Home Sick Today

Woke up with a sore throat, headache, congestion, and GI problems today.

Scruffy is happy. He's got Daddy all day long, today. Daddy's not so happy about the lost time.

I tried getting rid of my land line. AT&T must really want to retain landline customers, because my monthly bill went down $17/month, and they gave me 6 months free premium movie channels on U-Verse.

As a result, I'm watching all those highly regarded cable TV series. The one I'm impressed with is "The Tudors". Mon Dieu, what a ruthless time in history. The actors are superb, and the production values and writing are excellent. And, the producers are virtually guaranteed to keep making money, on future sales, and syndication.

Unfortunately, the regular cost of the premium content would enable me to buy the DVD's instead. I did this with the Hornblower series, and have not regretted it. (A&E has sadly gone downhill since then) All the others eventually show up, in time, at the library. Online is possible, but I'm a cranky old reactionary who wants the physical media. Something about data loss, and limited drive space... :) It does put me behind my peers who keep in step with the latest popular culture. Fortunately, enough material gets leaked for me to cope, and decide what I want to buy. My own version of a-la-carte, cable/sat if you will. As for simply recording, then wiping, time-shifting never really works out well for me. If I don't have the time, I don't have the time to watch it later. Hence, permanent physical media. No one is willing to admit that there are limits on what one can keep up with, culturally.

No wonder advertisers hate my demo. We know what we want.

As we get even deeper into financial crisis, more, and younger demographics will be faced with the same problems. Disposable income is shrinking. You get three markets: Crap, Middlebrow OK, and stuff people will always pay money for.

Roger Ailes may not like this, but PBS and NPR may be the last terrestrial networks standing in time. Consumers of public content may grumble, but they will pay to play. The individual shows on the other networks may find it easier to cut out the middle part of distributing. Only sports and news will keep terrestrial broadcasting alive, and we are already seeing consolidation in the smaller markets, without major local sports.

Time to be sick again. 2010 sucks. It's definitely hurt my health. The loss of my last living parent is a point of no return, psychologically. I'm old, now.

This will not be a well regarded year for anyone.