Dear Cable Companies and Worthless TV Networks,

It’s time to admit that your time is up.  AT&T and Verizon are closing in with Fiber, and your antiquated coaxial cable is on its last hurrah.  ESPN on the Xbox must have you scared shitless.  I must admit, I am most impressed by your ability to stretch the capabilities of the stuff — 1.37 Gbit/s speeds and wideband internet keep the general public calm.  But honestly, one thing REALLY bugs me.

I don’t want to pay for 1700 channels anymore.

I’ve been saying this to myself for a while, but for a long time I just accepted how much more awesome it was to have 1700 channels than the 70 my family used to have.  Unfortunately, after a while the 1700 start to wear on you — like living in a library of books, reading as many as you can but the books just keep coming, staying for a while, then getting returned before you can get to read them.  There’s probably whole sections of that library that you never even get to visit.  I can’t hope to keep up with all the new shows that come on each season, and think of how many fail!  Worse yet is that you don’t even give them a chance — millions spent on 6 episodes, and if it’s not a blockbuster it has to go.

Perhaps if we weren’t subsidizing this crap by paying all the networks, even the ones we don’t watch, the programming might be a bit better.  Or, I shudder to think what might happen if the cable companies actually redesigned their systems so that content providers don’t have to rely on a network to run their content.  Time Warner could have tons of on demand content that never aired on a network — public access on demand, if you will, but professionally done.  Give me AMC, ESPN, HBO, TBS, A&E, Bravo and a choice few others and I would be set.  Or, is it so foreign to think that I might actually pay 50 cents to watch a show on a network that I don’t subscribe to?  The $100 I pay you guys each month can only get stretched so far for these people… and $20 goes to HBO and Showtime!

Don’t even get me started on the Satellite companies… Dish Network is the reason I started this rant, because they’re actually running an ad that says no company can give you individual channels.

Why can’t I pick the channels I want to pay for each month?