And the 13th Doctor is….

To use the words of River Song, “SPOILERS!!”

So if you really don’t want to know who the next Doctor Who lead is stop reading immediately (and stick your head in a bucket of sand because December is a long long way away).

* * *

A lot of Doctor Who fans were hoping we wouldn’t hear the identity of who would be replacing Peter Capaldi until the annual Christmas Day special. Then all of a sudden, the BBC announces it would be revealed today.

Either they got spooked that it would be leaked, as the past few have been, or there was a backroom deal made and they will be magically showing up at Comic-Con next week, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Ever since Capaldi announced in January he was leaving Doctor Who, the speculation has ramped up over who would be the next Doctor. With that speculation came multiple names of who might be stepping into those shoes. Some guesses were pretty solid actors, while others were far fetched.

Adding variety to this change was the big push to have a female assume the role for the first time. There had been speculation that a woman, or at the very least a non-white actor, would be chosen, ever since the show was resurrected in 2005.

But, it should be noted that it was not until 2011’s episode Let’s Kill Hitler, that the possibility of changing race was added to cannon. Then a couple of years later the idea of changing gender was canonized when we were introduced to Missy, in The Bells of Saint John. (As it turned out, Missy was a regeneration of the Doctor’s arch nemesis, The Master, who we’d last seen seven years prior).

Both of those additions to canon were made by outgoing executive producer Steven Moffat, who happened to also be the writer for both stories.

* * *

Around 5:30 am (PDT) all eyes were fixated on BBC One to get the answer. Viewers’ television screens switched to a forest. A figure dressed in a charcoal gray hooded coat slowly walked away from the camera. Excitement grew with every methodical step. The person had an obvious svelte build. But, that’s all we could tell.

Thirty seconds in a white right hand came up meaning the 13th Doctor wouldn’t be David Harewood or Idris Elba. Seven seconds after that a glimpse of an obviously feminine left eye told us the next Doctor would be the first female Doctor. But, would it be Jodie Whittaker, Olivia Colman or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who odds-makers were projecting as the first female Doctor. (An interesting fact is that all three of these woman played roles in Chibnall’s Broadchurch.)

The hood was slowly removed to reveal Whittaker as the next Doctor!

As quick as a flash of lightning, the Internet was ablaze with people applauding the choice, as well as those condemning it.

Chibnall is now publically saying the 13th Doctor was always going to be a woman, and Whittaker was his first choice. How much of that is reality vs just trying to stand 100% behind Whittaker is up for conjecture. But, if so, it means he was just stringing popular choice Kris Marshall along; providing he ever met with him to begin with.

* * *

So how do I feel about this major change in direction?

I will admit to being a little disappointed about it. But, unlike some, I’m certainly going to wait to see how things pan out when Season 11 airs sometime next year. Besides, as the sixth Doctor Colin Baker tweeted, “…she IS the Doctor whether you like it, or not!”

It’s been quite some time since I watched Broadchurch so Whittaker might turn out to be the best thing to happen to the show since David Tennant (ironically also of Broadchurch).

A lot of fans seem willing to blame Capaldi, the most recent Doctor. Me, not as much. To me, the show seems to have been hit or miss over the past few seasons. Some episodes were great, while others lacked any kind of spark from the get-go.

I think it would have made more sense to cast a well established male actor, such as Tom Hiddleston, Colin Ferrell, or even Ben Daniels, though the latter is probably pushing the upper age limit of who they’d probably consider, as the viewing audience seems to skew towards those 30 and under, with nearly as many women as men tuning in. Then spend the time on tightly written story lines, rather than what might be looked at as a gimmick used to grab lots of attention.

Should the show tank even further, it will be too easy for the detractors to blame the idea of a female Doctor as being the reason for the failure.

The previously mentioned Elba would have been fantastic as the first black Doctor. But, he’s got his hands full with bringing Steven King’s The Dark Tower to the big screen, along with a follow-up television series.

Another important part of the puzzle hasn’t been revealed yet. Who will the Doctor’s new Companion be?

