;bundles&#8221; that give me seven channels that I&#8217;d pay attention to and sixty-three that I&#8217;d ignore. Show me your lineup and let me put my own bundle together. Give me what <em>I<\/em> want to watch (local channels, Discovery, History, Sci-Fi, etc.), and don&#8217;t force me to pay for crap that I&#8217;ll never pay attention to (the six thousand variations of QVC, foreign language channels, etc.). I don&#8217;t have any issues with paying for content that I&#8217;m interested in, but I <em>do<\/em> have issues with paying for content that I&#8217;m <em>not<\/em> interested in.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>TV as a Utility:<\/strong> Open the pipe and give me access to <em>everything<\/em>, but track what I watch and bill me for what I watch. Watching a few shows here and there is a small bill, feeling lonely and desperate for company and leaving the TV on 24\/7 is a larger bill. Bill me for what I actually consume, not what you hope I might try to consume in my most desperate, anti-social, couch-potato moments of depression.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I don&#8217;t expect that either of these options are likely to appear anytime soon, if ever, but they make a <em>lot<\/em> more sense to me than any of the current pay-TV models do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long as I&#8217;m babbling about the boob tube and whining about cable pricing, I might as well toss out my pie-in-the-sky, never-going-to-happen concept for what _I_ want as an option. I actually have two possible concepts, both of which seem like they&#8217;d be very doable in the present or soon-to-exist all-digital world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043,2037],"tags":[65,8],"class_list":["post-5190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-tv-and-films","tag-technology","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}