HALLIE EPHRON: Following on from last week, talking about TV shows, I offer this a
first-world whine: Television used to be so simple. You plugged the TV in (to a wall outlet!), turned it on, jiggled the rabbit-ears, and voila! There were shows you could watch and they were (wait for it…) free!
Yes indeed, I even miss those features of analog TV like "horizontal hold." Remember when you turned it on and the programming hours were over, and up came an image of an Indian head... and it didn't occur to anyone that the imagery was inappropriate.
Then
along came cable. I never succumbed. I survived without
watching a single episode of THE SOPRANOS
or THE WIRE.
Now
there's streaming, too, and a million shows that people talk about but that I
have no idea where to find or whether I should care.
In
our house, we have Xfinity WiFi/Internet which includes "Basic cable"
– the stations we
could get with rabbit ears plus an incredible number of useless channels. The
only ones I ever watch are PBS. For this I pay nearly $100 a month.
We
have a ROKU on our set, a mysterious gadget that my son-in-law (God bless him)
installed. On it, we have a subscription to Netflix. I cannot do without
"Stranger Things" and "GLOW". Plus all of Sherlock and
Poirot and NCIS and Midsummer Murder. Yes, overall worth the $9 a month.
Hoping
I'd find Scott and Bailey I added Acorn (sadly not on Acorn) which costs me
another $5 a month. It has "Vera"and "The Detectorists," which I find sublime, but otherwise there's not so much. 
So
along comes "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and I am seduced into adding
Amazon Prime. Yay, And soon I'm going to watch
"The Americans." Plus I love being able to watch movies like
"Lord of the Rings" in 20-minute bursts, about all I can take of all
that marching and shouting and fighting. Not too bad for another $10 a week
(and there's the free shipping).
Except
it turns out there are a ton of shows and movies you can get THROUGH Amazon
Prime but you have to pay extra. Feh.
So
now I am officially done. NO MORE FEEDS. To NBC, SHOWTIME, CBS and HBO and all
the rest of you out there that want me to pay another $10+ a month for the pleasure of streaming your programs,
take your siren song and go. Enough already! Even though I know I'm missing the
Christine Baranski in the spinoff of "The Good Wife." And "Big
Little Lies" which people tell me I'd love. And "Project Runway." And...
So
today's question? Are you cabling or streaming or just plugging in? Is there one source you couldn't give up?
Netflix?
Hulu?
Amazon
Prime?
HBO?
Acorn?
Showtime?
What
am I missing??