The Companion is a person who encounters the Doctor by happenstance, and then joins them in their travels around the universe.

Chemistry is very important so perhaps it hasn’t been decided upon, and they want to wait so the potential actors can read against Whittaker. The previous companion, Bill Potts (Perl Mackie), was a breath of fresh air over the previous few Companions. But, only she lasted only one season.

Moffat had apparently wanted to leave Chibnall with a clean slate, which is why he got rid of Capaldi, Mackie and Matt Lucas (Nardole) all in one fell swoop. But, I’d suggest that perhaps Mackie’s character being gay might’ve lead to unwanted controversies with the first female Doctor.

Moffat killed off Potts in episode 11, only to bring her back within the sappy closing moments of the season finale, so it’s certainly possible we haven’t seen the last of her; nor Nardole for that matter, who was marooned on another level of the Mondasian colony ship.

* * *

Will some people label me as a misogynist, homophobe, or both, because I’d rather have another male Doctor? I’d hope not. But, it won’t surprise me either if it happens as It seems easier to do so than to actually listen to any opposing viewpoint on something as inconsequential as a television series.

They're different…yet the same

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States. I like to publicly thank every veteran, as well as current military personnel for their service to our country. Without it, this country would never have grown to be what it has become, nor would we be enjoying the rights that many take for granted.

Recently a Facebook friend posted a photo which lambasted the media because

"…Memorial Day is not about Veterans. Memorial Day is about those that did not come home to become veterans."

The very first comment said, "Same Dif…semantics!" suggesting they were the same; which was followed by back and forth dialog on whether there was a difference between the two holidays.

After doing some reading on the subject, it's become obvious that it's not as crystal clear as that photo suggested.

* * *

Unofficially Memorial Day is the older of the two holidays. The exact origin of Memorial Day is somewhat clouded, with groups of people both north AND south of the Mason-Dixon Line, claiming to have been the first.

In those days it was known as Decoration Day because loved ones would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers who gave their all during that family squabble known as the American Civil War.

It wasn't until 1971 that Congress declared Memorial Day an official national holiday.

The day is generally filled with parades brimming with soldiers and floats, as well as air shows commemorating past conflicts, and the soldiers who took part. Unofficially it's also filled with BBQs marking the start of Summer.

California doesn't have the same fervor as the East Coast. That's probably because we have been lucky enough to have escaped military conflict on our soil, and invasion by foreign powers.

One of the most spectacular events takes place at America's National Cemeteries. But, it's a simple thing that probably escapes most people's thoughts today.

For several days beforehand thousands of volunteers go gravestone to gravestone making sure a small American flag graces the front of the marker.

If you have never visited Golden Gate National Cemetery on Memorial Day, you should. The utter silence with 140,000 tiny flags flapping in the breeze is awe inspiring.

Frankly, its more serene sight with quiet contemplation does more to commemorate our nation's sacrifice than any parade.

* * *

In 1919, WWI was fresh in the minds of many Americans. It's generally considered the first modern war due to many technological advances of the time such as tanks, airplanes and mustard gas.

On the one year anniversary of the end of WWI, President Calvin Coolidge declared every November 11th  a day to commemorate the end of hostilities.

(The official armistice went into effect 11-11-18, and because someone somewhere had a macabre sense of humor it took place, not at Midnight, but, at 11pm)

However, it wasn't until 1938 when Congress officially named it a Federal holiday.

Much to people's horror, WWI turned out not to be the War to End All Wars, to be joined in people's consciousness by the first true global war, WWII, and not to go unmentioned the Korean War.

Congress changed the holiday's name in 1954 to Veterans Day, to be inclusive of all veterans from all conflicts past and present.

What's forgotten by most, myself included until I was doing research for this post, was that Coolidge's original proclamation was not to celebrate those that returned live from the front, but to remember those that did not.

"To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations."

Arguably, Veterans Day is not observed nearly as much as Memorial Day. Probably, in part because of it falling two months after school has started, during the tail end of the Fall harvest and when BBQ weather has left much of the country.

