I wake up, in what amounts to some kind of haze. I’ve never been much of a morning person, so usually it takes an hour or so to just get back to cogent thought. If I have nothing urgent to do (work, or commuting to work, or the sporadic brunch appointment), I’ll shuffle downstairs, plop onto the couch, and throw on the television.
What do I watch? Who cares. It doesn’t matter. So I fire up Hulu with Live TV, the modern equivalent of cable, and see what is airing live. Turns out, these days, it’s nothing. Like they said, lots of channels but nothing’s on. But it’s becoming more and more true every day. USA is just Law and Order. TNT is, well, I don’t know because it doesn’t have anything but basketball but now it doesn’t even have basketball anymore. TBS probably has a bad sitcom—it usually does. The broadcast networks are just airing morning shows or commercials. Comedy Central just has a ninth-season Office episode. No, there’s nothing on here.
So I close the app and open the Tubi app. Or Pluto. They’re basically interchangeable, along with countless others. But what they have (other than being free) is just live streaming channels, mostly all of the same show, shown over and over again, from the pilot to the finale, then back again. Oh, look, and episode of Star Trek: DS9 I haven’t seen in a few weeks. Looks good. Or Family Ties. Michael J. Fox was great in that. Oh, Addams Family: I only got into that show in the past few years (thanks to the app), and it’s honestly one of the greatest shows of all time.
Speaking of Michael J. Fox, when I was funemployed back in 200—who cares, I watched the entire series of Spin City in a couple of weeks on FX. It was great until they brought in Charlie Sheen and Heather Locklear. But I digress.
But, yeah, I still have and pay for Hulu with Live TV. Signed up because we still watched a good amount of television that was still only on cable (or broadcast). But that has shrunk substantially. Now, it’s basically just a DVR for Jeopardy! and the rights to (some) Premier League matches on USA. Sometimes to watch live events, whether on the news or on the broadcast networks (I do love an awards show, come at me), and sometimes to just watch an old episode of Bob’s Burgers when it’s on (seemingly around 9-11pm).
I don’t even know what TV even is anymore. It’s a cable network, it’s a website, it’s a FAST service, it’s streaming (which, honestly, all of the previous are nowadays). I feel like a relic still holding what amounts to a cable subscription anymore, but, again, the things that are holding me back are strong than the urge to save a little money. I have the Hulu/Disney/ESPN/Live TV bundle, I have Netflix, Peacock (Premier League games and also it’s free with my shitty internet service), Amazon Prime, HBO (Max? Go?), and MLB.tv (it’s free with my mobile service; sometimes I half-watch a Red Sox game since I cannot for whatever reason watch the last-place Nationals with any of my services).
You may not realize this, but YouTube—YouTube—is the streamer with the highest ratings. More people watch YouTube videos than even Netflix or cable. Sure, you wouldn’t be surprised about cable since only old people watch cable (I don’t even watch cable I guess, see above). But TV now is YouTube. Lazy Sunday: that’s what I think of when I think of YouTube. But, really, I do watch a lot of YouTube. LGR (look it up) puts out some impressive retro computing/gaming content. I go to it whenever I need to fix something around the house. Music videos (remember music videos?). Yeah, YouTube really has it all. Despite the extremely annoying ad breaks (why do the ad breaks not hit at the chapter breaks, I am dying to know).
So TV is apparently YouTube now. And some fun sitcoms on Peacock. And the NFL on (checks notes) I have no fucking idea. Did you know that FOX only airs on 720p? Yeah, you bought an amazing 4K TV and FOX is still airing something that only vaguely looks better than a DVD. Oh you bought a 8K TV? Why? Nothing is airing on 4K, forget about the next step, which is pointless anyway. You cannot tell the difference between 4K and 8K, and to be honest, you also can’t tell the difference between HD and 4K.
Going off on a bitter rant here, so I guess it’s time to wrap it up. I think I had something better to say, but I started this post over a month ago, and am just now revisiting it. What is TV? What is TV to you? Do you watch TV on your phone, or are you just staring into the middle distance? How do you even read subtitles on your phone? I know the kids watch everything with subtitles because the audio mix on all TV shows now are terrible. How is the audio mix on TikTok videos? How is TikTok still around? I thought they closed that place down.
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