I never intended this to be a ranting blog, but I’ve got one that has been brewing in my brain for a few days, and I need to get it out. And that problem is the system that the US (and most of the rest of the world, for that matter) has in place to broadcast media entertainment into our homes. Yes, the television.

Years and years ago, television was broadcast over the air, and anyone with a television set and an antenna could tune into the channels, and watch them in the comfort of their own homes. The broadcasters owned the studios, the cameras, the broadcast stations and whatnot, and the end user (that’s most of us) owned the television and the home antenna. The way that the television studios paid for the content they were creating and sending to our homes was that they would display ads for products, both in shows and between segments of shows – the “commercial break”. This is all self evident to most people who grew up with television, which I will assume is most people who read this blog.

Now, the problem I have – that’s been making me horribly mad the last while – is that right now I’m paying money – hard earned dollars – for the television company to send the content to my house and show me ads while watching said content. Have you ever noticed when you rent or buy a DVD of a television series that the running time of a 30 minute episode is 22 minutes? When watching a movie, there’s always that warning in the beginning that “this movie has been edited to run in the time allowed”, which means that for every hour of movie, you get 16 minutes of ads, interrupting the vital flow of the story – and you lose parts of the filmmakers vision. How can’t you, when you compress a 2 hour and 15 minute movie into the 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM time slot? You lose 40 minutes to advertisements, so 25 minutes of the film have to go.

I was watching the Princess Bride the other day on TBS (hey, it was on, and I love that movie), and I had to turn it off. They cut so many of the good character building lines from the film that it really weakened the narrative structure. And it made me think. Do I really want Qais growing up, watching cut down versions of things, and on top of that, paying my hard earned paycheck dollars to show him extra ads for stuff we don’t want or need?

Further, the broadcast company decides on when to show things. I know people, and I’ve been one of them at one point in my life, who can’t do things on certain nights of the week – as they have to be at home, watching ads they are paying for, to catch the latest installment of their favorite TV show. It’s downright ridiculous.

The other side of this is cultural deprivation. So much of modern social culture depends on shared experience with popular media. I’m not going to deprive Qais of that either. The balance I’ve come to in my head, so far, is that he can watch as many movies and television shows as he likes, as long as it’s on DVD or on demand media. We’ll get NetFlix setup for him, and hook him up with Hulu, and he can watch what he wants and needs.

Just no to the insanity of broadcast television.