'Zombie TV': Cable Channels Left Showing Reruns as Their Owners Invest in Streaming Services (yahoo.com) 137
All those original shows on streaming services brought us "peak TV." But the New York Times reports on the flipside: back in the cable universe, they're experiencing "zombie TV":
In 2015, the USA cable network was a force in original programming. Dramas like "Suits," "Mr. Robot" and "Royal Pains" either won awards or attracted big audiences. What a difference a few years make. Viewership is way down, and USA's original programming department is gone. The channel has had just one original scripted show this year, and it is not exclusive to the network — it also airs on another channel. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" for all but two hours, when it showed reruns of CBS' "NCIS" and "NCIS: Los Angeles."
Instead of standing out among its peers, USA is emblematic of cable television's transformation. Many of the most popular channels — TBS, Comedy Central, MTV — have quickly morphed into zombie versions of their former selves. Networks that were once rich with original scripted programming are now vessels for endless marathons of reruns, along with occasional reality shows and live sports... Advertisers have begun to pull money from cable at high rates, analysts say, and leaders at cable providers have started to question what their consumers are paying for. In a dispute with Disney this year, executives who oversee the Spectrum cable service said media companies were letting their cable "programming house burn to the ground...."
The media companies that own the channels are in a bind. The so-called cable bundle was enormously profitable for media companies, and more than 100 million households subscribed at the peak. But subscribers are rapidly declining as people migrate toward streaming. Now roughly 70 million households subscribe to cable. As a result, most media companies are pulling resources from their individual cable networks and directing investment toward their streaming services. Peacock, which is owned by NBCUniversal, also the parent of USA, has begun making more and more original scripted shows over the last three years.
However, most streaming services are hemorrhaging cash. (An NBCUniversal executive said this week that Peacock would lose $2.8 billion this year.) Cable, although it is getting smaller, remains profitable.
Media analyst Michael Nathanson believes last year was saw a "tipping point" when cable advertising decreased — by double-digit percentages — in five consecutive fiscal quarters. "Advertisers are starting to realize that there's really nothing on here and they shouldn't pay for it."
One consultant who works with entertainment companies and used to run marketing at the Oxygen cable network tells the newspaper that cable channels "are being stripped for parts." The article calculates that in 2022 there were 39% fewer scripted programs on basic and premium cable than there were in 2015.
"Reruns are filling the hole."
Instead of standing out among its peers, USA is emblematic of cable television's transformation. Many of the most popular channels — TBS, Comedy Central, MTV — have quickly morphed into zombie versions of their former selves. Networks that were once rich with original scripted programming are now vessels for endless marathons of reruns, along with occasional reality shows and live sports... Advertisers have begun to pull money from cable at high rates, analysts say, and leaders at cable providers have started to question what their consumers are paying for. In a dispute with Disney this year, executives who oversee the Spectrum cable service said media companies were letting their cable "programming house burn to the ground...."
The media companies that own the channels are in a bind. The so-called cable bundle was enormously profitable for media companies, and more than 100 million households subscribed at the peak. But subscribers are rapidly declining as people migrate toward streaming. Now roughly 70 million households subscribe to cable. As a result, most media companies are pulling resources from their individual cable networks and directing investment toward their streaming services. Peacock, which is owned by NBCUniversal, also the parent of USA, has begun making more and more original scripted shows over the last three years.
However, most streaming services are hemorrhaging cash. (An NBCUniversal executive said this week that Peacock would lose $2.8 billion this year.) Cable, although it is getting smaller, remains profitable.
Media analyst Michael Nathanson believes last year was saw a "tipping point" when cable advertising decreased — by double-digit percentages — in five consecutive fiscal quarters. "Advertisers are starting to realize that there's really nothing on here and they shouldn't pay for it."
One consultant who works with entertainment companies and used to run marketing at the Oxygen cable network tells the newspaper that cable channels "are being stripped for parts." The article calculates that in 2022 there were 39% fewer scripted programs on basic and premium cable than there were in 2015.
"Reruns are filling the hole."
MTV (Score:5, Informative)
Really...? Using MTV saying it is a zombie version of its former self?
Remember when MTV was... MUSIC Television !?
Re:MTV (Score:5, Informative)
MTV as it used to be probably wouldn't make any money anymore.
Not when you can find just about any music video on YouTube these days (often on an official channel from the artist/label/whatever)
Re:MTV (Score:4, Insightful)
MTV [youtube.com] as it used to be was to promote music from various artists. It was a popular thing to run at fast food chains and whatever because nobody had to care about picking music, the channel did that.
