I’ve had a problem for the last couple years. Fortunately, it’s an easily solved one. Just about everything I’ve watched since about 2004 has been downloaded, or otherwise ripped from DVD’s borrowed or rented from elsewhere. This includes movies, TV shows, even the occasional hockey game–hey, I didn’t always have Leafs TV. The reasons are two-fold.

Movie companies have gotten incredibly sneaky with what they stick in that first track of current DVD’s. The one track you can’t actually skip/fast forward past–usually it just contains the FBI warning that says you can’t copy them. They’ve gotten good at cramming previews and other advertisements onto that first track. I’ve heard it said that some DVD’s actually have enough un-ignoreable advertising on there that you could theoretically run into the kitchen, whip up a quick snack, and come back in time to hit play. Download the movie instead, and snap. Problem solved.

TV shows have a similar problem. Only they actually make that problem slightly worse on TV. A typical hour-long show, minus advertisements, only actually lasts about 45 minutes. But they interrupt the show every 5-10 minutes for at least that long filled with commercials. It gets worse during live events, such as the olympics. I swear the advertising doubles at that point. And, as usual, they go to commercial during a semi-important portion of the said live event. Well, at least they didn’t cut off during most of the Canadian portions of the events.

My solution to both problems, except for the whole live events thing, is the almighty torrent. About 95% of everything I watch can easily be found, and downloaded, via that means–anything from CSI to Deep Space 9, and a few of the less popular shows that got me through highschool. Yeah, the MPAA may have a thing or three to say about it, but well, I have a thing or three to say about unwanted ads, too. I’d say we’re even. The only difference is, I won’t spend money to take down the MPAA. Yeah, I’m a pirate when it comes to TV shows. I also have a difficult time caring. You can blame the MPAA, and ads. I do. And I sleep just fine.

A goodly portion of my TV watching, at least that which doesn’t consist of hockey or baseball, is done on CTV. Usually, its Ottawa station–particularly since they were nice enough to kill news broadcasts from Ottawa’s local A Channel station.

Their Ottawa newsroom caught fire overnight last night, resulting in the temporary loss of use of that building and the possibly permanent loss of 30+ years of news and video archives. Definitely, it resulted in the permanent loss of at least 2.5 million dollars worth of computer and video technology. They get to provide their news updates during tonight’s football game–which starts in 4 minutes for anyone curious enough to watch-from the parking lot of their former headquarters. Tonight’s local update at 11:30, however, will ironically enough come from the A Channel building–the first newscast from that building since March of last year.

If you get any of your news from CTV in the Ottawa or Pembroke area, or even if you just want to help out, keep an eye pealed–there will probably be ways and means for you to do so. If you’re a Max Keeping fan and happen to have something from his time with CTV, you’re encouraged to help replace everything he’s lost in the fire this close to his retirement–info for doing so is in the article’s comments section. CTV, and the news I’ve gotten semi-used to watching from there, will probably never be the same. CTV Ottawa is dead, long live CTV Ottawa.

I used to at least make an attempt to watch American idol every couple weeks. Mostly because I was living at home and we only had 2 working TV’s, both of which would usually be in use, but a small part of me found something about the show fascinating. It wasn’t necessarily any of the actual talent–there haven’t been all that many that I’ve seen that made me want to pick up the phone and repeatedly call in to vote, or clear my schedule the next week to see if they ended up bombing out or if they made it into the top fifty million. I thought it might have been the overall hillarity of some of these people who somehow got the judges to believe they could sing, only to have themselves booted when someone outside the actual broadcast could make the decision. Then, I figured it was the general amusement I got out of listening to people who thought they really really could sing, only to discover–not entirely too unexpectedly–they really really couldn’t. Nope, wrong again.

Why do I bother to tolerate a show like American Idol, when I’d much rather be doing just about anything else? Because at least once in a season, usually only once, you get that one particular fool who figures him or herself to be god’s gift to anything musically inclined, and there’s just nothing you can say or do short of tranking them that’ll make them shut up about it. My major complaint with American Idol? It only happens maybe once in a season. So after I see it, I no longer have any real interest in watching. So I usually skip out.