Besides that, it's not part of a three day weekend, despite it originally becoming one under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Only four years after moving five holidays to Mondays; to create long weekends; Congress chose to move Veterans Day back to it's original date.

It should be noted that while Memorial Day is truly an American national holiday, "Veterans" Day is commemorated around the world in multiple nations, albeit under different names.

* * *

Today, I turned on the History Channel while having breakfast After all, it's Memorial Day. Surely they're going to have lots of historical goodness I could lose myself in today. Just ending was some program on WWII, only to be followed by episode after episode of Pawn Stars.

God bless Big Rick, Corey, Chumlee and the Old Man. But, little historical blurbs about items being pawned or sold just shouldn't cut it on Memorial Day.

I found a blog Tech Crunch editorial  frustrated by this as well, only to realize it was from 2011.

At least H2 (formerly known as History International), is running four episodes of Patton 360, a 2009 series on Gen. George S. Patton.

But, that's not even the full series.  They aired 3 episodes; then stuck an odd-ball episode of Target Earth about climate change, before repeating the same episodes! Thing is it's a 10 part series. Would it have killed them to have aired the whole thing today?

Thankfully, if a person has HBO or Amazon Prime Video, they have access to Band of Brothers and The Pacific; with NO commercial interruptions.

Sigh…

movie review: PIRATE RADIO (2009)

(reviews may contain spoilers for those that have never seen the film or are unfamiliar with the characters.)

* * *

PIRATE RADIO (2009)

Back before the Internet and mp3's were part of main stream vocabulary, people consumed their music by listening to vinyl records, or more than likely, broadcast radio.

While licensed radio stations were the norm, there was an underground movement of radio broadcasters who sailed the seas in converted ships to skirt around the unofficial British policy to avoid playing evil Rock N' Roll. Hence why they were called pirates.

I can remember vaguely listening to some European pirate radio stations back in the 1970s on my Hammarlund HQ-160 short wave radio, which my father bought the day I was born.

Pirate Radio takes place in the Spring of 1967 aboard Radio Rock, which sails the North Sea spinning records 24/7, much to the disdain of a particular member of the British Ministry of Communications.

Initially we accompany Young Kevin (Tom Sturridge), as he boards the ship one stormy night. He's being sent by his mother (Emma Thompson) because he needs to straighten up after being kicked out of his prep school for smoking.

Young Kevin's adventure is just one small plot, among several plots, in the film. The most obvious one is the somewhat one-sided battle between government officials and the pirates over their broadcasting. Unfortunately, that plot is treated almost like an afterthought for most of the picture.

* * *

From the self-proclaimed rock royalty Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to the wild-haired Bob (Ralph Brown), the supporting case of DJs represented the open ended music style of the period.

And just as hip as the DJs were, the government officials Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) and his scheming lackey, played by Jack Davenport, were properly stodgy in their battle to overcome perceived lawlessness by the Radio Rock crowd.

Bill Nighy plays Radio Rock's maverick owner. He felt like a cross between Sir Richard Branson and Phil Spector. It's a shame he didn't get more screen time because his character added a bit of common sense, in a hip and offbeat way, to counter the DJs.

Though the cast is primarily male, January Jones and Talulah Riley play a couple of sweet, seemingly innocent albeit naughty, girls along for the ride.

* * *

As great as the ensemble cast may have been, bigger kudos goes to Stephen Price, the music editor. He must've felt like a kid in a candy store with all the tracks at his disposal.

I suppose it was a case where rights were easier to come by in 2009 than back in 1973 when George Lucas made American Graffiti, and the studios forced him to cut back his soundtrack due to the monumental fees they would have had to pay.

When Gavin (Rhys Ifans) made is slow motion appearance onboard, to the Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash, there's a swagger to his character that wouldn't have been there had they used the original idea of the MoTown sound of either The Supremes or Temptations.

* * *

The R rating is is for language and crude humor, including some brief nude scenes. Probably not a good film I'd let a child watch, no matter how open-minded you might be.

