How often do you visit the forest?

Two nights ago, I was channel surfing the Comcast Digital Plus service. Out of boredom.

In case you failed to notice, with the Comcast digital set-top box EVERY CHANNEL gets displayed when you surf, even the ones you're not authorized to access ... that screen content "blacked out" but of course the datastream still presenting the name of the channel, the number, and the current program selection anyway.

Read that last one to apparently force upon me "what you're missing by not subscribing to this tier." I suppose this is a marketing scheme, some brilliant idea from another Comcast genius thinking I'll stumble across a show or movie that I'm so very desperate to view, I'll immediately reach for the phone and upgrade so not to miss it.

Right.

What I'm really being shown, with the program title and channel ID for EVERYTHING to which I'm not subscribed, is how repetitious and limited the programming universe really is. I'm happy for the movie studios, and all their "evergreen content" ... titles in their vaults that continue to generate revenue, year after year, be it DVD or PPV or premium channel packages. An ever-green forest of profits. I mean, how often can I possibly refuse to miss another rerun of "Die Hard" 1 or 2 or 3?

Two nights ago, all this surfing brought me to the 1964 Jerry Lewis film from Paramount, "The Patsy." It was running on Showtime's Family channel, a heavily leveraged premium service. This is a movie, now half-a-century old, that in the past ran time and again on over-the-air network television, syndicated local TV off-hour Hollywood movie packages, and even in a DVD home release. A quick check shows it can be purchased outright today for $3.77 from a multitude of retail web sites.

Now how much would you pay?

And yet, this title is presented as Prime Time Premium Cable Programming. Not basic service. Not practically free On Demand. Pay Premium Cable. I'm all for evergreen, but how often should I be expected to visit this forest?

And clicking through the Comcast Universe (near-pun intended) noting all the content I CANNOT view because I don't subscribe, I spot movie after movie after movie I already watched earlier on Encore or Multiplex or Starz or any of the other "pay services" that DO exist in my current tier. So, how does this motivate me to upgrade to additional premium services, when I can already see that a huge portion is stuff I've already recently watched elsewhere? What's my motivation? Why is forcing me to understand everything that's on every channel I CAN'T get such a good idea?

Instead, why can't I have a function that blocks or skips the ID and Current Program display for stuff I don't receive? Did anyone at Comcast every consider THAT option, that I could partake more of the content for which I'm authorized if it was easier and faster to access it? If I didn't need to wade through every single blocked channel in their digital maw?

But, that, apparently, is why Comcast is making the big bucks.

What do I know?


Jim Furrer