Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Shows That Justify Cable TV

Just my own list, of course; your mileage will vary considerably.

SportsCenter
Baseball Tonight (not really: the talking heads are too inane for me)
NFL Primetime (Sunday, 7:30E/4:30P edition)
Sunday Night Football (only if it's a good matchup and/or I know Chad and I will have at least a half-dozen brief game-related phone conversations)
Sunday Night Baseball (but I think I watched this exactly once in 2004: some innings of a Giants-Padres game caught by accident while I was visiting friends for Easter dinner)
Family Guy(!)
Saturday Night Live (old episodes on Comedy Central or E!)
South Park
Chappelle's Show (which I've literally never seen before - in fact it should be in the entry below this one - but is so good that once I start buying DVDs of shows I've never-seen-but-assume-are-good rather than shows that I've seen-and-know-are-good, Chappelle will top my list with a bullet)
Whose Line Is It Anyway? (both British and American versions)
I Love The [Decade]
various random VH1 fare
Giants or A's games on Fox Sports Net rather than local broadcast TV
Whichever baseball Division Series games Fox doesn't snap up
Any poker competition
Cheers (on Nick at Nite)
The Cosby Show (ditto)
random political stuff that I can't specifically define (and would probably just channel-surf through, changing the station whenever Kerry or some talking head annoyed me)

By reputation I assume The Sopranos belong on this list (#2 behind Chappelle for DVDs of TV shows that I'd buy just on spec if I had way more disposable income). All in all you can see that cable's not worth it for me, despite my temptation to claim otherwise.

Weeks ago we had a discussion about this; well, more than a discussion and less than an argument. But one thing you have to understand about me and TV - not just cable TV, but TV period - is that I don't believe in watching TV for the sake of watching TV. You watch TV only to watch some specific thing(s). Also, I don't aimlessly channel surf. Emphasis on my not aimlessly surfing. I'll flip around a bit, yet I swear I do this far less than any guy I know and less even than most gals I know. In particular if there's a show I truly care about, I'll even voluntarily watch commercials rather than surf and risk missing something important. Mind, I'll readily watch two things at once - way more than two if most or all of them are sports - as long as I'm aware of what I'm doing and conscious of making the tradeoff of missing stuff. For sports - say, baseball or football - you can easily follow five at once if you surf purposefully and not randomly.

Anyhow, about sports: Notice NFL Primetime above. I'd be perfectly content to have my entire televised NFL experience be that show. This is specifically because of the background music for the highlights, and the relative level of depth to how many highlights they show and how Chris Berman's narrative strings them together to give you the full sense of the flow of the game.

In an alternate universe I got MLB Extra Innings on DirecTV at some point. (This means in the alternate universe I got DirecTV in the first place...) Clearly in that universe I'm single, since in this universe I don't see it happening. Given the choice... well, there's only one right choice, but if you're reading this (you know who), realize the sacrifice involved. Well, not really, but still.

Posted by Matt Bruce at September 25, 2004 08:42 PM