Since the first time I sat in front of a TV set as a kid, I have been obsessed. I would watch anything — cartoons, sitcoms, dramas, news, movies, game shows, music videos, infomercials. If it was accessible through the boob tube, I was down to watch.
As a shy, and overweight gay kid, watching these characters — who all seemed to be confident in being their authentic selves — go on fantastic adventures was more appealing to me than going out into the actual world to make friends and have real adventures. If you are like me and were one of those “WandaVision” fans who got up at 3 a.m. every Friday morning to watch the latest episode on Disney+, then you probably understand the obsession of immersing yourself in your favorite TV shows to escape the pain and grief of the real world.
For those who have yet to worship at the altar of “WandaVision” and without giving too much away, Wanda is a character from the Marvel films who has had a lot of pain in her life, but instead of dealing with it, she creates her own illusion of happiness with her dead soulmate, a sentient humanoid robot named Vision, within a world of sitcoms. That’s an overly simplified explanation of the series, but over the last few weeks if you’ve had a friend singing the jaunty tune “It was Agatha All Along,” they are a fan. Have them give you the full TED Talk on the show.
While I love television, one thing I never realized until I was old enough to move out and build a television-viewing dwelling of my own was how expensive having cable TV is. I currently have my cable and internet through Spectrum, and at the risk of having my services disrupted, I am not a huge fan. I was originally roped in with their bundle service, even though I didn’t need nor use a home phone, so that I could have cable and internet for a relatively low price. But after that deal ran out my bill shot up, almost doubling, even after cancelling the home phone service that I never used.
I finally got tired of paying so much and decided it was time to cut the cord and rely solely on streaming services since combined the entire household watched maybe four channels. Between our entire household we have several streaming services, so paying for cable on top of that was too much.
I explained to the Spectrum representative that I needed to remove cable from my account and after going through all of the possible scenarios in her “keep them in the system” Spectrum script, she pulled out her Hail Mary pass to keep us on and offered to switch us to the Spectrum app. I was intrigued.
The Spectrum app, as she explained, would give me all my local channels as well as let me pick 10 cable channels for about the same price as other “cable streaming apps” like Sling TV, YouTube TV and Hulu TV that stick you with channels you don’t watch and limited or no local channels.
BTW, this is not a paid advertisement, I just really like this model for cable. Even as a kid, I wondered why cable TV couldn’t be a la carte. I like it even more now after seeing #CancelFOX trending on Twitter last week.
Media Matters, a U.S. progressive media watchdog group, got the hashtag trending after it launched the website UnFoxMyCableBox.com to let cable and satellite customers know, that if you have a channel package that includes FOX News, you are paying money to the conservative news outlet whether you watch the channel or not.
“Every network charges cable and satellite providers a small fee per subscriber; the one for Fox News is extraordinarily high,” the website states. “A typical household pays Fox News almost $2 per month—about $20 per year— via their cable or satellite provider, regardless of whether they actually watch the channel.”
According to Media Matters, while FOX News averages 3.5 million viewers, they are paid by 90 million households through subscriber fees. All the more reason to embrace a la carte TV.
Now do I think Media Matters’ hashtag campaign will work and cable companies will pull FOX News tomorrow? Of course not, and I don’t even agree that should be an option, but I do like that TV is trending toward letting the viewer decide what they pay for based on what they watch and if that keeps a few bucks out of a certain “news” channel’s pocket, all the better.
In this issue, we’re one year into this pandemic so we check in with local LGBTQ-owned and allied businesses to see how life has been over the last 12 months.
In A&E, we chat with Orlando comic Heather Shaw and look at Off Kilter theatre company which is launching in St. Petersburg.
In news, the Orlando Gay Chorus is getting back to in-person concerts, Project Pride unveils its Pride Walk & Street Mural and Equality Florida details 2021’s fight for transgender youth.
