You know the pitch.
DirecTV, now with ten billion channels! All of them are in HD, as well as regular D! Three new movie channels for every day for the rest of your life, guaranteed! Record seven hundred shows at once with the DVR-humbo-jumbo and never miss your, your wife’s, your son’s, your mom’s, your coworkers’, or anyone in greater Salt Lake City’s favorite shows that are all playing at once again! Sports games, from every angle—like the new Jock Cam! Watch the games as they’re seen by your favorite player’s genitals!
I get it. Big numbers are impressive and help sales. I’m not going to waste my time with AT&T’s package that’s only up to nine billion channels (they’ve got the Jock Cam, but not for any of the minor league or high school games. Pfft!).
Who is actually watching all that junk? Really? Even the most devout, relentless TV watchers must have some specialized interests—sports, dramas, movies, etc.—rendering 75% of the channels useless. Is there a version of Dunbar’s Number for TV channels?
And further: What’s the point anymore of putting the news at Channel 2, then the sports at channel 134, and then the movies between channels 7632-48? In the old days, you had different channel numbers to reflect different wave frequencies to be picked up by your TV antenna. And there’s no consistency from carrier to carrier, area to area. When I come home to New York to visit my parents, I can’t find anything on TV. I’m 23—I should have at least 40 more years before I’ve got to toss the remote aside to some young whippersnapper and scoff at this sort of thing.
Who’s winning here? Does DirecTV get an ego boost every time I have to scroll through six dozen channels to find the one I want? Is it a bizarre revenue sharing model to try and generate commercial viewership for lesser-watched channels? Is it some kind of a sales pitch that half the channels I click on while I’m surfing are unavailable because I don’t have the right programming package? You want to watch one of these twelve channels? Too bad! Should’ve gotten the ninety billion channel package, instead of your puny ten billion option.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t make sense.
You know how I’d win the next generation of TV watchers? Keep your eleven trillion channel programming packages, but give me the option to program the channels to whichever number I want. Channels 1-10 that I love, 11-11,000,000,000,000 to sniff through on a rainy day.