Quality programming

Some filler while I work on my next full-length posting. Ditch the dish, the current battlecry for Comcast. Oh, how they’d love for everyone to sign on for their cable television services. And they’ll even give you $400 for ditching your dish, even if the very small print says the money is a $25 credit on your bill each month for sixteen months. We got rid of cable three years ago to move to a satellite service and we’re not looking back. I can say I’m very happy with the satellite service that we’ve got right now (but I’m not saying which—no free advertising here). And it doesn’t hurt when your uncle is a senior manager in the company, so if a customer service rep wants to get snotty with me and I threaten to have their job, there’s a really good chance I can make good on the threat.

Currently we get around 180 channels at home, including quite a few of the digital music channels. The music channels come in handy if you need background music for whatever reason, and they sound great through the home theater system. The remaining channels are quite varied in terms of their programming, and a few of those just leave me scratching my head. I generally ignore the religious and Spanish language channels, and I’ve setup my receiver to not even display Fox News on the program guide. But I can’t explain why there’s a TV Guide channel, after all the service comes with a program guide so you can see what’s on at what time and get a summary of each program. Why do I need a channel that says the same thing? It seems as though the only thing on the TV Guide channel are insipid programs featuring Joan and Melissa Rivers covering some Hollywood event or repeated reruns of their covering said Hollywood event. Collectively, the mother-daughter Rivers duo has more plastic in their bodies than in my entire GI Joe collection, and that’s quite a bit of plastic, folks.

The Horseracing Channel is another one of those programming jewels that just seems to be filler for the satellite company so they can say meet the 180 channels for the package I’m subscribed to. Because, of course, 180 channels sounds much more impressive than 179. The programming is what you’d expect—horseracing and nothing but, 24-7-365. But by far my favorite unusual channel is RFD-TV. This channel is geared towards rural, middle America so I’m nowhere near their target audience. Only on RFD-TV can you find programs on classic tractors, cattle auctions, or live coverage of the annual national FFA convention. In my opinion the jewel in the crown of this channel is Big Joe’s Polka Show, which runs at 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights and again at 10 p.m. on Saturdays. The premise of the show is simple: our host, Big Joe (Joseph Siedlik), introduces polka bands of varying quality who play their music for the modestly-sized group of people on the dance floor. It would be American Bandstand if Dick Clark wore lederhosen and the dancers were 50 years older. Some of the dancers on Big Joe’s show are younger, perhaps in their 20s or 30s, a few children, but by far most of them are senior citizens, giving the show the appearance of one of those “Am I a candidate for hip-replacement surgery?” infomercials. The production value of the show is higher than it was a couple of years ago; it now looks like they have about $500-1000 for each show for production. Still, I find Big Joe useful for one reason (other than humor), and that is it’s the only show that will send my daughter running to her room, hands covering her ears.