Several of you have asked me to keep you in the loop as I make the leap from getting my TV from cable and I venture into the jungle of streaming services. It's a jungle because there sure are a lot of them offering pretty much the same services, just gift-wrapped in different ways. Fortunately, unlike some cable arrangements I've had, almost all the streaming services offer seven-day free trials and then if they hook you, it's "No contract, cancel any time." So if I don't like one, it's no big deal to dump it and try another.
I've had to cope with the working assumption by most providers that what I'm most interested in is sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports and, of course, more sports. One of them — I forget which one — offered me the chance to watch fifteen major sporting events at the same time, which is of course the way most people enjoy watching athletic competitions. I had this vision of making one wall of my home look like one of those Sports Books in Las Vegas with dozens of screens all going at the same time so you can watch yourself lose money on six baseball games, three football contests, a couple of basketball competitions, a horse race or two and maybe somewhere in the world, two guys playing a sudden death croquet tournament.
Years ago when I dumped DirecTV, I received a series of phone calls from some sort of retention "We desperately want you back" department. Some of the callers, I sensed, were working some sort of phone lists on commission — they got paid only if they got me to sign up for two more years of DirecTV and so were authorized to offer me special deals to return.
All of those offers involved more sports channels for my money and when I said, "Thanks but I have zero interest in watching sports on TV," I could hear the looks of shock on their faces even when those faces were far off in the Philippines. It's the face you'd make if you offered someone better ventilation and they said, "Thanks but I don't require oxygen."
It's also the face I see in restaurants when they screw up our order and the server or manager says, "We're sorry and we'd like to offer you a free dessert." When you decline, they wonder if they should call the paramedics. A waiter once tried to convince me that there are no calories in a dessert if you don't pay for it.
So I have to wade through these companies that think I'm yearning to watch lacrosse all day and all night. I also have to keep reminding myself that getting eighty-seven zillion channels is no big deal when I'm only going to wind up watching about eleven of them ever. They used to say "He who dies with the most toys wins." These days, it seems to be "He who dies with the most channels in his packages wins."
That's no irresistible deal — just more you have to scroll through to get to the ones you want It's especially annoying when the list includes the 24/7 Hopscotch Channel, the Watching Paint Dry Channel, the All-Britney Spears Movie Channel (where they just rerun Crossroad over and over), the Weather-in-Botswana Network (unless you live in Botswana), the Snail Racing Channel, the Cummerbund Fashion Show Network or Newsmax.
At the moment, I'm subscribed to the streaming service that YouTube offers plus I added on Max (the channel formerly known as HBO Max) and Frndly TV. This may change before the next post on this blog so stay tuned as I stay tuned.