Pay TV

Back in the summer of 1968, I was working at my first paying job - a usher at the Forum Theater in Squirrel Hill.  At one point during that time, the theater owners were asking all patrons to sign a petition against the looming menace, then known only as "Pay Television".  Pay TV, the reasoning went, would enable people to purchase first run movies in their homes to watch on their televisions.  Such a development would surely put movie theaters, as we knew them back in 1968, out of business.  No one knew exactly how "pay TV" would work when and if it finally arrived.  I think most of us envisioned some type of meter that would be attached to out TV sets into which we would put money to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

In time, that sort of Orwellian device did not come about, and the money-gobbling monster that the theater owners were describing in those petitions forty-five years ago never did quite come about, but eventually cable television emerged, and most of us do, in fact, have a device attached to out television sets, only we call them "cable boxes", and we are, whether we realize it or not, are purchasers of "Pay TV".   There are some people, and I can only think of one such person among my acquaintances, who enjoy truly "free" television - no cable and access to only the local network affiliates via over-the-air signals.

To be honest with you, I don't even think of it that way anymore.  The cable bill is just another utility bill, like the electric and gas bills, but if I ever decided that by god I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to pay what should be free anymore, think of what I'd be missing:

• All those Pirates and Penguins games on Root Sports
• The MLB Playoffs that have been shown on TBS and MLB
• Anything on ESPN including all those great College Bowl games every New Year's Day
• Wolf Blitzer
• The Sopranos, The Americans, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and any number of arguably the best shows on television on cable networks like HBO, AMC, TBS, TNT, FX etc
• Turner Classic Movies
• Love It or List It
• Giada De Laurentiis
• I even saw that basketball's Final Four will be on TBS, and not CBS, this coming spring.
• How far off is it until the World Series and Super Bowl will only be available cable outlets such as the MLB and NFL Networks?

Pay TV is here, folks, and if came upon us in a way that we probably didn't even realize it was happening.

And the technology is evolving beyond cable.  Just this week I heard that the NFL is considering offering one game a week via streaming on an Internet outlet such as Netflicks or Google, in which case who then needs a cable box?  And if the money is there, and it will be, don't think it won't happen.

Those theater owners weren't entirely wrong back in 1968, either.  Oh, there are still movie theaters, but terrific, classy, and intimate movie theaters like the Forum are all but gone now, replaced by big suburban multi-plexes, often attached to shopping malls.  My old Squirrel Hill neighborhood, once home to four such theaters, now has only one, The Manor, and even it has been converted to a four screen multi-plex.  I suppose that that is progress, of a sort.

We live in interesting times.