Minh’s Notes

Human-readable chicken scratch

Minh Nguyễn
July 13th, 2006
Entertainment
#1,047

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Unhooking the bunny ears

We recently switched to satellite TV from broadcast. Yes, broadcast, the kind of TV where you have to wiggle the “bunny ear” antenna around and maybe dance on your head before you get a signal. But don’t expect me to be watching that much more TV from now on.

My family’s traditionally been against any sort of cable or satellite hookup. Except during the summer months, we don’t have much time to watch TV anyways, so why do we need over a hundred channels to remind us of that fact? Yes, it’s nice to get news when you need it from CNN or learn how to cook on the Food Network, but I’m sure it’s all going to get old after awhile.

I can say with some pride that I grew up on PBS. Though my local affiliate doesn’t offer an incredible selection of programming compared to the cable networks, it offered enough that I tended to watch Wishbone and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego instead of Pokémon and Pinky and the Brain.

The nice thing about the lack of interesting programming for adults on PBS is that, once I grew out of children’s programming, I nearly stopped watching TV altogether. Apart from the news, Jeopardy!, and NOVA, there was no reason to keep watching. So I never got hooked.

So we got satellite. And I have no idea what to do with all these channels. It’s not like I really want to learn to cook from a TV set.