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The TV Network Guide
What if we were confined to watching only—God forbid—one TV network? Say, for example, we give up living in the speed culture, forgo the high tech highway, and move to a remote area where finances don’t allow for the luxury of cable or satellite and therefore reception allows for only one TV network. Even if we had a choice, of which station that would be, we might be quite devastated by the sudden loss of hundreds of channels that previously spoiled us.
That sort of happened to me recently—six days ago, actually. I moved into the deepest woodsiest area on purpose, buying a little trailer so I could get away from barking dogs, jungle music and the accompanying jogging on the ceiling over my head, the booming, in-your-face ghetto blasting car stereos, the drunks, the gun shots…well, you get the idea. I did this so I could write, write, write, WITHOUT inane interruption. (Any focused writer will tell you that to even SAY, “I am busy” interrupts the tight and steady flow, breaks into the “zone” a writer has his or her head in….
So the first night here, despite the hundreds of other necessary boxes and bundles crying out for re-settling, my friend hooked up my TV and handed me the remote, saying that for now I had to deal with what I had. After they left, having spent all day lumping insane numbers of books and all, I clicked the remote. Not used to the new satellite dish system or remote, I had no understanding of the digits you have to push to change channels. So I was stuck on one channel, which happened to be an encore action channel showing a marathon of anime. So. Until my friends returned to help me hook up more and completely—in a few days, as they were now an hour and a half away by car—I had to listen to explosions, screams, and gunshots…again.
This of course made me revert to that old cliché, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone, and to feeling sorry for myself—that I had one choice, one TV network, though it was the sort of company I needed to keep from going completely bonkers. This also got me to thinking about those hypothetical exercises you fool around with in an interpersonal dynamics class, wherein you decide, of the ten people on the list, whom you will choose to go with you in the boat that fits only seven and whom you will abandon. Which TV network would I choose if I were allowed only one? That’s a tough one. Turner Movie Classics is a frontrunner, especially since is commercial-free. But then whichever station carries the most reality TV shows might be better, cause then you could force yourself to catch the news, as well. If affordable to you, you might choose to go with the Indy Channel, or another fascinating, educational and entertaining network that would cover more than basic TV-viewing needs.
Argh. I cannot decide. Can you? Thank God and the network powers that be, as well as the many stupendous artists, that we have more than one option…that we have hundreds.
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