Then it became a crap show with some obscure shows that were useless and nobody really cared about.
The end result is that now it's more profitable to install microwave ovens and do kitchen deliveries than to be in the entertainment business.
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MTV when it started didn't have enough content for more than an hour or two of content so it was continually repeating the same songs in its early day.
It only grew because people actually started enjoying music videos and those exploded as a huge marketing tool, providing MTV with lots of new content that pays a lot of money because it became part of the promotional campaign.
These days, not so much since official music videos are easily available on demand from video sites like YouTube, among others.
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Not when you can find just about any music video on YouTube these days (often on an official channel from the artist/label/whatever)
Artists bitch about being starving artists while officially giving their product away for free.
And we wonder why certain economic models are ultimately fucked.
Re:MTV (Score:5, Insightful)
1) In most cases, it's not the artist's choice. Unless the artist isn't signed to a label or they've negotiated a non-standard contract, it's generally the label that decides what gets uploaded to YouTube.
2) It's not being given out for free. In addition to a small share of monetization from ads, YouTube pays fees for mechanical and performance licenses. Unfortunately those fees go into a labyrinthine web of royalty organizations that make it difficult for an unsigned artist to ever collect anything. Signed artists have to deal with a label/publisher collecting the royalties and taking their (often hugely unfair) share of them before anything is handed over.
In short, don't blame artists for the capitalist system that exploits them and takes most of the profit the artist's work generates.
Re:MTV (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately those fees go into a labyrinthine web of royalty organizations that make it difficult for an unsigned artist to ever collect anything.
It never ceases to amaze me that a system where you can verifiably say "this track was played x times in period y" (and often know exactly who the listener was) still goes into a system where revenue is distributed "statistically" based on the premise that it's unworkable to figure out exactly how many times a given track was played.
Re:MTV (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, don't blame artists for the capitalist system that exploits them and takes most of the profit the artist's work generates.
Considering that the whole concept of copyright and intellectual property, is really capitalist, in and of itself since it creates a private domain which really can't exist outside of a completely constructed legal structure, it comes across a bit brazen for artists to criticise capitalism, when they're throwing their lot into the system to make money in the first place. Nothing says controlling the means of production more than legally protecting ideas with copyright.
Now there is something to be said for gatekeepers and "platforms" who basically demand their cut in rent-seeking, but this is just a situation where it really boils down to a value proposition. Does an artist want to stay local and be in control of everything, or do they want to jump onto a platform with the potential to be seen by just about anyone, almost anywhere in the world? The value proposition remains that either an artist slaves away to break out, and then their name is enough to attract attention on its own, or, if there's something worthwhile there, they can use platforms to try to help with outreach.
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Artists bitch about being starving artists while officially giving their product away for free.
Remind me how much the performers are paid when their songs are played on the radio? Oh, yes, that's right, in the US, radio stations have never paid performers when they broadcast their songs.
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>Oh, yes, that's right, in the US, radio stations have never paid
>performers when they broadcast their songs.
In fairness, that came from an era in which airplay was seen as free and desirable advertising. To the point that DJs were bribed by studios to play them.
The payoff was expected to be in selling more records and concert tickets.
Aspiring artists went on road trips pleading with each DJ to play their songs . . .
In today's world, though, the model makes very little sense--but getting everyone to
LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
I read somewhere that around 60-70% of MTV's schedule these days consists of reruns of a show where a few people watch viral videos and talk about them.
There are Youtube channels of people mowing overgrown lawns that get more viewers than MTV these days.
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There are Youtube channels of people mowing overgrown lawns that get more viewers than MTV these days.
And the youth get offended when Boomers mock the entertainment they value. Harrumph.
Whoever said the simpleton mind is simple, was being incredibly kind to those standing on their lawn looking for invisible Pokemon.
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Remember when MTV was... MUSIC Television !?
(GenAlpha) "TF is an MTV?"
(GenZ) "I think I heard a Boomer talk about it once. Dunno, I wasn't paying attention."
(GenY) "Uh, actually..no. No, I don't."
(GenX) "Yeah. Back when I was shoving cassettes in my car dash and making sure I didn't accidentally grab the leaded gas pump."
Not even MTVs zombie version of its former self, played music.
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Born in 69, so I guess I'm "GenX"?
I remember when MTV started and first came to cable, watched the first video they showed, and would occcasionally have it run in the background when I wasn't trying to record songs I wanted copies up from the radio....
