Whatever happened to the notion of streaming content services with no commercials? What I mean is, the deal we had with these new streaming services was: You pay extra for viewing our content and you get the pleasure of not having to bite off your fingernails waiting for commercials to end. You need to go to the bathroom, no problem, just hit the pause button. How civilized! Sirius radio which is now in every car manufactured offered the same basic deal: You pay us a ridiculous amount of money for content you’ll never listen to, or care to listen to and we won’t make you sit through commercials.
But then something happened. The rug got pulled out from underneath us. Actually, a couple of rugs were pulled. As it turns out if you add up the cost of all these content providers you’ll be paying a ginormous king’s ransom every month. MIT is working on the algorithm to determine if we can save $7 a month by giving up cable and going with streaming services over the internet. They estimate having a prototype ready by 2026, it’s a tough nut to crack. Recently, I heard there’s a new service called, “Sling.” It promises very inexpensive content, but you have to watch it with one eye closed, otherwise you pay double. And do we really want to use a service called Sling? It just sounds like an illegal app only found on the Dark Web. In the era of big brother is always watching, I’m sure the FBI is waiting for me to download the app so they can put me in the slammer for Slinging. I’ve given up. They win on this front. It’s just too painful to try to figure out and I can’t listen to the litany of pros and cons any more.
But what I can tell you is that these services have broken their contract with the United States of America! And what I mean is, let’s say you’re listening to Joel (Osteen) on Sirius. He’s pontificating about some of David’s missteps, post slaying of Goliath. Then all of a sudden you get a commercial for Fixed Term Life Insurance, brought to you by, “Who Did It and Ran.” But wait a minute; I’m paying a lot of shekels for Sirius. I’m not supposed to be getting commercials. Obviously I didn’t read the deceptively fine print of the contract as my atomic microscope was in the shop for repairs. The Hulu streaming service has also lost its moral compass. Recently, without warning they began injecting commercials into their content. And not only are they force-feeding commercials into their programing, but the commercials are odiously long and frequent. They’re doubling down. It's like they’re saying, “In your face, we don’t give a…hoot!” (Good choice of four letter word, right?) My wife spent about three hours online scouring every corner of the Internet universe looking for an explanation of what happened. It seems in a distant dark region of the Web, out by Pluto, she found that Hulu is thinking of offering a new more expensive service with no commercials – what a surprise! Unfortunately you need a law degree to understand the verbiage of the new and improved contract, if you can find it. The unredacted version is not available.
I think we can all see where this is going. Over the last couple of years Wikipedia, my “goto” for online information began asking for donations to keep their business afloat. Facebook has recently been making comments along the lines of…and I’m paraphrasing, “If you don’t give us access to all of your Personal Information (PI) and your contact lists, we’re going to need to start charging you for Facebook. What’s next, are we going to need to write Al Gore a check every time we use the Internet?
Happily, there is a rainbow at the end of this story. But we all have to stick together, no division. Remember, we are the United States of America! My hope is that these media organizations that enable our online world and the content in it do start charging the public directly for their services. Here’s why…warning you may get dizzy trying to follow my fuzzy math.
Let’s say for an average family of four, we were charged:
• Five cents for every e-mail & text message we send or receive. Figure 200 a day per person, that’s ~ $15,000 a year for the household.
• Social Media - $2 a post, two posts a day. Three platforms ~ $17,500 a year.
• AI Tools - $500 a profile. Run of the mill requests of the AI engine $10. Want a term paper - $500. Want a term paper that’ll get you into Stanford - $5,000. (Your kid gets caught and you go to jail for helping, value to you: priceless) My wild guess at the annual cost for AI: $25,000. And if you don’t pay, they’ll just create a new identity of you and it’ll pay. How much are you loving AI now?
• Other services like Wikipedia, gaming, or the weather service etc: To make the math easy ~ $10,000.
• Internet access & a plentiful bundle of content we’ll never watch: ~ $12,500.
Conservatively, we come to a total of 80,000 after tax dollars a year to continue using these services that rot our minds and cause our kids to need an abundance of psychotherapy. The simple math tells us this can’t go on. In the words of John Lennon: Imagine!
Imagine if we all came together and said, “No more!” Kids would go outside and get exercise as a way of occupying their minds and bodies. And to replace the adrenaline rush they need, maybe they try skydiving. Or turn to artistic endeavors and create. Maybe we listen to music or try a really crazy idea…turn a couple of pages and read a book. (Hopefully something inappropriate as determined by someone’s inappropriate rules.) In the end, we work harder for what we want and become healthier - if the parachute opens. And we stay out of jail by not helping our kids cheat their way into a good college.
