Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 12, 2020

Pig and Rat finally got a flatscreen tv.

Why I don’t watch netflix

Would have had to watch a political campaign ad, leaving the viewer to be depressed for the remainder of the day.

Throw the TV through the window and turn the radio on .

never had a Netflix subscription, but probably never will (wouldn’t be able to decide what to watch anyway)

Remember when checking the listing meant changing through 4 or 5 channels?

How to solve the problem:

1. Reduce the number of TV networks back to the Big Three.

2. Bring back video rental stores.

Why would you pay for that kind of “entertainment”?

It worked because we had to watch what was on, when it was on.

Now, we have all these choices, and if you’ve seen the good stuff, you don’t want to watch the rest.

I can remember spending way too long at the video rental store, all of us trying to find a movie to watch.

Too many choices and nothing gets resolved.

Never watched Netflix. Want none of that trash.

The idiot box only got slimmer. It’s still an idiot box.

Obviously no Gunsmoke reruns…..

Lose the TV! Go get some Babes!

OK, my TV watching is sparse. In the last year, I’ve only carved out the time to watch one scripted series of only nine episodes, and I thought it was superb. I’ve watched entirely random episodes of scripted shows just by being in a room where someone else was watching, and many of them are cream of the crop. Intelligent, beautifully realized, brilliantly acted. “Downton Abbey” is, well, astonishing.

There’s a wealth of non-fiction TV worthy of attention too, from classic literature brought to broadcast life, to nature shows, art studies, musicians of every kind imaginable, math, science, history…. bang.

I wish I had the time to watch more and/or the spare cash to subscribe to all of it. It’s clear to me that however good the “Golden Age of Television” was [and it was very good], the offerings today are better.

The junk guilty pleasures are there too… the stuff you know is the equivalent of lousy beach reading but that is somehow all the more engaging because of its very earnest crappiness. The stuff you say to yourself, I will NOT watch this, but don’t change the channel either. And you’d never admit to friends that you watched.

I multitask in the sense that if the TV is on, it’s more or less “background buzz” while I read serious fiction or important non-fiction.

In short, I think there’s something for everyone out there. Whether it’d be better to watch a particular show or read a particular book… or do something else entirely… is more than ever a judgment call.

But it’s entirely possible to watch a lot of TV and have no cause for regret or feelings of neglecting “quality” entertainment.

Now… as soon as I finish here (and is our time here better spent than with TV or a good book?) I need to listen to my new CD of the 1980 recording of Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony presentation of “Carmina Burana.” I know before I even put it in the player that I’m going to love it… and won’t even check the TV listings tonight.

Hulu has better options

There’s more garbage on TV today now more than ever. A total waste of airwaves, electricity, and time.

Not big on TV …. more radio … Croc Power !

Part of Amazon’s success is a liberal returns policy. Sometimes I wish I could get a return on the 2 hours invested in a Netflix show that turns out to be lousy. :-)

Why doesn’t Rat spend all his time on-line so he can be even more grouchy and insufferable?

I remember when the channels had better scheduling. Nowadays, it’s nothing but marathons.

I threw my TV out about a dozen years ago and have never looked back.

I was a Netflix sceptic until we heard some comedians we like mention their comedy specials on it. Then we heard that Bojack Horseman was on Netflix. And Disenchantment. Etc. I don’t think we’ve ever found anything good on Netflix unless we knew what we were looking for in the first place. It ticks me off that you have scroll past that junk in the recommendations to get to what you’ve been watching and/or marked as favorites.

The Paradox of Choice: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Paradox_of_Choice.html?id=g422yyua-P8C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&ppis=_c#v=onepage&q&f=false

Books.

My cousin has a Netflix account that she let me use, but I mainly used it for watching “VeggieTales in the House” and “VeggieTales in the City”.

Glad this reminded me to cancel Netflix. Lame offerings. I got it because there was a series my wife wanted to watch. Having watched it, she didn’t think much of it, and I’ve not found anything worth bothering with since. I find plenty on Amazon Prime.

Dumped Netflix a long time ago. Did find justwatch.com where you can search for what you want and it will bring up any services that stream it, and tell you if it’s free or for a fee. Great resource.

In the last few years I have really enjoyed the Chernobyl miniseries, and all or parts of Strange Angel, Lodge 49, Project Blue Book, The Man in the High Castle, Castle Rock, Messiah, Carnival Row, The Haunting of Hill House, several of the seasons of American Horror Story and those are just a few that come to mind. Netflix, Hulu, Vudu all have a pretty good catalog of documentaries and movies to stream at any time. Combined with the offerings on TCM it’s impossible to really keep up. Sometimes a service has a free month offer which I’ve taken advantage of.

Three over air channels plus one public channel seems like a good idea again.

My favorite pay channel is ACORNTV. It’s all British and UK stuff and they have outstanding shows. Mysteries/crime (I love the Brokenwood series) and documentaries. A Stitch in Time was great. So was Lords and Ladles. (that was not a typo. The show was about cooking up to 500 yrs ago on those grand estates) American tv is full of trash and reality shows. And, I used that term very loosely.

Unless they have a new original series airing, I rarely stream Netflix. I still have the DVD subscription though since that’s where all the new and good movies are.

NullFlixing. Better just go with YouTube. This clip’s only five minutes, so go ahead and watch it. And this clip, and this clip. Three hours later….

I DVR everything so that later I can watch and fast forward past the commercials and boring news stories. But, having an actual life (not counting GoComics time), I don’t get around to watching most of what I’ve saved.

This is why sometimes the best thing to do is to just read a book.

On the upside, the fact that there are so many sources now means a lot of good written material that would never have made it to the cinema is now being done as series on tv. On the downside (see strip) too many choices can lead to a degradation of enjoyment. (see The Paradox of Choice (Why More Is Less) by Barry Schwartz)

They sound like my mom and dad.

Just another reminder that all of our economic experts lined up holding hands from coast to coast still couldn’t reach a conclusion.

I go to a feed aggregator that lists channels by how many are currently watching it..i watch the no.1.

“5,000 channels on the TV, and not one single show that’s good to watch!”

Yup, I spend all my time looking for stuff to watch without watching anything.

Easy to spend an hour scrolling movies you don’t want to watch.

We all used to revolve our schedules around our favorite shows. Now, if you don’t know exactly what you want to watch in advance, your screwed. A paradigm shift in our approach to entertainment. Fascinating Captain.

typical netflix…….

Pig and Rat living the life in the House of a Thousand Channels….

Hey, Pastis gave them an up-to-date TV!

Still better than having to sit through ads.