Take tonight’s show, for example. I watched it only because it was on, my mother had the remote, and I’m mommy sitting. And, admittedly, because if the show completely sucks at everything else, I can at least snicker at some of the things that come out of Simon Cowell. It didn’t disappoint on either front tonight, but now that I have no real interest in watching next week, I can make do with what I saw.

Near the end of tonight’s show, we were treated to a very stoned-sounding dood who thought, though I have no idea why–other than the fact he very well might have been stoned, that he could actually carry a tune without a half ton truck. And he chose to demonstrate his unquestionable singing ability with Amazing Grace–not exactly world’s most popular, or best really, song to begin with. That was mistake number 1. Mistake number 2, though? Actually having the nerve to be surprised when all 3 judges pretty much simultaneously decided he redefined suckitude. Mistake number 3? Insisting they were wrong and offering to give them an encore. Whether they wanted to hear it or not. The gentleman’s reward? A personal escort outside. In handcuffs. Whether he wanted to or not.

Now, why in the hell doesn’t American Idol show more stuff like that? That’d make the show about 5 times more interesting to watch. Hell, I might even manage to last through to the finals if they happened to have someone up there who, upon receiving the impression they’re god’s gift to anyone with ears, got told to go pack. Maybe I’m just abnormal, but seeing a person get all uppity like that about a few million people who all think he should be flipping burgers instead of singing would be worth sitting through the rest of the crap. My problem with American Idol really is that simple. They pretty it up too much. That’s probably why you only see maybe 3 or 4 of the people who end up going home–the others, they figure, are probably too strung out at someone having the nerve to prick their ego. And thus, there goes any entertainment value for me. Don’t get me wrong, Idol’s an okay show, if there’s nothing else on and I’m desperate. But it could be so much better. And I might walk away from a show not feeling like taking a nap.

Dear Idol producers. If you happen to be seeing something similar to this here entry, take it under advisement. I have a problem with your show. It bores me to tears. Thank you.

Also, randomly tacked on side point: I still maintain Simon Cowell should consider a career in politics. We’d then at least know what we’re getting, even if we don’t all agree with or like the guy. More than we can say now.

I can tell you one thing I ended up not being thankful for when I woke up this morning after last night’s festivities. I staggered out to the computer, and went through my various news sources, coming up on this bit of disturbing news. It would appear, much to the dismay of just about anyone who’s had any experience with the downloading of torrents over the last… oh, 4 or 5 years or so, Mininova picked yesterday to close its doors to all but legitimately uploaded torrents. Which, as it turns out, rules out just about everything now on my list of things to be downloaded. Fortunately, if you follow the guys over at EZTV, they’ve already moved everything you might be looking for to alternate downloading sources. Which means, at least that illegally downloaded content will remain online. Now, to just hold out a little longer in the hopes that Demonoid makes a reappearance. Rest in piece, Mininova. We’re gonna miss you.

Okay, Just to set the stage here, I know not everyone’s going to like, appreciate, or even approve of what goes on on TV, particularly nowadays–that’s part of the reason I don’t actually watch TV very often anymore. But, there’s gotta be a line drawn somewhere between that and ridiculous. And expecting someone to appologise for being themselves is, well, about as ridiculous as it gets.

On the American Music Awards, also known as the same show that allows such brilliantly talented artists as Eminem to spend 5 minutes rapping about raping women and interlacing at least half a dozen not rated for TV phrases in along with it, Adam Lambert had the unmitigated gaul to actually kiss his keyboard player–yes, also male–during a performance. Yes, I curse. I curse a lot. I’ll probably do a fair bit of cursing on this here blog–I’ve done it before. I have no problem with that. Much like I have no problem with the openly gay guy who wants to kiss some dood on TV–yes, in spite of the fact I actually do have a girlfriend and am not, will not be, and have not been, gay myself. What I have a problem with, and this is a huge problem, is people who will presume to complain enough about that that it makes headlines for days after the awards, and yet leave Eminem’s talented performance alone, and not offer a comment except in passing when certain other performers break beer bottles over pianos. Okay, I get it. We’re not ready for an openly gay performer like that. But we’re ready for women to show their stuff on stage and guys to talk about raping them.

