Story of the Day

Let's see now. You can watch cable television. You could watch a television held up by cables. You could watch a portable television on a cable car. You could wear a cable knit sweater while watching cable. What does cable mean? Does it have any other meanings?

Cable television was a development with the usual unintended consequences. Originally cable programming as simply a substitute for direct receiving due to limitations caused by distance and then by ghosting due to other buildings. So cable had primary applications in rural and urban settings. It is so different from that now.

I don't know if the recent promises of cable TV have been met though. Supposedly it would increase the variety of available programs. I guess it has done that but the variety is not as great as could be expected. Big on systems are the home shopping channels. That is probably because it is felt their effectiveness can be better measured by the sales they generate. I don't think you could find a more boring use of a channel. The local colleges using cable for telecourses is I think a good thing. Info-mercials are not. They are intentionally deceptive. They wish to imply that a product is being shown off on a regularly scheduled show run by objective people with an objective audience. Nothing could be further from the truth. The entire presentation is a sham. Everyone on the show was hired with the intention of maximizing the salability of the product. To me, that is fraud.

Info-mercials have found their way onto broadcast television because their market penetration doesn't matter. They are prepaid programming like regular commercials. At least the home shopping channels harbor no pretensions of what they are about.

February 7, 1996

Return to my Home Page

Comments welcome

Jack Jackson ( jjack@bearinmind.org )