Having lost my cable because Rogers wanted my first born child to continue (he’s an adult now and objected) offering what they call “service”, and being blackmailed by Rogers who are preventing Bell from providing me service (shouldn’t that be illegal?), I am left with only my one local over-the-air channel, which, thanks to the government, apparently, I am also going to lose come August.

This got me thinking to the “good ole days” when all we had was over-the-air channels, not many if I remember my childhood, but they were all “broadcast” channels, including the three US networks at the time, NBC, ABC and CBS and two Canadian networks, CBC and CTV. The way it worked was we received the channels for FREE, but we had to sit through what they called “commercials” from advertisers who sponsored programs, paying for the actors and production costs. Everybody made money and we all went out and bought the products that were advertised on TV and we didn’t have to pay a gazillion dollars a month for the privilege.

Today we have our TV delivered by cable or satellite. We still have to sit through all those same commercials, even more of them now, especially during programs like Hockey Night in Canada, which didn’t use to have commercial “breaks” because that would mean losing the momentum of the game (oh, right) but for some unknown reason we now have to pay a bazillion dollars a month for the privilege. Now there’s this thing called the internet, which we also pay a gazillion dollars for every month. So tell me why we can’t get all our programs from this internet for FREE because the advertisers pay for the actors and to produce the programs and we go out and buy the products and then we wouldn’t need to pay a cent for the privilege. What a concept!