Why Free TV Isn't Cheap

[jeffrey]

Time is money. Time is always money. The consequence changes markets and our behavior. I had this sublime but massively unoriginal thought after spending four hours watching television. To celebrate our first day as a post-rabbit ears family -- now brutally empowered with 75 channels of Comcast cable TV -- my wife and I watched "The Godfather" on the Spike TV channel...

But as several of the ads were run for what seemed the hundredth time, I began to wonder if it was worth it. The original film clocks in at 175 minutes. Sliced up with advertisements, the run time was four hours. That means we voluntarily sat through 65 minutes of advertising -- which is typical for four hours of prime-time programming -- when we could have rented the DVD for a few dollars and found a better use for the 65 minutes each of us lost.

Small wonder the video rental business has done so well: If you put any value on your time, rentals are cheap and programmed television is expensive. Too expensive. The value of time also explains the wild success of TiVo, which allows you to record programs, watch them at will, and fast-forward through the advertisements.

Time economics is simple. If you put a value on your time, your "return on investment" quickly rises to astronomical levels. Suppose you rent three films at a time from Netflix, the online service that sends an unlimited number of movies for a $20 monthly subscription fee. Rent a handful a month, and you've spent less money than you'd spend at Blockbuster, avoided late fees, and saved the time and expense of driving to get the DVDs... [read more at msn.com]

[tklahn]

The cheapest TV is no TV. No money or time spent! I know, I know, "I can't live without TV," you say. Well, just give it a thought, anyway. Try it for a short time. I'll bet you won't miss it as much as you thought you would.

Also, for the cheapest way to rent a movie, try your local library for free. Our very small town library has a great selection of videos AND dvds. And it's free!

[MargaretKur]

Talking about Cable TV rates:

Not counting the regular broadcast channels that you'd get if you only had an antenna, have you noticed that by paying for cable you're also paying to watch commercials?

Originally, if I remember correctly, HBO started the whole thing with commercial-free movies via subscription. After that, more and more stations joined in. The idea was that instead of watching TV with advertising by the show's "sponsors" we could just pay and watch TV without the commercials. Whatever happened?

One day I sat down with our weekly newspaper TV listing book, which lists nearly all the cable stations available (not counting digital) and proceeded to count the actual hours of "Paid Programming" scheduled on the cable stations alone. You wouldn't believe how many hours I found in a week's time! Add to that the fact that on most of the cable stations, with few exceptions such as the premium channels and one non-premium movie channel, include the same annoying commercial interruptions as does broadcast TV.

Why is this happening? If cable is "sponsored" by the subscribers, why is there a "need" to show commercials by "sponsors" other than the subscribers? Why, if we're *paying* for these stations which are on the air 24/7, are several of them allowed to air hours and hours of "paid programming" (infomercials and the like) instead of *real* programming which is what we're paying for?

What I'd love to do is to count up all the hours of scheduled paid programming and count up the minutes of commercials that interrupt my cable programs. Figure out the percentage of time they consume, then deduct the amount from the charges on my cable bill!

Too bad it won't work, but I sure do wish there were some way to get people out there to give the cable industry a piece of our minds. I resent paying to see commercials!

To be clear, I am not commenting about any specific programs or stations to avoid a conflict of interest because of my occupation. I'm writing strictly as a cable TV subscriber.

I really have considered going back to the bare basic subscription since reception in my area is poor, however the lack of 24-hour news and weather info is really the only thing that keeps me paying for cable.