Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 16, 2022

We should go back to ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS and an antenna on the roof.

“57 channels and nothins on”. Too much binging at our house though..,

You’re supposed to say, “I’ve been watching that show since it started!” even if you never heard of it.

I’ve heard of “Yellowstone,” and I hope that Yogi and Boo Boo haven’t run out of ways to outsmart the Ranger.

This is why I have 2 TV sets, still in their boxes, 2 years after moving.

Need a box for “Don’t care”

I, for one, have never heard of it. And I’m perfectly OK with that.

Someone seems (many seem) to be a little bit (more than) obsessed about this.

Ha. Me subscribes only to Go Comics on the internetwork.

I feel most people have turned to piracy by the time they get to the right hand side of that flowchart.

There’s only so many hoops you can make people jump through to give you money before they won’t.

Excellent idea, Pig!

I have cable, and I wish it was ala carte as so many channels are there I never would ever watch!

Television is called a medium because anything well done is rare.

Been there, still got that. Better picture over air and no time delays. Get all N and Philly stations. So why am I paying Comcast. Wife has a channel she needs or she will die. I keep try to cancel Comcast.

I haven’t seen Game of Thrones yet… I took a shortcut. “Have heard of it”, “Know the network”, “Don’t care.” :D

There are so many options from so many sources that i never find the shows that would interest me until the distributors have decided to cancel the series due to lack of viewers. In the past year i know of three series I wanted to see, missed when they were being released and they were gone before I found out they had started.

Today’s technology is not all bad. When I was a kid, I was the remote. Lotus, change the channel. Lotus, turn it up. Lotus, adjust the horizontal hold.

Remember the good old days when we could watch reruns and acquired programming on digital cable channels and streaming was available on the official network websites for free?

And then there is the problem of wanting to watch the show but forgetting which streaming service carries it – Apple? Paramount? Netflix? Peacock? Hulu? Oh, forget it. I’ll follow Pig’s suggestion.

I always end up at the box in the very top right corner……always!

All those mentions of subscription: TV stations were paid for by advertisement and product placement or sponsored by people who got their point of view broadcasted. Now we pay ourselves but still all that crap is fed to us.

Left out “see reviews for show so you don’t waste hours on yet another turkey”

Watching TV is too time consuming; I waste enough time on the Internet. The rest of the time I have other things to do. Dropped my Netflix and Prime subscriptions at the beginning of the COVID mess to save money, and haven’t missed them.

We live in a really bad area for TV reception. An antenna is not an option. Tried one of those ones with a built in amplifier, but it didn’t work, and there’s no real incentive to keep on looking for a solution.

And how many streaming services are you supposed to pay for?

And why did I watch TV every day when there were only 3 networks, but when there are 1000 choices, I watch nothing?

Looks like Pastis put a week’s work into one day’s strip. ;-0

There are ways to watch it without doing all of that

I think my wife still has Netflix and Disney+, but I not certain. I tried watching Wandavision with her, but they did such a good job of emulating it stupidest 1950s sitcoms, I left the room.

He left out “Don’t Know and Don’t Care” → “Quit”.

I got it from my local library, no flow chart needed!

The latest gotta watch that I don’t.

but is what you want to read on ebook, audio book or audible?

Watched five minutes of it. Got disgusted with the violence. Turned it off.

If it isn’t on DVD, I don’t care.

I get Mhz and watch foreign detective shows. I miss football, the olympics and the World Cup, but not enough to pay

Whatever happened to “yes” and “no”?

Pastis left out our Yellowstone solution….. friends bought complete series on disc…. Borrowed them… problem with network subscription solved!!

AKA the representation of every show/movie recommendation I get from others…

Better off reading…..

Where’s the box for “I pay for enough streaming services at it is”? Or is that covered under “not affordable”?

And have missed Breaking Bad?? No thanks!!

Yes, we have a very confusing and fractured media ecosystem. I doubt it will prove sustainable.

Where’s the box for “yo ho ho”

Bullseye Steph.

Is today’s strip a rerun ? Yellowstone premiered in 2018 with its 5th season premiering next month. It’s not on a streaming service except for past seasons on Peacock. The latest episodes are on Paramount Network available on most basic cable tv packages and not to be confused with their streamer Paramount + There are spin-offs of Yellowstone that are on Paramount +

I have no cable, just an antenna and I never use it. I suppose I could stream on the computer, but I don’t like sitting in front a computer to watch a movie. With 100+ channels and nothing actually worth watching, I read instead. The biggest problem with things like METV is the same cheap drug commercials over and over again. I had to stop watching the Saturday night monster movies because the commercials came too often and were constantly repeated. Rich Koz’s shtick didn’t help much.

Guess what, TV lovers, I don’t miss it. Never cared for sports, corny sit coms, game shows. When the last CSI aired, that’s when I stopped watching the tube, or maybe it was when Tony left NCIS. I don’t recall. It has been many years since I’ve watched commercial (emphasis on commercial) TV.

Hint: In the 1960’s, an hour how ran about 50 minutes. Today, maybe as much as 42. More commercials so they can pay those alleged actors more money to complain about how rotten their lives are. Gimme a break.

“It’s good”……Really?? another show laced with violence and profanity. No thanks.

Gold.

>Make more money -—> Have no time to watch TV, on account of working to make more money

Sorry, Stephen, but my first job out of school, Bell Telephone Laboratories, only allowed two arrows out of the boxes (no maybe about it!).

Perhaps, before going to all that trouble, read some reviews or watch the trailer.

Ah. I see why I don’t relate to this. Watched trailer—-realised it is a Western style show—-hate Westerns—-ignore it—-done.

or go to the library, they have a great selection of tv series

My basic cable has it.

This is why TV should be consumer driven, not provider driven.

I want my TV (or other devices) to be like a sushi bar.

When I turn it on, there is the sushi conveyor belt. Any providers, Netflix, Apple, Disney, Amazon, etc, can put their wares onto my conveyor belt if they want. Then, I’ll buy whatever looks good as it comes by on the conveyor belt, and I’ll leave the rest.

At some point in time, these streaming services will cost more than the “cut cable” that inspired it.

No TV, no problem!

This is the kind of thing that consumes too much time. Read a book. Go play outside.

Beautiful flow chart, Steph. :-)

There is another way, the Pirate way…

I could be happy with just one channel that does not show repetitive ads for Medicare, Zocdoc, butt deodorant, insurance and sad-eyed puppies. (Why yes, I do watch a lot of PBS and TCM, thank you.)

“I find television very educational. Whenever someone turns on the set, I go in the next room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx

I never left the major networks and my antenna works fine.

A lota new shows out there I don’t watch.

Rat forgot the all-important first step… “Have you heard of it?” That one rules me out right away.

What about the option for, decide the show doesn’t sound that interesting? That’s the one I usually take, including with Yellowstone.

Good old Rat! This goes far to explaining why I do not have, never have had, never will have cable/satellite/streaming. It’s an expense I have no need for, as I get all the TV I want and then some on numerous available broadcast channels….

I always take the “not affordable” path. Each individual network is okay but when you add them all up it’s way out of my range. Better to not even get one than try to decide which to get and which to reject.

He left out the arrow connecting “Not Affordable” and “Have Friend’s Password”. That’s the path most people take.

Final possibility, after considering all those exhausting options, switch over to Pluto and watch Addams Family reruns!