Why I Don’t Fault Time Warner

First of all, let this not be an all-encompassing endorsement of Time Warner, its cable division and its practices. I find it hard to sympathize with a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that profits by preying on the people. They are a shithole company.

Now CBS wants Time Warner to pay more to retransmit its signal on the coaxial wires so that we cable customers are able to watch it seamlessly. Never mind that we already get to watch that shit for free over the air.

CBS and Time Warner can’t agree to the retransmission fee, so Time Warner pulls the plug. What have I missed?

* I have missed a bunch of shows I never watched. I don’t care about “Big Brother”, “NCIS: Your Basement”, “Two Broke Girls”.

* I have missed the KCAL9 news. With the exception of 3:30-4 p.m. and 7-8 p.m., there is a local news broadcast on live between 5 am and 11:30 p.m. during weekdays here in Los Angeles. KCAL provides the bulk of that programming. But that’s fine. Twitter exists so we don’t have to be so dependent.

* I have missed one Dodger game. Well, I could have missed one Dodger game, but thanks to technology I was able to watch last night’s game that was exclusively on KCAL. An even bigger benefit was that I watched the Fox Sports Midwest broadcast so I could avoid Eric Collins.

* I have missed Showtime, but I never got that channel to begin with. If there was a show that intrigued me, there are other ways of watching them even in a legal manner.

So I’m fine with this blackout. It really hasn’t affected my life, and if things get really desperate I could buy an HD antenna thingee.