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Really...? Using MTV saying it is a zombie version of its former self?
Remember when MTV was... MUSIC Television !?
No, not even Pepperidge Farm remembers.
MTV was always just a mouthpeice for whatever the music industry wanted to plug at the time. Even before the days of Youtube and streaming music they played very little variety in music, usually it was the same song (maybe two if you were lucky) played almost constantly for the entire month with an hour or so dedicated to the artists other work. It was almost worse than radio.
The next logical step was to start making terrible reality TV.
That reminds me (Score:3)
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I would imagine they could probably pull in a lot of Gen X if they just created a channel that rebroadcast the original programming from the 80's in broadcast order. 120 Minutes...Headbangers Ball...Young Ones...Liquid Television...MTV News...Yo! MTV Raps...original bumps...all of it! They'd have to go with new ads but everything else would be the same.
Just now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes....what are the customers paying for? They knew the problem 30 years ago when satellite starting advertising 500 channels. The obvious implication was that the cable networks had less to watch. Now they've finally figured it out. I mean I used to love the history channel, and I'll watch a stupid curse of oak island episode every single time. However I already know that each episode had approximately 4 minutes of actual new content, 16 minutes of hype, and another 10 of advertising.
The cable networks for a few years simply made money selling the streaming rights to the streaming corps, but they all stopped doing that because then they thought they were losing out on direct sales. Turns out now they're just plain losing.
Re:Just now? (Score:5, Informative)
Studios are making it harder and harder (and / or more expensive) for viewers to watch their content and then cry when people torrent movies.
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Just do like others do and rotate your streaming subscriptions when there are shows that you want to watch. The nice thing about streaming is the ease with which you can subscribe and cancel at will. Good luck doing that with your cable subscription.
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They need to bundle them all together as one. /s
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I hate to be "that guy", but: https://www.theonion.com/area-... [theonion.com]
None of this drama effects me in ANY way. It was the ads that pushed me away 30+ years ago. The lack of content and how it is spread across numerous services is merely "chefs kiss" delicio.
ROFL
Sports (Score:2)
I'm not sure that's true anymore, I think google did a big sports push for the NFL, not sure where the NBA stands. MLB has always been pretty easy to get digitally going all the way back to the days of watching games on a brick phone
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Yes....what are the customers paying for? They knew the problem 30 years ago when satellite starting advertising 500 channels.
I wrote an essay for a scholarship almost thirty years ago in which I predicted that more direct content delivery over the Internet would make broadcast TV obsolete within one to two decades. To be honest, I'm surprised that these channels took this long to die. Were it not for powerful entrenched interests like Comcast and Time Warner that owned both cable companies *and* content creators (and thus had an incentive to prop up cable TV by releasing content there before making it available for streaming),
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Re:Just now? (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently dumped DirecTV when they once again jacked up prices. Part of it is that I updated my RaspberryPi and got it to play widevine protected streams well. When I called them to cancel, of course they sent me to retention. I wanted to be fair so I told the person my new DTV bill would be $165/month but I figured out a combination of streaming packages for $50/month that gave me what I wanted. I gave her the chance to beat that. She came back with $96/month and seemed baffled that I didn't jump at that.
In case I had any doubts (I didn't), days after that call, I saw that DTV was trying to sneak in yet another rate hike and at least one of the local channels went dark because they are once again battling over fees.
The only channels I ever cared about that I don't have now were TNT, TBS, and USA. But then I realized it's been a while since any of those showed anything new, so who cares?
And it's not just the cable channels. The big 4 broadcast networks are steadily being stripped of new programming as well. Fox moved the Orville from broadcast to streaming. CBS moved a few and some like Picard never went over the air at all. Even parts of the NCIS family were meant to be streaming only and only appeared on broadcast when the writers and actors strike killed the fall season.
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It's funny to me when people talk about wasted time as though they would put those extra minutes toward something productive. Chances are, they would just use that extra time to watch other content, which is just as much of a waste.
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THIS.
My wife loves hockey but without cable or pricey streaming, you can't really get the games.
She was even considering paying for NHL streaming but the price was INSANE AND the games she wanted to watch would often be subjest to blackout because they were home market games, and we live in the Detroit Metro area.... Bally Sports+ was the only real option, and there's still a few games (+playoffs) they don't how at all, had to jump to SlingTV last year for the NHL Playoffs after dropping Bally until this se
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Possibly, but my wife will never want to play around with VPN...