The film is also a bit long, weighing in at just over two hours, plus there's over 30 minutes of Deleted Scenes in a bonus track which, for the most part, added nothing to the film.

RATED: 6.5 out of 10 STARS

* * *

Pirate Radio is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming at Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.

Cutting Cable without getting Sliced

Recently I had an opportunity to see what it's like not to have cable television in the house. Just the thought sent shivers down my spine. I admit it. I am a television junkie.

It was through that recent trial separation that I thought about it. How many of those zillions of channels did I really watch on a regular basis, and how many were things I could watch elsewhere, or watch alternatives to?

Last Friday I jumped in Cold Turkey, and am going through a bit of an adjustment period.

* * *

As my street is graced with overhead power lines, I've never been able to successfully use a rooftop antenna. In fact, I found that the higher my antenna, the worse the reception was. I actually got better reception with the antenna sitting six feet off my back deck. Not an optimal installation as I also nearly blinded myself by walking into one of the elements while letting the dog out after dark!

It had been a stop gap measure so I could watch the San Jose Sharks' magical 1994 playoff run; back when the team actually broadcast over the air on KICU-TV (Ch. 36). Ironically, I ended up calling Century Cable just in time to catch the Sharks' final playoff appearance that year.

That started 15 years of relationship with cable television, interrupted by a three year affair with DirecTV; blindly shelling out money to watch a fraction of what was actually available.

* * *

If you're a person who can live with simple over the air broadcast signals, that's awesome. All you may need are a set of cheap rabbit ears and perhaps a digital-to-analog converter box if you're still using an older television set.

We're blessed because most places in the westernmost East Bay have Line of Sight coverage from Sutro Tower - that 1000' tall erector set high atop San Francisco's Clarendon Heights.

In my circumstance the only programming I regularly watch over the air is The Amazing Race and Survivor. Both on the local CBS affiliate, KPIX-TV (Ch. 5).

Most of the time my cable box lived on Syfy, BBC-America, CNN and the Encore movie channels, with HBO and Starz joining the cast after being enticed with a special deal which recently expired and became not so financially special in the blink of an eye.

All is not lost. In our current Internet age a lot of what you might watch on cable is available online. (CBS now has full episodes of the above mentioned TAR and Survivor streaming immediately after they've aired in the Pacific Time Zone.)

If you're one of those people that prefers episodic television, Hulu is a fantastic option, with many of its programs available for FREE! $7.99 per month gets you lots more content, including many shows from the current broadcast season. Granted you have to live with commercials. But, that's not any different than live TV.

They also offer the chance to relive shows which just didn't cut it for whatever reason. But, were entertaining none-the-less.

While Hulu does offer movies, Netflix made its claim to fame there. Their streaming option is also $7.99/month. Unfortunately, you will have to rely on their DVD option for most newly released titles, which is an additional charge.

For the occasional new title, there's always your local RedBox kiosk.

While live sports programming used to never be available without a cable or satellite provider, that's not the case anymore. The NHL, NBA, MLS and MLB all offer live content by subscription in some form through the use of either a computer, Internet-ready TV and/or streaming device. While the NFL doesn't offer live content they do offer a package of games available once they've completed.

* * * 

While the late Sen. Ted Stephens (R-AK) was generally off base with much of his Series of Tubes tirade, you can think of your personal Internet connection that way.

The more things you are doing at one time, the bigger that tube needs to be. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora, World of Warcraft, etc. all suck up bandwidth, and if you're watching a movie while your kids are in their bedroom streaming music or playing some MMORPG, you're all fighting to pull your content through that same tube.

Even something as simple as accessing your email uses bandwidth, albeit one small chunk at a time.

Notice that "AT ONE TIME" part mentioned. If you're in a one-person household, a basic connection is probably good enough for you. For the rest of us, we're going to need a bigger tube.

It was a no brainer I'd have to come up with some type of internet connection, not just for the additional streaming load, but for everything else web-related, as my email address is more useful than my home phone!

