DsTV - “So Much Less”
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Well, the subscription to DsTV has just gone up yet again to nearly R500 and we all wonder ‘is it worth it?’.
And this of course after resolutely proclaiming that if it goes up just one more time we’re going to bin it. The answer of course is that it’s not worth it. Rather read some good books from the library for nothing. Take up a hobby like dancing. Anything rather than sitting like zombies in front of the box every night, complaining about there being nothing on. The most watched channel is the programme guide. Up & down and up & down all night trying to find something watchable.
There’s always something on and generally it’s of good quality but there are only so many dinosaur/shark/tornado/murder programmes that one can watch. Even that self opinionated great plonker Clarkson is getting predictable - OK? We often watch something that we know we have watched before, hoping to glean some additional ‘pleasure’ from it. Even worse, we dig into the DVD box and watch something really ancient from VHS days.
Sky News is the fallback channel but they’re in danger of being renamed Sky We run The Same Tired News For At Least Three Days - and it’s all bad news. I used to think that the local news channels inclined one to tear one’s own head off in frustration but Sky has got just as depressing. I wonder if the DsTV executives scroll up and down the programme guide saying ‘Oh. for Christ’s sake!’.
The final pathetic excuse for keeping the technological shambles is the sport. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll get rid of it just after the Super 14′. Then there’s something else and something else. I think that if the sport channels were removed, the subscription would halve.
Of course, I haven’t factored in the junior opinions. While still at their mother’s breasts, children can (silently) recite all the channels and their numbers. One day, they will emerge from the womb complete with remote. I for one would ban all cartoon channels - except of course for Tom & Jerry. If there are religious channels, I think that in all fairness there should be anti-religious channels, worshipping Satan or the empty waste basket in the corner.
The really sad thing about the general entertainment channels is that there is so much good material out there that we will never see. There’s the odd good film but the rest of the programming is dominated by thousands (because I am sure it is in the thousands) of straight to TV junk. The plots are predictable, the dialogue, execrable, the acting is atrocious and where there are special effects, there is an abundance of string. Rubbish.
Yet, perfectly sane and intelligent folk sit and watch this twaddle dressed up as ’side splitting comedy’ or some such night after night after night.
To add video insult to audio injury, there are the commercial breaks which are a mixture of commercials and DsTV promos. Without mentioning the banality of the former, I would like to say a word or two about the latter.
What in God’s name do they thinik they’re doing? Promos lasting well over a minute are thrust at us - advertising DsTV. We’ve got the bloody thing already! These wretched pieces of video pulp are shown thousands of times, presumably to save on programming time. Any of the documentary channels show only 36 minutes of actual programming per hour. The other 24 comprises the aforesaid insult to the intelligence, future programmes (which I understand), commercials and station IDs.
Have you noticed that at the end of another sad queue of commercials, the station ID comes up - National Geographic is an example. Thousands who have muted the mind numbing junk see the station ID and suddenly all unmute the programme only to endure another 3 minutes of utter dross.
Like Save Energy Day, we should have an Unsubscribe to DsTV month. We’d all be better off.