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Yeah, I gave up being a baseball fan because it was too much work. Over the years more and more games that would formally be broadcast OTA have migrated to the franchise-owned cable channel. There is no way to pay them to get the game online due to local blackouts. Neither MLB nor the local team will take my money. The only other option is trying to find a pirate stream, but that is super unreliable and has you going to all kinds of sketchy websites. So I gave up.
"peak TV"? It all peaked, brother. (Score:3, Interesting)
All these people are migrating to streaming...why? Every weekend on Netflix is like getting to the Blockbuster at 9pm Saturday. There's nothing good. Paramount+? Searched for 25 minutes to find nothing worth an annual subscription of $2.99. Hulu? Please. Peacock? Just listing their names is half the good press they'll get this month.
It's all as peaked and gutted as Sports Illustrated.
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All these people are migrating to streaming...why?
There are plenty of good reasons to migrate to streaming.
1. Appointment viewing is terrible and except for the rare live event that isn't rebroadcast, I would never choose cable TV.
2. Unless you keep cable service all year round, DVRs aren't good for anything.
3. Even the cheapest basic plans usually cost twice what a single streaming service costs. A basic plan is likely to have far less content that you want to watch per month then any of the top 5 SVOD services.
4. Unlike Cable TV, it is trivial to switch
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Good antenna and streaming with a SmartTV will blow basic cable out of the water. Got a good deal on an outdoor antenna (indoor one wasn't getting much) and paid to have it installed on our roof, get all the local channels and then some, and RokuTV has tons of streaming channels that are free
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Don't forget over the air TV. I recently installed an antenna and I now get almost 45 stations with tons of fun re-runs and content. The craziest content is advertisements. I haven't seen those in years. Sitting down and watching someone try to scare an old person into buying life insurance is fucking funny. I love watching commercials at lunch. Best of all, it's free. I even get live sports!
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I also use Justwatch, as it works outside the US - just set your country and streaming providers.
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Funny, Stargate SG-1 is not available for streaming.
I'll just turn on my TV, switch to channel Z and enjoy the show.
Funny, I wanted to watch that episode where O'Neill hits golf balls into the Stargate. Considering that the show ran for 10 seasons, I guess it'll be playing sometime within the next decade.
I'll just watch it through Kodi from my home media server. Screw paying money to streaming services or cable, for an inferior experience.
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If you want to watch ancient shows that you could have gotten cheaper on DVD by now, certainly.
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If you want to watch ancient shows that you could have gotten cheaper on DVD by now, certainly.
Yeah, but for Stargate SG-1, you'll probably have to buy five or six complete sets to get one working set. Or at least when I bought it, they had produced a huge bad batch where they apparently didn't allow the epoxy to fully cure before sticking the discs into the cardboard sleeves (or at least I think that was the problem), resulting in severe circular scarring and pitting. So I ended up ripping all of the discs, setting aside the ones that failed to rip, ordering a replacement set, repeating the proces
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Disc Replay landed us all the season of SG-1 and Atlantis pretty cheap. Ain't got to worry about it no more.
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All these people are migrating to streaming...why?
Because if you're just going to watch mediocre shit either way, streaming is cheaper. It's also somewhat easier to cancel a streaming service than it is with cable, when it finally does dawn on you that all you ever do is browse around in the app and give up because you've already watched everything good.
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All these people are migrating to streaming...why? Every weekend on Netflix is like getting to the Blockbuster at 9pm Saturday.
I guess people don't really remember walking into that Blockbuster...and then wandering around for 30 minutes "scrolling" through the isles looking for something to watch.
Peaked? More like Same Shit, Different Decade.
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Yeah Blockbuster still got your $5 if you picked up the movie that merely looked like the one you'd heard was good but was the third rate knockoff.
Instead of "only" finding 5,000 options of nothing-to-watch wandering around a store, now you have 500,000 options of nothing-to-watch wandering around a screen or seven.
And content pimps still get your $9.95 x too-many-services every month, because everyone just knew they could fool Greed by cutting the cord.
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all about money (Score:3)
Cable channels are practically free: once I paid the cable subscription (in this backwater East European country it amounts to 6€/month, so not significant), they can make money from me only with ads. Any streaming needs paid subscription. Also, streaming can double dip: both subscription and ads. Media companies want to maximize profits, of course.
