I have a task on my honey-do list this week that I am not looking forward to. In order to save money my wife and I have decided to change our cable subscription from the standard, to the basic. That means there will be no more Sportscenter on ESPN. No more Monk on USA. No more Rugrats and Spongebob on Nick, that mostly for my daughter. No more TVLAND, no more Turner Classic Movies, no more weird sex lady late night on Oxygen (I can only watch her for a few seconds at a time. Not only does she talk about things that a woman her age should not be talking about, but she's the splitting image of my mother which is way too disturbing to bear.) All that the basic package will include are the network channels and WGN out of Chicago so I can watch the Cubs, big deal for a Braves fan. Otherwise my nightly entertainment will be in the hands of (gasp, cue the Psycho music) the goobers running the major networks. Why have a television at all?

I haven't been a fan of the networks since Carson went off the air and in the ten years since my opinion of them has dropped about as much as the quality of their shows. I think that my biggest beef with the networks is that they lack the least bit of originality. Your hear a tagline similar to his one: "Coming this Thursday an original new series from Fox!" Then you tune in Thursday and it's either the same old rehash of what's on the other networks or something that they've borrowed from over seas, like the Weakest Link or Banzai. When they do get hold of a good idea, they either cancel it or they show it every night until you’re sick of seeing it. That Seventies Show would be a prime example of the latter.

The fad here lately, if you've been under a rock for the last couple of years, is reality TV. Give me a Murder She Wrote marathon over this garbage any day. There are a lot of these shows and admittedly they're all different but most go back to two basic premises. First you take a group of the most annoying people you can find. Then put them in a demeaning situation and let them cheat and back stab their way to a big cash prize. Or you place cameras in the home of a complete loser or losers, some of whom happen to be famous, and watch them stumble their way through their daily lives. Do any of these shows exhibit amiable qualities or do the characters/contestants just try to make an idiot out of themselves or try to screw over some other person? It seems like the mentality that makes people watch these shows is the same one that makes you want to look when you pass a car wreck.

I think that I grew up in a great, oft forgotten period in the history of American television. That would be the period between the three channel days and the days of Cable T.V.. That would be the period of the small independent UHF stations that provided a great deal of the entertainment of my youth even as my friends were getting cable. We were too far out in the country to get cable which was first offered to the area just a few weeks after my dad got his satellite dish, no lie.

These little stations knew what the word variety meant. On a given day you could have a week day afternoon filled with cartoons that you had never seen before, and would never see again, but on Saturdays the fun really started. After the morning cartoons went off the networks, when they still showed them, you could turn on UHF and get a veritable Russian roulette of pleasure to entertain you the rest of the day. You might get an old movie, including the old Hammer horror movies of the sixties. An old TV show, some cartoons, wrestling, a kung-fu movie that made Bruce Lee look like Sir Laurence Olivier, a Three Stooges short and the carousel would spin on an on.

Like a lot of other things that I remember so fondly. Those little TV stations have gone the way of Hee Haw and Dialing for Dollars, having been bought out by Fox, UPN and the WB, so they can put out the same old drivel that we're being force fed from every other direction. I don't know if any of these stations still exist. I guess conceivably they can, but it looks like if a station gains any sort of popularity at all, even local, that they'll get swallowed up as well. I guess now that all the T.V. the Farlow household will be getting is network T.V.. Then we'll be checking movies out of the library, reading more or spending more time at my parent's house. Dad got rid of the dish. Now he's got digital cable now.

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About the author: Jonathan Farlow is a frustrated writer/librarian and lives in Archdale, NC with his wife Kathy and daughter Sara. Visit his web site. You can read some of his stories there. Feedback is welcomed. Email: jonathan-farlow@excite.com

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