Free Lunch

My friendly, monopolistic TV cable pimps have happily screwed-up again — alas, only the second time in some nine years — and instead of serving me only the basic broadcast channels they’re required by the FCC to provide access to and for which I’m being charged the minimum fee of some $15 per month, they’re now serving me the entire analog cable spectrum ($50 per month, minus the extra-charge premium channels like HBO, of course).

Oh goody!, thought I. They’ll catch their error sooner or later and bump me back to being served only the basic service for which I’m paying, but in the meantime, thought I, I’ve an escape from the wasteland that is broadcast TV (PBS and House excepted, of course), and now, if only for the nonce, I have access to the rich vastness of the entire multi-channel analog cable spectrum.

Silly boy.

Turns out, that multi-channel vastness is merely the wasteland of broadcast TV writ large, and saturated with commercials of intolerable length and frequency. It wasn’t anywhere near this bad the last time they made this error nine years ago and gave me access to channels for which I wasn’t paying. Commercials aside, why do paying customers put up with this deluge of unmitigated crap?

Silly question.