Each weekend, Next TV writers Daniel Frankel and David Bloom head to various gun conventions and shooting ranges to reinforce their masculine self-images, as well as consolidate and soothe a simmering rage they can't articulate. When they're done, they conduct a sometimes lively and interesting text exchange about technology, media and telecom.
Daniel Frankel: Greetings, David, from lovely Lake Arrowhead, Calif. I'm here in this mountain town, chilling at my lifelong Canadian pal’s A-frame, ready for a weekend of televised pro sports, Labatt brews and Canadian whiskey. There’s also usually a lot of Maple Leafs hockey when you stay at Tony’s cabin. It's pretty dry, sunny and warm (at least during the day) before the winter deluge starts in a few weeks or so. Speaking of deluges, we're certainly not seeing any of them any longer in terms of original programming from basic cable networks, as Friday’s solid “zombie networks” story in the New York Times points out. I don’t know that the art of breezy, whimsical 40-minute-long USA Network comedy-dramas and TLC reality shows is necessarily is necessarily lost, per se. There are plenty of SVOD and FAST places to find those types of shows. But reading that story, I had the thought that the pay TV ecosystem, circa 15 years ago, is kind of the place where we’re all trying to get back to. Plenty of easily searchable choices, with on-demand options via DVRs. Sure, the commercials ultimately got out of hand … but maybe we'll be saying that five years from now with ad-subsidized SVOD. Made me wonder, as consumers, did we end up stepping back instead of forward with streaming?
