To be a selective adopter of new technologies, as I am, brings certain annoyances, especially when it comes to carrying on conversations with my fellow citizens. For example, it is with dismaying frequency that I find myself fielding questions about why I retain a landline, why I decline to use a smartphone, or why I will never read a book on any sort of screen.
Yes, the life of a Luddite often feels like one of near-constant explanation, but when it comes to one of my most eccentric acts of technological resistance, I must concede that I simply have no good excuse.
For more years than I care to admit, I have been a subscriber to cable television. You read that right: To this very day, I persist in sending a not-insignificant portion of my hard-earned money to a company that uses cable to bring me such novelties as ESPN, HBO, and TCM—which, to most people in the third decade of the twenty-first century, is not very different from saying that I use rabbit ears to bring me ABC, NBC, and CBS.
To be sure, I subscribe to a handful of streaming services, but I find that I make use of them intermittently and unenthusiastically—mainly when I have been assigned to review or write about a particular show or movie on a given service. I have concluded that this is not a reflection of the offerings on these streamers—to the contrary, no channel on any current cable lineup could match the extraordinarily rich mix of art-house and international cinema on the Criterion Channel—but their method of delivery.
To put it simply, I would rather stumble upon a show in the course of channel-surfing than to choose to watch a show by clicking a title on a streamer. My preference might best be explained in culinary terms: Most of us would rather eat a meal that has been chosen and prepared for us than one we have glumly prepared for ourselves. Food just tastes better when it is whipped up on our behalf—whether by a chef, a friend, or the participant in a potluck. By the same token, shows and movies are likelier to capture my interest if someone other than me has decided to put them on TV.
Perhaps my preference for watching something that is being shown to choosing something that is merely available might have to do with my distinct feeling, in the former arrangement, that there are real live humans on the other side. In other words, someone else has made the call to show this baseball game or bowling tournament on ESPN, this series or documentary on HBO, or this classic movie or cult favorite on TCM. Obviously, I retain the freedom to watch or skip a given program, but I have no say in the nature or the timing of said programming. This results in a salutary push-pull that is entirely absent from streaming: The channel’s programmer has complete authority in choosing to show a game, series, or flick now. I decide merely whether to watch it or not.
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By contrast, streaming invites subscribers to become masters of their fate. When streamed rather than watched, scripted series no longer have to be viewed according to a schedule but can be “binged.” Time itself falls under streaming subscribers’ domain. Last fall, while watching live sports on a streaming service, I was unnerved when I realized that I could pause and rewind the action, and then, to regain my place, “fast forward” to the present moment. To gain control over sports coverage in such a manner reflects a society that has become too comfortable with the autonomy that inevitably accompanies technological progress. After all, no one who attends a sporting event in person would have the ability to teleport themselves to an earlier third-down conversion or missed field goal.
Perhaps my eagerness to relinquish power to the programmers at various cable channels is a matter of sheepishness on my part. I simply do not want the responsibility of deciding what is on my TV. For example, following the writing and filing of this or other columns, I often unwind by watching whatever innocuous show happens to be airing in the wee hours: reruns of Forensic Files, American Justice, and a random assortment of shows on the History Channel are among my favorites. Yet I would never have the gall to actually dial up such shows were they available to stream (and I’m sure they are). For the purposes of my ego, it is better that someone else has chosen to air a trashy true-crime series—and that I have merely landed on it with the help of my remote.
Dear reader, I cautioned you at the outset that I had no good excuse for continuing to fill my cable company’s coffers, but just as I have become too old to ditch my landline, I find I have become too staid to cut the cord.