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Come to the US, where cable costs a fortune for even the weakest package, AND the customer service completely sucks
Old slashdotters turned midlife incels (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm probably not the only old Slashdotter turned midlife incel. When I was married, the TV stayed on 24/7/366. She actually used some kind of time dilation device she hid somewhere in her woman bits to round that year out to a full 366 days of non-stop TV. Then she left me for a spectacularly obnoxious, unemployed deadbeat dad after 30 years, because he is more of a man than I am, and then I tried Tinder and all the new dating stuff, hooked up once with a post-rehab drunk alcoholic train wreck who still gives me nightmares and rescue fantasies years later, and here I am.
"You were more drunk than I was." Yeah, but I can go for days, weeks, or literally months without a drop of alcohol without dying, and you can't say that. I know that look. I've seen that look before. Mom.
After 20 years as a Linux hacker, I eventually migrated back to Windows. I just got done using some Arduino components to hack the RGB lights on my Windows PC. This probably explains why the only women who will touch me are on the wrong side of rehab, but whaaaatever. I'm eventually going to figure this out, and get it working, without buying a proper cable. I've just got generic patch cables bent and twisted and crammed into each other, and I'm making progress.
My point, diffused through the fumes of all the alcohol I shouldn't have drunk the night before my appointment for a physical to assess how close I am to dying of bad health, is that I cut the TV cord when the Ex Mrs. Spuggleink fled the scene, and I haven't looked back. I watch a movie now and again. I've watched "The Martian" like 300 times. I don't watch any of those networks anymore though. The main reason is that for every 15 seconds of content, they blast you with 92 seconds of generic ads. If you're going to make me watch ads, at least make me watch ads for improved suicide methods or alcoholic products or sex bots or something useful. I don't care about tampons anymore. There are no tampons in my life anymore.
My life is devoted to my two Great Danes, and my Core i9 12-900KF RTX 3080 ridiculous I couldn't have bought it without the assistance of alcohol to dull my self-preservation algorithms PC.
Featuring Windows. So sad.
Windows 11, no less. The Windows gamer people hate this OS, but it's the most Linux-like Windows I've ever seen, and it's narrowly tolerable.
Yeah. I probably deserve to have literal decades of good karma downvoted to oblivion, and I probably deserve to be driven out of this place too. I'm a borderline troll, and I'm almost certainly an alcoholic. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Then again, it's Slashdot, and the most impressive hacker I ever knew self-destructed 20 years ago. Being good at hacking and sucking at living life kind of go hand in hand. I made it to 51. If my liver hangs in there a bit longer, I might even narrowly live long enough to see retirement.
Also, TV is garbage. Except for "The Expanse." But I watched that on Amazon Prime, so TV is still garbage.
This message brought to you by Jim Beam, and suicidal depression.
Downvote away!
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After 20 years as a Linux hacker, I eventually migrated back to Windows.
Windows XP was more or less okay. Windows 7 was tolerable. But to return to Windows from Linux when Windows 11 runs the show... is inexplicable. It's monstrous. It seems like a really bad depression.
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Well, alcoholism and bad decisions go hand in hand...
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Well, alcoholism and bad decisions go hand in hand...
One barely has to be sober to remember how to format the hard drive and erase a bad decision.
It's akin to actually returning that drunk Amazon/eBay purchase.
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Don't knock it 'til you tried it. I once tried to drink to muster the courage to chat someone up, only to find out later that I dodged a HUGE bullet there because I was eventually too drunk to talk.
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True. It's understandable enough, but it doesn't make the decisions any better.
And yes, Microholism can also be devistating.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old slashdotters turned midlife incels (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok buddy, listen and listen well because you are one of my peers. And we have to take care of each other.
1) This post of yours is a call to help, and that a really positive thing for you to do. The worst cases are those where people don't speak. You're not it.
2) The brain is a pleasure machine. It runs on it. Everyone is.
You feel depressive because there has been a lot of displeasant things in your life, and your brain is thinking this depression thing should be its state. What you need is to feed your brain pleasure, regularly, so it stops thinking it should be depressive. It is kinda like a switch between two modes in the brain.
3) Use what you have to accomplish #2.
a) Your Great Danes.
Excellent. Do you have fun with your dogs? Do you go play with them? Do you take them to park or a space where you can play catch ball or frisbee with them? Regularly? Do you meet and share with other Great Danes owners or similar size dogs? Do it.
b) Your core i9 + RTX 3080.
Great config. Do you have fun with it? What screens do you have with?
For fps/tps or sims, triple screen set-ups/ultrawide monitors are really, really nice. Magnifies your pleasure of playing.
Have you seen OLED screens? Have you seen your favorite games running on them? 4k OLED monitors are a thing of beauty.