The guy’s gay. Big deal. He kissed another guy on stage. Also, big deal. And he’s not appologising for it. I may not like the music, but just for this, I sincerely hope he brings his boyfriend, life partner, whatever it is he wants to call the guy he’s with, with him to his next interview and kisses him right on camera. If we’re going to complain about things that may or may not be offensive, let’s at least try and introduce some consistency to the mix here, shall we?

For years now, I’ve been watching slowly less and less TV. At least, watching less of it actually *on* my television. Before, say, in about 2003 or so, I used to watch just about everything I wanted to on TV–you didn’t use to have a whole lot of other choice. I mean, you could download every single episode of every single series you were keeping up with, one episode at a time, but it usually took for bloody ever, and often times they weren’t exactly of very decent quality. Plus, I was in college, and the college network had a nasty little habbit of randomly crapping out–sometimes for a couple hours at a time, so that made doing anything that required a constant net connection a little tiny bit challenging.

Flash forward 6 years or so. Now, with the growing popularity of torrenting technology, plus increasingly faster connections, downloading entire seasons of series becomes a whole lot easier–I’m downloading the first 7 seasons of CSI Miami as I write this. Add to that, you can pretty much pay I think it’s like $5 or so, if that, to somewhere like iTunes and have access to download entire seasons that way. And there’s still the old fashion method of downloading one episode at a time over your more traditional filesharing clients–Bear Share comes to mind–although many of the same issues of old usually pop their heads up when that’s tried. And, if that isn’t good enough and you want to keep things on the still semi-legal, many of the more popular shows are usually available online, streamed directly from the originating station/network’s website–for exactly free. Of course, if desperation sets in there’s always Youtube if nothing else.

So what’s the point? Lately, I’ve been keeping track of exactly how much actual TV I watch on TV, and the amount is really quite surprising. Consider it like this. At the moment, my TV’s turned off. It may stay turned off until 7:30 tonight, when the hockey game comes on. It may get turned on maybe an hour and a half earlier for local news, assuming I decide I can’t get just as much information online throughout the day. And it will probably be turned off again after tonight’s hockey game–unless my Leafs display their usual amount of suckitude, at which point it may be turned off halfway through said game. That routine will likely continue, until approximately April 5th or so, at which point the baseball season will start, and my TV will be on long enough to watch that. I don’t usually watch Star Trek, CSI, or any of my other shows on TV anymore, unless they happen to be on at someone else’s place while I’m over. I don’t watch American Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance, so I’m not missing a whole lot by not catching up on who got kicked/voted/bought off or whatever on those series. So really, my TV watching peaks at perhaps, at most, maybe 5 hours a week–all of it sports broadcasts you can’t download, or stream without usually paying for it anyway.

I was reading earlier this morning about the so-called TV tax hearings being held in Ottawa between the broadcasters and the cable companies. During yesterday’s hearings, CTV, one of Canada’s major broadcasting companies, escentially told the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that if cable companies don’t start paying for the privelege of transmitting their signals–which, roughly translated, means if we don’t start paying up for the privelege of receiving their signals, they will either start blocking US programming or pull their signals off any carriers who don’t want to pay for it. Which, to me, means I’ll lose my local news. Which I get online anyway. Hockey Night in Canada is streamed online, so if I have to, I can watch it there for far less than I’m paying for the privelege to watch it on a CBC channel as it is. Rogers and Bell Canada own two of the major broadcasting channels my sports programs show up on outside of HNIC–Sportsnet and TSN, respectively, so I doubt they’ll be pulling their own channels off the various networks. And, since I get my US programming fix via Torrents, directly from the originating US networks’ websites, or when I’m over at someone else’s place, I don’t miss much by having it blocked by CTV.

So what are we missing again? Broadcasters want compensation from the cable companies, who will take said compensation from us, for… exactly what? So we have the option to watch our local news on TV as opposed to getting it from any number of newspapers, either online or in paper copy? So we can watch the same shows on TV, occasionally interupted by commercials, that we can either buy from iTunes or download from Mininova without, or that we can watch with different commercials by tuning in the originating US network? If the choice is between that and paying more for the privelege of being able to watch the same, limited number of programs I actually still watch on TV, I see a cancelation in my not too distant future.