Tioga Herald

Rupert Murdock once pronounced free broadcast television and radio as being as good as “dead,” due to cable television.  Did anyone notice the smile on his face?  After all, Murdock makes tons of money from cable television.  That’s money that you and I pay in expensive cable television bills and no choice for lower-cost subsets of cable television channels which would exclude Murdock’s channels and be more palatable to us.  And people complain about the small amounts of tax dollars (in comparison to what I probably pay Murdock) used for PBS and NPR?  Give me a break.

Murdock might as well have been explicit and said, “I intend to destroy free local broadcast television.”  For this is his intent – destroy his competition, as are the secret missions of Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and other big box retailers.  Don’t compete, but destroy – like a Roman warrior and the Mafia which identifies with the Roman Empire.

So someone says to me, “you have a choice if you don’t like cable television, you can cancel it!”  Oh, I can, can I?  So, my choice is like black and white.  Receive everything or nothing?  I am abrasive to that thought that “I have a choice.”  I don’t have a choice.  And the one choice I do have, the big guys like Murdock wish to eliminate that choice, too!

I don’t have a choice.  Sure, I can turn the channels I don’t enjoy off.  I can even set up my remote to bypass such channels and only move to channels I enjoy.  But I still pay more for the bundled packages than I would if offered a package with a more delightful menu – and paid less.  It is not right for my dollars to go to something I don’t agree – particularly for politics and religion for which I disagree.  I also don’t figure I should pay for the bundling of sports into my packages either.  Give me the ones I DON’T want to receive as “pay as you go.”  I attended Syracuse University football games in Syracuse.  It was pay as you go.  I had a choice to purchase a bundle for season’s tickets or pay as you go.  Even the bundled season’s tickets were “pay as you go” – for one team only.

Sports have become far too commercialized, due to this boondogle called cable television.  And while on this subject, consider how much more of my tax dollars have paid for stadiums than for public broadcasting!  Yet millions of us never watch sports!  Where is the justice in this?  Where are the supposed “choices?”  There are none.

And now Rupert Murdock, with the finger prints of paranoid Tricky Dickey on his actions, wishes to eliminate free local broadcasting.  Better to control the “herds” of animal slaves, don’t you know?  When will we the people stop this jerk and others like him?  We won’t, as long as we continue to dismiss what I say with, “you DO have choices” and brush my main point aside.  I do not have choices when I am precluded from purchasing what is acceptable to me.  That is elimination of a choice.  Preclude me and make me out to be troublemaker and you are all working for big business, not for the people.

Imagine the creation of “family-friendly” cable television packages – just for James Dobson and his looney tune worshipers.  It’s a win-win situation for right and left wing – as well as spreading the wealth, rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few people like Rupert Murdock.  Imagine what I could do with the extra money NOT wasted on cable television shit which I don’t wish to view!  The only ones who lose are greedy selfish monopolists – and I don’t give a damn if they lose.