Have you played on high frequency screens? 120Hz or more? Have you played your favorite 3D games on them? High framerate gives a kind of pleasure you don't ever want to go without, just moving the mouse on the screen feels better.
Ultrawide/4k OLED 120Hz+ monitors are coming soon, and there is a reason why some of us can't wait.
Have you tried VR? Jailbroken Beat Saber with custom tracks of your favorite tunes is one the best things you can have. Some flat games can be played on VR thanks to 3rd-party programs, Nier Automata does.
Have you revisited all your favorite games on your rig?
Some of them might have sequels you're not aware of? Or about to? e.g. Homeworld 3 comes out next year.
Aren't there some games you like where you could be involved in? Preservation project? Modding?
4) Keep communicating.
There are helpful people in some subs on Reddit. Go there and speak. Do it. Slashdot doesn't work as good in that aspect.
Re:Old slashdotters turned midlife incels (Score:5)
This is the best post I have read in years. Thank you
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4) Keep communicating. There are helpful people in some subs on Reddit. Go there and speak. Do it. Slashdot doesn't work as good in that aspect.
Great post, save for this suggestion.
If you have a professional-grade problem, then seek professional-grade help.
AA didn't go "all-digital" for many a valid reason.
Re:Old slashdotters turned midlife incels (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for being a good human. It's rare these days to see something that's just... positive on /.
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That actually was a really nice way to handle the ranting drunk.
So basically, I saw something about TV, it reminded me of the life I used to have, and I went into pity party mode. I do that less often now.
I don't like the life I have now, but it's the life I have. As far as the whole incel thing, I'm afraid it's true. I was the only guy at Party U who cared about good grades, and I was a virgin. Someone started stalking me. I didn't like her that much, but she was unmistakably available. I let her have me,
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> So basically, I saw something about TV, it reminded me of the life I used to have, and I went into pity party mode.
Yeah. You're watching entertainment, i.e. fantasy, and a detail from it reminds you of unpleasant things in your real life. Be assured it happens to all of us.
> I'm also self-aware enough to hate that side of myself, and to recognize how pathetic it is.
Jerks aren't self-aware. By being self-aware you are automatically in a good category of person, remember that.
Also, being self-aware is
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Which AI did you use to generate that? Did you edit at all or straight copy paste? What queries did you submit to get it to write that for you?
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Which AI did you use to generate that? Did you edit at all or straight copy paste? What queries did you submit to get it to write that for you?
I have a more relevant question; Which AI are you using that can even remotely generate a response that long without obvious illogical bullshit nonsense peppered in?
Hell, your response sounds more machine generated than the OPs.
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You seem to have little experience with gpt style AI as it tends towards very lengthy replies when "you sound like a bitter incel" would do.
You sound like a bitter incel.
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Which AI did you use to generate that? Did you edit at all or straight copy paste? What queries did you submit to get it to write that for you?
There wasn't much AI text generation back in 2015 [slashdot.org]. [ a previous comment by Spugglefink ]
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But, seriously, have you considered therapy? I think it'd help to find someone to genuinely talk this out with. (Slashdot does not count.)
As long as you don't smoke you're probably fine (Score:3)
If you're a non-smoker though you're okay but if you're not try to switch to nicotine gum. I don't know if vaping is safe or not in this case. Some of the cancers may be c
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Not being alcoholic enough for the alcohol to kill me seems like a really low bar, but it's what I have.
As far as that goes, I did seriously ramp up my fitness this year. Getting this puppy was great for me in that respect. Well, the almost grown puppy, and now the puppy's puppy. I take my girls everywhere except the grocery store, and have a hundred conversations. I meet lots of people, and lots of women especially, but there has never been any spark.
I haven't experienced one spark since the breakup. I use
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> I haven't experienced one spark since the breakup. I used to click with women all the damn time when I couldn't do anything about it.
Yes, I got a lot of friends who share that experience.
Here is how it works:
Women can feel when a man is looking for sparks, and this isn't appealing to them. But when you already have a woman such as a wife in your life, you're not looking for sparks. Women can feel that too, and this total lack of need to spark is appealing to them.
Thus we click with them when we don't n
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Saffaya already made some great points, I'd only add my $0.02 that I found a lot of pleasure in life once I got more physical activity. With 2 ginormous dogs, you probably don't lack the opportunity.
I don't mean "working out". I try to walk 2 miles every morning, it's kind of become a habit. Just getting outside is a pleasure watching the seasons change and seeing things happen at the pace nature intended. And let's be clear, I live in MN so there are a lot of objectively miserable days - I dress approp
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A short day when I slept too late and I've got to go, I still almost always manage one mile with the girls. When I have more time, 2.5 miles is my daily deal, and I like to go on longer adventures on the weekend. I was much less depressed during the summer, when I could hit three or four different trails before sunset, and run their furry little asses off.
I was still depressed during the summer though.
Anyway, the climate is more accommodating here, but not exactly tropical, and so far I have slogged through
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Hey, life can and will get better. Besides, we can't lose you on Slashdot -- there aren't that many people left here as it is. :)
I'm sure you are already aware of these resources but I think we'd be missing something if it weren't posted (US resources):
Alcoholics Anonymous
https://www.aa.org/ [aa.org]
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
https://988lifeline.org/ [988lifeline.org]
(Call 988)
Don't be afraid to reach out to one of those, it can't hurt!
With that rig, you can play most games at ultra (Score:2)
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No budget for a better monitor. I barely managed the 3080. I have a single ASUS TUF 4k that caps out at 60 fps, which is kind of okay, since a 3080 should be able to manage 60 fps at 4k in almost anything except Witcher 3. I should probably go play that. I've piddled with it a bunch of times, but I've never sat down to actually play it.
While I'm blathering in these comments, I might as well share an insight. I'm a creative guy who has a bunch of expensive tools for creation, and I haven't really created any
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I just learned that my son has never actually played The Witcher 3 either. He built a gaming rig as soon as he got a job, and he makes sure to carve out time in his work life balance to have plenty of time for gaming. He lives with me, because it's cheap, and his rent checks never bounce. Anyway, that guy is orders of magnitude more of a gamer than I will ever be, or have ever been, and he never played that game either, even though I got my copy from his Steam library.
I don't feel so bad now.
Also, I went in
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> Anyway. Blather, blather, blather, I'm probably guilty of flagrant attention whoring now.
My dude, you say that like no other programmer/dev/gamer ever wants to talk about his rig. Of course we all do dammit.
Myself, I'm chugging along with an i7-4790k and a Vega 56, triple VA panel 1080p screens with the center one @144Hz.
Go to Reddit, there are subs there where people discuss their rigs and their choice and HAVE FUN doing it.
As for gaming on Linux, maybe have a look at what Steam achieved when making t
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> So I guess all this blathering is me showing off for an audience, which seems totally pathetic when I analyze it. Look at me! I'll make a big production out of being an obnoxious drunk, and then drink in all the attention, even if it's negative.
It isn't pathetic at all. We are social creatures. We don't thrive on being isolated from one another.
Recognition is one of our most basic social and mental needs.
Even more so when you are a creative person.
Can you imagine a cook that spends efforts to make full
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Like, say, talking for an hour without saying nothing of relevance?
The problems with streaming (Score:2)
There's very limited bandwidth at the provider and they have to run a connection to each and every viewer. This simply doesn't scale well. The only way it can be done is to overcompress, use lower resolution images, and poorer quality sound.
A cable service obviously only has to send out one copy total, so can use much higher quality.
Streaming services don't transfer to DVD and ditch the content after a while, which will make the BBC's and UK's ATV junkings seem trivial in comparison. Only, this time, there
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Well, that's a lovely extrapolation from what you already know but you've left out some critical items that pretty much nullify your point.
Caching nodes exist. Prestige streaming shows exist. And they do indeed sell shows on physical media wherever there's a buck to be made from doing so - they weren't going to just leave that money on the table.
As for quantity vs. quality? We're seeing a lot more quality these days, we're just seeing exponentially more crap AND it's available 24/7 instead of waiting on
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The trick is finding it, but there are some hidden gems out there, you just have to look and take a chance.
Left Zombie TV over 15 years ago (Score:2)
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Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Cable companies (along with the networks) priced themselves out of hand with ridiculous fees and price gouging, so people said screw that and cut the cord. Then Netflix and Hulu started to lose programs to every studio wanting it's own exclusive piece of the streaming pie and it started to turn into Cable 2.0 where you needed multiple services to see the shows you wanted. People then started to try to get smart again and started subscribing to a service for a month or three, watching the exclusives they wanted, then kicking the service to the curb and moving to the next streaming service to repeat the process...
Used DVD stores helped take up a lot of the slack by people buying the discs and not needing a streaming service to watch their old favorites whenever they wanted to without having to worry that the streaming service they have has lost the rights to the shows...
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At this point, I'm seriously just waiting for someone to either create a webpage or a program that automates the process of subbing, binging and canceling.