Not widely known is that Comcast will sell you an Internet only subscription. In my experience I'm getting insane speeds on Comcast compared to other providers. As long as they don't go back to enforcing their data cap, I'll be happy. Otherwise it'll be time to go shopping for a new service provider.

* * *

Is this plan perfect? Certainly not. There are some things to consider.

Most of your viewing pleasure is at the mercy of your Internet connection.

CNN has decided to marry themselves to cable and satellite providers so you can't watch CNN, nor its sister network HLN, live unless you're a subscriber.

Lastly, and perhaps a deal breaker for some, there's no option but to go without premium channels, such as HBO and Showtime, as they currently don't offer a la carte subscriptions. (April 2013 is going to be rough in my household when Season Three of Game of Thrones premieres!),

Good luck to anyone that takes up this venture. Your pocket book may just thank you!

I have such a BIG hangover today

I have such a BIG hangover right now. No alcohol was involved. I'm dealing with Olympic Overload and withdrawal.

Every two years, I curl up on the couch, remote in hand, to watch as much Olympic coverage as I possibly can, including many events I probably wouldn't think about during most of the waking hours.

The first Games I remember watching were the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. I can still remember the family sitting around the old Hitachi set as Olga Korbut flipped and flew around the gymnastic apparatus; and Mark Spitz giving new meaning to Aqua Man! And who can forget the big Soviet "coal miner" turned weightlifter Vasiliy Alekseyev, with his huge torso shaped like a beer barrel.

Unfortunately, I can also vaguely remember the horrific Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Fortunately, I don't think I realized what was happening at the time since my parents were pretty good at shielding my sister and I from things like that.

1976 marked the first year I really had any say in whether I'd watch. I say that with tongue in cheek as the Winter Olympics took place in Austria! How could I not watch? My grandmother was born in Austria. I marveled at what I thought was the final Downhill run of the day as Franz Klammer flew down Patscherkofe to win Gold.

I guess I was too young to realize this was a big taste of tape delay and editing for evening Prime Time. We never saw all 74 competitors, including ones from such winter sports hotbeds as Iran and Turkey! ABC treated us to only the Top 15 ranked skiers. They tightly packaged it and I was happy to see what they allowed me to see.

By 1976 I was hooked. I can still remember the shiver when I found out Moscow would host the 1980 Games as my other grandmother was from Russia. For a while I actually posted a drawing of Moscow Olympic symbol with the number of days and the weather on our fridge. I can also remember the depression when I heard that the USA would boycott those Games due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that NBC would not broadcast them either.

1980 was my first experience of an American Olympic Games, with the Winter Games in Lake Placid, NY. All I have to say is USA! USA! USA! and visions of the Miracle on Ice game probably pop into your head.

* * *

From that point forward, the television coverage expanded at an astonishing rate; from 54 hours in 1980 to over 5000 hours for the recent London, which included the first major use of the Internet to stream events that would otherwise not get televised.

Unfortunately, the hangover came, not only from the amount of hours I watched, but from frustration with NBC's coverage.

It is true that NBC had more live coverage than ever before, especially relying in the CNBC, MSNBC and NBCSN cable networks. However, it is also true that those of us not on the eastern seaboard were treated to tape delays of the supposed live events.

With the explosion of social media, there was a really good chance we'd find out about the results even before they were telecast. This lead one friend to tweet that "The Internet is ruining my Olympics!"

I started watching the internet live streams of the events  the first day. It was awesome! I watched as much archery in the first day as I'd watched in all my previous Olympic viewing COMBINED. There were no commercials; just a banner ad at the top of the browser.

On about the third day it changed. I was greeted with an ad for an upcoming Will Farrell movie. I wrote it off since I had just logged in. HOWEVER, it the same ad popped up about EVERY FIVE MINUTES.

The next day a Citibank ad with Meb Keflezighi droned on. I sent an angry tweet suggesting I'd seen him more with that hour's ads than I probably would during his actual event!

