Get Off My Television!

Get Off My Television Set!

Listen, I paid a lot o' money for my television set! An' I pay a lot o' cash for my cable an' all the rigamarole that goes with it. So I figure it's all mine an' nobody else’s! So if I tell you to get off my television set, I ain't kiddin'.

I'm talkin' 'bout all them advertisers who keep interuptin' my programs with messages I don't want to hear at the best o' times, never mind when it suits them. It's bad enough that the TV stations ain't got enough programming to play original programs nomore so they got to repeat everything about once a week an' three times on weekends. An they do all this on MY television set!

My friend had a way with people using his equipment. One o' them telemarketers would call up an' he'd answer on purpose an' let them make their pitch. Then in a big boomin' voice he'd say, “GET OFF MY PHONE!” Well the poor telemarketer wasn't expectin' that, so he'd sputter somethin' foolish, and my friend would read him chapter an' verse about who did he think he was, tyin' up his phone like that? After he'd read the riot act to whoever was at the other end, he'd hang up with a bang an' chuckle to himself, visualizin' the befuddled look on the caller's face. He wasn't angry at all, just annoyed at the intrusion.

Well it ain't all that different with the dad blamed commercials on the TV. Every time you get involved in watchin' somethin', they break in an' try to sell you some snake oil. If that ain't bad enough, they do it over an' over. Then somebody else tries to get you to donate to somethin' or other. By the time you get back to what you figured you'd be watchin', you forgot the story line for crimeny sakes. Listen, I ain't got nothin' against these snake oil salesmen. They gotta make a livin' too, an' they're just hornin' in wherever they're allowed to go.

An there's the problem right there! The governin' body that regulates all that stuff is asleep at the switch. They're so busy regulatin' who buys what airwaves an' broadcast content an' all that business, you'd think somebody in that whole dang place could figure out you need a separate channel that is strictly for adverstisin'. That way, if you need somethin' you just go to that channel an' watch for what you need. An' don't think nobody would watch it neither. Them cuckoo birds in the advertisin' business know how to make things attractive for people an first thing you know the ratin's would be right up there.

An' the dynamics wouldn't have to change at all neither. All the people payin' for the advertisin' would just move the money over to the advertisin' channel an' Bob's yer uncle. Straight shuffle. Just look at the benefits. People watchin' the advertisin' channel would actually be interested in buyin' somethin' so the makers o' them products would have better sales, an' the rest of us could relax an' watch our TV without all them unwanted noisy interuptions. An' the CRTC would actually have done somethin' useful for the benefit o' the taxpayers for once. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin',