Sunday, January 31, 2010

Shut-up Stupid Sunday: CBS and doing the Right Thing


This post is not about CBS’s decision to air Focus on Family’s rant against free will. I feel it won’t make a bit of difference, as it will probably be like the rest of the stuff they put out and not be translated to the 74% of America that doesn’t speak moron. So it will be the bankrupt organizations last masturbatory message to the people they’ve been fleecing, which they rightfully call their flock.

This post is about CBS’s business decision to go out of their way to turn away customers.

When I was broke I had to give up pay TV and start watching shows online. That’s not a problem as Hulu airs most of what is on TV and the things they don’t are available illegally.

The illegal sites offer high-quality, commercial free broadcasts of all TV shows. Hulu barely works, it offers low-quality versions of shows with commercial breaks, in both meanings of the word the commercials often don’t load and you have to restart the show. Hulu is technically is inferior to the illegal sites, but it offers one thing the illegal sites don’t: The people who made the show get some money from Hulu (not much but some).

If I have the choice between high-quality, non-annoying TV watching that doesn’t pay the artists vs. low quality, annoying, barely workable TV watching that pays the artists I’ll go for the low quality, annoying, barely workable TV every time.

CBS is deliberately turning people like me away by not putting their shows on Hulu and instead puts them up on their own site, which doesn’t work. Most of the time it won’t load at all, when it does it doesn’t buffer so if there is a network slow down or interruption instead of pausing for 10 or 20 seconds it stops for a second, plays for a second, stops again. So instead of giving the watcher a minor annoyance it turns that part of the program into gibberish.

The seek function on their videos is a joke so when a commercial doesn’t load you can’t just reload the show and sit through the commercials like on other sites.

In other words they have a site that is unwatchable and it has been that way since I first started watching TV online 6 years ago.

As a result if CBS puts out a show, viewers who have given up on the Cable and Satellite Companies are forced to watch it illegally and not support the artists who made it. CBS has responded by making a programming schedule that makes people not care if their “artists” get paid. They either put out shows from Mark Burnett who doesn’t pay the stars of his shows or they put out total crap. As far as their new shows it doesn’t matter that they have to be watched illegally, but they also have some old shows from a time when their target audience wasn’t the people who are to stupid to figure out how to use their remote and get stuck on CBS and only use the TV for soothing background noise. I would watch shows like the original Twilight Zone and Star Trek with commercials because if those shows continue to make money it would encourage TV producers to invest in quality, but CBS doesn’t give me that choice.

While CBS turns people like me away they complain how they are losing money to illegal sites.

So to the executives at CBS who bitch about the illegal sites, but don’t give viewers a way to watch their shows with advertisements I say, “Shut-up Stupid” and give me a way watch your damn shows that will make you money.

Is there a group of stupid people that irritate you? If so I am looking for a guest blogger to do their own “Shut-up Stupid” post. Drop me and email at: morestupid2@yahoo.com.

3 comments:

Stephanie Barr said...

I am very opinionated on this topic, not just TV but movies and more. So much so that I might have to do a guest spot about people panicking about illegal recording and the stupid lengths they go to. Swamped this week, though, so probably not tomorrow.

Doctor Faustroll said...

I love everything and everyone. Why do you liberals hate America?

BTW, I remember some kid talking about Dobson's program once. She called it Poke Us in the Fanny.

Anonymous said...

I love this post. I don't live in the US so I can't view HULU, but I TV is getting to such a joke these days over here as well, so much advertising, shows running 10 mts over time, its all about the advertisers getting their bucks worth nothing to do with quality or care of service. And yeah most of the TV is BS anyway, reality shows, crap, nothing worth watching. I download most stuff now because of all the reasons you and I have mentioned. Not surprising that the world at large have spoken and said its not good enough!