At this point, I started seeing people commenting about the BBC's coverage. No commercials, streaming of every event live, or available in their entirety shortly after completion; and what could be more fitting than British coverage of a British Olympics? I thought, "What's not to like about that? I'm in!"

Well, yes and no. You see, broadcast rights are sold on a national basis, and since I'm in the United States, the only feeds they want me to watch are those from NBC.

I loaded iPlayer and was greeted by a warning page telling me BBC video streaming is only available to residents of the United Kingdom.

When I had searched for iPlayer, I noticed ads proclaiming, "Watch the BBC Olympic Coverage from…anywhere."

Each Internet connection has what's called an IP address. You can think of this as your computer's address, which includes city, state and zip code of where your computer is connecting from. The BBC servers saw my California connection and said "No way, Jose!" 

Those ads were basically for companies offering proxy servers that would allow you to connect to them (for a price). Think of that as being a hotel room where your computer is taking a vacation. Once you connected to their proxy, your computer would then send out an IP address with a British location, and iPlayer would say, "Welcome!"

Coverage of every shot; every stroke, every step! Not just the top athletes, but those who only came to participate. It was INCREDIBLE…when it didn't crash. Unfortunately, it did fairly often. Sometimes it would recover, but more often I was rudely greeted with a message that the feed appeared to not be working, please try again later.

Additionally, if I should decide to watch the event from the beginning, the feed would arbitrarily end with no warning, and the message would say it should be available shortly. In all their British properness they were nice and tidy and ended "recording" the stream immediately upon end of of the event. At least NBC's recording continued for quite some time before ending the live feed.

Sometimes, when I restarted the feed, I'd inadvertently find out the results because they have chapter bookmarks at the bottom. I ruined several beach volleyball matches that way.

By the penultimate day, I had run out of time on the proxy server so I was back to watching NBC. In case you haven't heard, they butchered the Closing Ceremonies pretty badly, not to mention sticking a sitcom episode and the late local news in the end, which delayed the final 10 minutes of the program, the anticipated set from The Who. Makes ZERO sense, and they were taken to task in social media.

* * *

So what are my suggestions for NBC to win me back?

Offer ALL events streaming live online, including the ceremonies. Don't block the more popular events once they're complete so you can save them for Prime Time. Also, I'd be willing to see a banner at the top of the browser page at all times if it meant no commercial breaks that take away from the events. If you must have interruptions, will you please have someone watching the feed, and only insert ads at times when there's no action.

Assuming your cable lineup is still the same 500 days from now, continue portioning out coverage over multiple channels. This coverage should be live, with taped coverage of some events during Prime Time.

I cringe at the idea of tape delayed coverage, but NBC has to make money somehow, and Prime Time advertising is where the best money comes from. They don't have the luxury of the BBC, where all UK households must pay a TV License fee to watch live television.

It sounds funny to say you need a license to watch TV, but it's really nothing more than a tax to pay for public television, something the British have less of a problem doing. The fee is about $228.

Since British public broadcasting is done on a national scope, with only a half dozen channels, they can get away with it. This would never work in the US, with over 1200 stations across the nation, and public funding is a hot button issue.

NBC will need to recognize they need to ratchet back on how many commercials they run. With the World moving to more and more content being available by the web, it's far easier for viewers to turn to alternative methods to get what they want.

NBC will also need to reign in their announcers. Many are great. However, some try to be cute and say stuff that sounds dumb, like when Madagascar was described as an island where a group of movie animals come from, nothing more.

I'm eager to see if NBC takes public comment to heart. But, just in case, my computer is ready to book a vacation in the UK again.

600 channels and nothing to watch???

Recently, I've had to make some changes with my Internet service provider. I'd been sharing a connection with someone for over 12 years. However, it was time to get something of my own.

At the same time, I had been reviewing my cable television bill. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area changes are extremely good that your provider is Comcast. I've had Comcast at my current residence since April 1994, when the San Jose Sharks made their first NHL Playoff run.

After considering non-cable options for Internet, I finally decided it was best to go with Comcast's Triple Play. I was able to get a deal that was a little more than what I currently pay for cable only, and yet I didn't have to sign up for a long term contract, something that I'd have to do if I switched to another carrier. A Win-Win IMHO.

