Let me tell you the story of cable TV.

Once upon a time, some engineer/scientist types discovered they could get TV signals directly to their audience via cables that ran from the studios directly into the home.

This was better than the previous method of mass-broadcasting the signal through the air, because now you wouldn’t have to adjust your antenna to get optimal reception, and the signal could not be blocked by certain materials that might absorb the waves at that particular frequency. The downside, however, was that it was a costly proposition to get cable run to someone’s house just for a better signal.

The people who looked at these innovations from a moneymaking perspective said, “Hmm, very few people will buy this, how do we get the edge over broadcast channels?” And they concluded, “Hey! Since they’re paying us for the content we’re providing, we don’t have to follow rules on what’s acceptable to play and what’s not. We can make the material as explicit as we want! Or at least as explicit as the customer wants.”

And then they said (and this is the important part, so pay attention), “Best of all, since they’re paying us directly for the content we’re providing, we don’t need any corporate sponsors, and that means NO COMMERCIALS! People will love that! Nobody likes commercials!”

And they all did a little jig at the thought of how much money this concept would make them and promptly put their plan into effect.

And that’s the story of how everyone can watch TV without any commercials.

Is it just me, or is it very strange that I’m armed with that previous chain of reasoning, and I sit down to watch some cable TV, and the first thing I get is a commercial? Seriously, what gives? The whole point of paying for your TV signal was to not have commercials, and yet here we are. And it’s not just the fact that there are commercials, either; the commercial breaks seem so much longer than anything on broadcast TV.

But all is not lost. It is possible to get commercial-less programming – if you pay extra for the premium channels. So you’re paying money for the programming that you could otherwise get for free, and you’re not being compensated for it at all, unless you’re willing to pay extra money on top of the money you’re already paying unnecessarily in the first place. That sounds to me like the very definition of bull you-know-what.

Besides people starting wars in third world countries, this is the biggest moneymaking crock on the planet right now! Cable companies accept money from both you, the consumer, and big-name corporate sponsors at the same time-that’s crap!

This begs the question, “What am I really paying for?” Well, it would appear that you’re paying for the “superior” programming, nothing more. And, in my opinion, it really isn’t all that superior, since even all that aforementioned explicit material is only available on premium channels. A more pertinent question is, “How can we change this?”

Unfortunately, there is no easy way. See, the people in charge don’t care about what’s right or fair; they just want to make money. And so long as they know that people will still buy their decoder box even while getting screwed over by it, they’ll never change this winning formula.

The only way to send them a message is if a significant portion of people cancelled their subscriptions out of indignation from having to pay all this money for no reason. That would definitely let them know that we won’t take any of their crap anymore.

Trey Treviño is a sophomore CTV major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].