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At this point, I'm seriously just waiting for someone to either create a webpage or a program that automates the process of subbing, binging and canceling.
Brings together multiple Internet data platforms. A combo DVR / RSS feed / daytrader system. Slap "powered by AI" on it and ??? profit!
1) You log into your content library app, select which content you're interested in watching, and set the bid price of what you're willing to pay per episode or season.
2) App federated discovery engine LLM to trawl content providers, locate what you want, read the TOC and pricing structure, then execute a subscription if it meets your "call option" criteria.
3) Of course, the
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I have something much less sophisticated in mind. Just a tool where you can enter all the shows you're interested in. The tool checks when which show's season finale is broadcast and times the subscriptions so that your subs happen whenever that show's season is done, subs, downloads the whole show, unsubs and repeats this with all the other services out there.
It's not really Cable 2.0 (Score:2)
In practice this means people sign up, hang around for the 1 or 2 shows they signed up for, cancel, and sign up for another service.
It's basically the ala cart we wanted, but we're paying for a suite of shows rather than one show at a time. I'm not 100% sure this'll last though, since I don't think thi
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piggybacking on your hot take, VPN is the next platform integrator.
Living in Panama, expat USA, the next future belongs to the innovator that erases all boundaries, zones and barriers. VPN points the way, but remains promiscuous. VPN feigns local location logins to remote servers in a way that has known solutions for grabbing an ID or location.
In a world where programming is free as in free speech via VPN-style connectivity, you have selection, choice an captions to enjoy alternate content.
I know that kind of thing (Score:2)
Happened a lot during my college times when I was rooming with some others, the last one leaving probably just forgot to turn it off.
The value of cable (Score:2)
1) Reruns are actually where cable adds value over broadcast TV. Broadcast TV still only show the new episode once per week, so if an episode is delayed for pre-empted due to sportsball or a tornado you're out of luck for at least six months.
2) The marginal cost of discovery is low. If you hear about a new show but it is on a streaming service you don't already have, you attribute the total cost to that one show. E.g. I'm the perfect audience for Star Trek shows but since the only thing on Paramount+ I know
There is too much content & no ads (Score:2)
I only subscribe to Netflix, Prime, YouTube Premium and Apple TV and there is already way more content than my family can consume. And none of that content has ads. I don't consider my family an outlier, we are typical. I strongly suspect if you looked at the demographics of who were those 70 million cabe subscribers, most of them would be over 50.
many options are available... (Score:2)
premiere some shows on cable and move them to steam a day latter, is the thing that adult swim + max does with rick and morty
other option is to have "specials" for streaming only, and "regular premiere never seen before" chapters for cable. Is what comedy central + paramout do with south park.
also, instead of doing "streaming exclusives" allow the shows to be shown on cable channels after an exclusivity period (say, one or two years). HBO Tthe channel) is moving in that direction...
"Zombie"? You mean "better"? (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is much simpler - the reruns are generally better, or much better, than the original programming. I couldn't care less about most "original programming" on either networks or cable channels, because it is largely garbage. A rerun of "The Rifleman" from 1964 is preferable to leftist programming on NBC or yet another show about Bigfoot or the "Knights Templar buried treasure in Minnesota" cable show. TBS plays almost nothing aside from reruns of "Friends", "Big Bang Theory" and "Young S
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Relax. More and more networks and even studios realize that the professionally outraged are not their audience. They just want to complain about movies, they don't want to buy tickets for the ones they want made.
Give it time 'til they realize that the money isn't in catering to the loudmouths but rather those willing to spend money.
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I don't mind "woke". If you have a good script, there's zero problem with a diverse cast. The problem most people have with more recent cinema is the checkbox-writing. Focus groups are more important than telling a story.
Once that problem is resolved, movies may actually be good again.
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One theory regarding zombie programming is creators being afraid of offending their audience of professional victims these days. Gotta go woke no matter what, right?
Race to the bottom entertainment the double-down crowd loves to deny would ever fail for any reason other than "racism". You know, that unprofitable shit that has ultimately turned into a waste of creators time and money.
You've taken the wrong view of it. It's not pandering to professional victims. It's creativity by committee. You can only make more of what sold best last year. And check with your committees to make sure you're properly fitting the exact mold you want to fit. You spend a couple decades chasing what was popular last year, you don't exactly create stellar programming. You create milquetoast puree, bland, devoid of texture, completely safe, and absolutely banal to anyone with a half a brain cell registering a