* * *

It amazes me when I hear people say, "There's nothing good to watch on TV these days!!" Now, granted some of the shows are pretty abysmal (Jerseylicious, Big Brother or Housewives of <fill in the blank> are perfect examples of TV gone wrong). But to say there is nothing to watch when you have between 200 and 600 channels to choose from if you have cable is astounding.

As I sit here watching all sorts of programs that I didn't have before last Saturday I started thinking back to when my family first signed up for cable television.

We could say with pride that our family was among the first houses to get cable in the San Francisco Bay Area. I can't speak for what was available here in Albany back then as we were next door, in Richmond. Our service provider was Bay Cablevision.

I think I must've been at school when the cable man came because I don't remember seeing him install it, and just know that's something I would have been sitting there watching get done.

On top of the old TV sat a gray-brown box with two rotary dials that would make a loud clicking sound as you turned them. This WAS the cable box of its day and you manually switched channels by the use of the two dials. One dial had numbers on it, while the other one had letters. The differing combinations would offer different channels.

(The remote control never entered my house until many years later. After all, it was only a few years earlier that we bought the first color television ever in our family, a Hitachi. I still have that TV in storage, and the colors were just as good the last time I hooked it up, as the day we brought it home from Dale Sanford Television, in Alameda.

Back then it seemed you got multiple channels for each of the THREE networks. This was way before Fox, WB and other newcomers came to play. All your news coverage was local, unless you happened to catch the evening national news, presented by Walter Cronkite (CBS), John Chancellor (NBC) or Howard K. Smith & Harry Reasoner (ABC). CNN wouldn't show up until I was in high school. And I can remember when Atlant's WTCG, proclaimed itself the first super station, being seen Coast-to-Coast thanks to cable TV.

TV Guide was something like 10 cents, and was a real guide, not the magazine you see these days. Beyond that, Bay Cablevision used to release a heavy paper guide that showed what was on HBO and the other special movie channels they had. There were three colors, Green, Red, and Yellow. Each one was a higher priced package. I remember us having the Red package, which included Green, but the Yellow package must've been financially out of reach because I remember looking at it and seeing what we wouldn't be getting. Also, movies were on, generally, for three months, before something else rotated in.

To get HBO, there was a special filter you connected to your cable box by way of a patch cable, and then the outside cable from the telephone pole. It was apparently very important not to disconnect the filter because if you did, the cable man had to come out and set it back up. Not sure if that was real, or not, but that's what we were told. Also, there was a $50 deposit on that filter, which is comical because I think it was nothing more than a low or high pass, filter which probably cost $3.

* * *

But now we've reached another metamorphosis in the world of television entertainment, which will make today's television offerings seem as antiquated as my first experiences were in their day.

Though traditional broadcast channels and cable networks has the largest variety ever, it's also the hardest for a new producer to get into. It seems that networks will spend most of their production dollars on what they think are sure hits that will get them a high rate of return. That's why you're seeing so much Reality programing. It's relatively cheap, and fills what they perceive as being the viewer's most common wants.

However, in steps the Internet to fill a need. With higher and higher streaming speeds available, and storage costs plummeting, anybody can become a programmer. I'm a tech news junkie and more often than not I'm watching one of the TWiT.TV shows streaming on YouTube.

Leo Laporte has to be one of the most successful producers who has made a jump from traditional media to the Internet. After having his career controlled by others, he took the plunge and started netcasting his first show, This Week in Tech, in 2005, from an outbuilding on his property. Last year he made a move to a major production facility in downtown Petaluma, producing 29 shows, as well as maintaining a live 24/7 streaming channel. 

Chances are good that if there's a subject you are interested in, there will be some type of netcast about it. If not, there probably will be one shortly. And if you feel so inclined, you can start a program yourself. Most of today's smartphones have a good enough quality camera, which shoots high-definition video, which can be used till you decide to upgrade your equipment.