Broadcast TV: It Only Looks Dead

It’s common to think that all TV is “streaming” now, and you need Disney, Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime to watch. The Internet has captured our minds. Before the Super Bowl, a leading Google query is “how do I stream the Super Bowl?” (Spoiler: it’s still on broadcast for free)

Cable TV isn’t “streaming,” but it too is hanging on by a thread, where live sports is really all they’ve got left. For the “4 Nations Face Off” hockey finals with U.S. vs Canada, big news since there were 3 fights in the first 9 seconds of the last game, I’d have to subscribe to ESPN to watch it, or go to a sports bar. The same was true of the college football national championship in January, as well as the tournament leading up to it. Same for the Major League Baseball post-season, except for the World Series.

You’d be justified in thinking there’s no reason to have an antenna anymore. Antennas are so 70’s!

But Wait!

Here’s the antenna on my roof:

No, not that big thing! It’s the little Figure-8 below it. I’ll probably take down the useless big thing when I get around to it, although it might require a metal saw.

Search on “tv antenna” on Amazon and you’ll get hundreds of products available for under $100. Many of them work indoors, although I haven’t tried those. If you live in the city or the suburbs, almost certainly those will be adequate. In the country, you can probably find a roof antenna that will get a signal from 100 miles off or so.

There’s a coaxial cable running from my TV, under the floor, and up to the Figure-8. I have a fairly modern OLED TV which has a coax connector on the back. The TV’s operating system already allows for “live TV.” Here’s a small portion of what’s available in my area:

When I first got the antenna hooked up, I scrolled through every single channel available. There were over 800! Many of them were actually encrypted so that you had to subscribe, but none of the channels shown here are. A lot of those 800 channels are in a non-English language.

You notice that, besides 11.1, the “main” NBC channel, there are three other “subchannels.” Wikipedia explains:

The transition to digital broadcasting in 2009 has allowed for television stations to offer additional programming options through digital subchannels, one or more supplementary programming streams to the station's primary channel that are achieved through multiplexing of a station's signal. A number of new commercial networks airing specialty programming such as movies, reruns of classic series and lifestyle programs have been created from companies like Weigel Broadcasting, Sinclair Broadcast Group and even owners of the major networks such as Fox Corporation (through the Fox Entertainment subsidiary), Paramount Global (through the CBS Media Ventures subsidiary), The Walt Disney Company (through the Walt Disney Television subsidiary) and Comcast (through the NBCUniversal subsidiary). Through the use of multicasting, there have also been a number of new Spanish-language and non-commercial public TV networks that have launched.

Digital Broadcasting

In the olden times, there were 4 VHF channels, maybe (the three “major” networks plus PBS), plus dozens of UHF. Now, Wikipedia tells us there are over fifty. Most have subchannels, as the above paragraph explains.

Remember snow on the TV, when you tried some distant station or just had bad reception? Maybe rotating the rabbit ears didn’t fix it, or putting aluminum foil on them.

You never have snow with digital broadcasts, which is what we have in the US since 2009. You either get a perfect picture, or nothing at all.

So Why Watch Live TV?

To be honest, I spend most of my TV viewing time on Prime or YouTube, not watching broadcast. But sometimes, I do check it out.

Local News

Yes, you can watch local news on streaming channels. But would you? Ask yourself. The local TV stations still have news crews that go out and film things, and if you watch a “local news” story on YouTube, usually that’s what you’re seeing.

Quite often at 5:00, I turn on the local news. When would I ever hear about an accident blocking 680 or see the floods in Sonoma County if I didn’t watch that? Or, more seriously, find out who’s running for Governor.

It’s background noise. After a half hour or so, I’ve heard all the major stories so I can turn it off. And I can just mute the commercials.

Sports Events

I mentioned earlier that the Major League Playoffs games were not on broadcast, nor were the college football playoffs. However, lots of events still are, e.g.

• The Super Bowl

• The World Series

• The NBA finals

• Most college football games on Saturday

• Your local NFL team’s games

• Lots of college basketball games

Shows You Missed

PBS actually has a lot of good shows (Nature, Nova, The American Experience, etc.). All of those are free on broadcast. If you have a TiVo or other DVR, you can, of course, record them and then watch when you want to.

OR if you forgot, they’re rebroadcast on one of the PBS subchannels:

Mindlessly Watching the Tube

There is something about being lazy and just turning on the tube. Admit it! — you do that, too. Mindlessly, you can flip through the channel guide and say, “Wow, Frazier is on! Or Seinfeld!” You might be more in the mood for those than the latest cookie-cutter show about Mafia hitmen, serial killers, or secret agents.

And besides, even though you could, when would you ever consciously seek out The Brady Bunch or Gunsmoke? But if you just happen upon them …well, then.

The Paradox of Choice

If you have even one streaming service, you have an almost infinite number of choices. On Prime, for instance, you can find almost any movie ever made, and on Kanopy (which is dependent only on having a public library card), many of them are free. On YouTube you can find virtually any video or TV show ever made. So how do you actually decide? It turns out most people just choose from the shows “recommended” for them. Not much different than surfing through the channels on broadcast, although you are more likely to find something you like.

How Many Types of Jam Can You Try?

In 2000, two psychologists published an influential paper, When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? One of their experiments was also featured in Freakonomics, if I recall. Customers in a store were allowed to taste jams and then buy a jar, if they liked it. There were two tables: one with 6 choices, and another with 24. You can read the full details in that paper.

Two research assistants, dressed as store employees, invited passing customers to "come try our Wilkin and Sons jams." Shoppers encountered one of two displays. On the table were either 6 (limited-choice condition) or 24 (extensive-choice condition) different jams. On each of two Saturdays, the displays were rotated hourly; the hours of the displays were counterbalanced across days to minimize any day or time-of-day effects.

More choices are always better, right? Not exactly. People bought more jam from the 6-choice table.

Is the initial attractiveness of extensive choice also reflected in subsequent purchasing behavior? Our findings suggest not: Nearly 30% (31) of the consumers in the limited-choice condition subsequently purchased ajar of Wilkin & Sons jam; in contrast, only 3% (4) of the consumers in the extensive-choice condition did so, X2(1, N = 249) = 32.34, p < .0001. Thus, consumers initially exposed to limited choices proved considerably more likely to purchase the product than consumers who had initially encountered a much larger set of options.

Older TV Shows

If you get your TV set up on broadcast, once in a while you’ll find yourself checking what’s on, and think, “Holy cow! Cheers and Taxi were great shows.” They were, too.
If you ask, “what’s wrong with modern fiction-based shows?” Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” offers help. Newer shows are all the tip of the iceberg (character, action, plot), with nothing underneath.

For example, Hemingway believed a writer could describe an action, such as Nick Adams fishing in "Big Two-Hearted River," while conveying a different message about the action itself—Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about the unpleasantness of his war experience. In his essay "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway is clear about his method: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit." A writer explained how it brings a story gravitas:

Hemingway said that only the tip of the iceberg showed in fiction—your reader will see only what is above the water—but the knowledge that you have about your character that never makes it into the story acts as the bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas.

Any aspiring droid in Hollywood can take a screenwriting class, like this fictional one in Adaptation:

about “the bones of a story” and how to be a writer. You can see them in the audience in that scene. Those are the ones who work for studios and go on to greenlight those cookie-cutter shows on Prime or Netflix.

Quite often, the older shows are still better than the swill that Netflix or Disney want to serve you. That’s the reason to have broadcast TV: it’s a reminder of what’s been lost.