Showing posts with label Bonanza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bonanza. Show all posts

Thursday 13 February 2020

Choice


I grew up with two TV channels. When John F Kennedy was assassinated they replaced "Bonanza" with an old woman playing piano  much to my annoyance. It was either that or nothing. I probably went and played out.

It's the same with books and music, I know people who have little or no personal music or books in their lives and at some point I didn't have much.

This has come home to me using the Samsung A3 until I replace my Google Pixel. I had so much music on the Pixel that I didn't really know what to play some days. It's the same with TV channels , I have over 200 to choose from as well as on demand TV and over 400 video discs, as well as so many books I could start my own library.

Reading "Follow The Music" I decided to load the CD from it plus the five discs from "Forever Changing " in to the small SD card on the phone to listen to in sequence.  It's strange having too much choice is almost as bad as having no choice at all or a limited choice, but it's always better to have the option of too much of what you want.

But listening to these albums , I 'm not thinking of what should I listen to, I'm enjoying the six albums that I have to listen to , and means that I can appreciate them as they should be, Having said that there is some awful stuff mixed with some subliminal stuff but I am still on the early folk so we have Tim Buckley and Tom Rush mixing with people I've never heard before, but  is all great to listen to.

When I've finished these I'll replace them with another few albums. Sometimes it is good to limit your choices, but then again you want to be able to choose what you limit yourself to.

Tomorrow I have a work photography session, I offered to be in the crowd and they've asked me to run it, so that should be interesting.

So what song should we go with , it has to be one from the current album, we'll take Judy Collins' "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" which I first heard excellently covered by Rod Stewart on "Every Picture Tells A Story" and it is a wonderful song penned by Bob Dylan and covered by many.

Thursday 30 April 2015

TV IS KING!


Well it is and it isnt. I'm old enough to remember only two channels, being really annoyed when Kennedy got shot because ITV took all their programs off and just had some woman playing piano and I missed my weekly episode of Bonanza. I saw the transition from black and white to colour, the moon landings and England winning the World Cup..

I remember getting BBC2 and that was a 50% increase in available TV , then we got Channel 4 and Brookside and Channel 5 was a relatively recent terrestrial addition , plus there was the proliferation of satellite , Sky's money managing to make and sterilize football in one fell swoop.

When we had limited channels , audiences could be huge , but people complained like hell about repeats. We now have digital channels that are completely repeats. People complain about the TV License but happily shell out five times as much for subscription TV that STILL is full of advertisements.

The switch to digital came and gave most people loads of effectively free content funded by adverts. Plus these days we can have catch up TV and recording boxes that allow you to skip adverts, enabling you to watch what you want when you want.

It's very seldom these days that you need to get home for a TV program unless it's a televised live event, but we now probably watch more TV than ever before. It#s ubiquitous. We have TV on Mobile devices and there's a TV screen visible wherever you sit at work.

TV IS KING!
And my point is people still say "There's nothing on television" , apart from the off switch you have all the options above. My TIVO box is 90% full and Netflix and Amazon Prime don't even touch my radar. There are times when you channel hopand cant find anything you want but there are so many catch up and record options you should always be able to find something.

And if not, why not read a book or call a friend , that's even better than TV!

Though the Tubes song was appropriate as it gave the  post it's title.