An essay, steeped in the frustration of being nickel and dimed to death by Paramount, Hulu and Amazon, that posits that streaming services are ruining television…
by: Audrey Levitin
The once pleasant, calming and taken for granted pleasure of watching television has become a bit of an ordeal. TV has always been my guilty pleasure. I settle in under the covers after a long day, remote in hand and escape with the staff at Grey’s Anatomy, Doc, or Chicago Med. When I run out of medical dramas, I indulge in Ted Lasso or Schitt’s Creek reruns.
Too often instead of Ellen Pompeo, Jason Sudeikis or Dan Levy, I encounter a black screen and the dreaded QR code. Finding my username and password takes too much effort, usually ending in failure. With exasperation, I move along to another platform or activity, deciding that the show I want to watch is more trouble than it’s worth.
Alternatively if my login efforts are successful I am often asked to upgrade for one reason or another. True, being nickel and dimed to death by Paramount, Hulu and Amazon doesn’t elicit the terror of losing health care or the worry associated with gas and food prices, but the experience demonstrates that unregulated Capitalism has become nothing more than a shakedown.
Along with millions of Americans, I pay monthly for a very unsatisfying viewing experience. I remember the days when I turned a dial free of charge. Then cable came along with its two hundred channels and monthly cost of over $200. In an effort to be a responsible consumer, I switched to streaming platforms to save money, only to pay for multiple accounts, track usernames and passwords to receive a frustrating and fragmented viewing experience.
The inconvenience is tolerable. After all, it’s only television. That is until a live sporting event comes into play. Baseball is the backdrop of long summer days, football ushers in a season so exciting that the painful end of summer is softened. Basketball gets us through long winters and spring. Tennis is amazing. Watching sports brings joy and having that joy controlled, delayed, and denied causes fury.
Two years ago, I planned a day around watching the U.S. Open Men’s Semifinal. Being an immensely popular event, taking place in Queens and with U.S. in its name, I assumed one of the many streaming platforms I subscribed to would carry it, at least as a public service.
I clicked on the remote. No prompt for the U.S. Open appeared on my home screen.
With a knot in my stomach, I spoke into the remote, “U.S. Open, U.S. Open, U.S. Open.” The prompt appeared. Phew! I launched Sling which at the time I subscribed to for $45 a month. I clicked. Nothing. I clicked again but I remained in that weird greyed out zone where the prompt doesn’t activate the programming..
I asked my husband for help. As he searched his iPhone seeking advice from Sling’s website, I said with anguish “Everyone in America should be able to watch the U.S. Open, without all this aggravation. It should just be there.”
With the match well underway, my husband let me know that we have to upgrade from Sling’s Blue plan to their Blue and Orange plan. Sling promotes its streaming service as being “customized” for your needs. But what does that mean? It means that when you want to watch something that everyone wants to watch, it will cost more.
I caved. We upgraded to the $65.99 a month Blue and Orange plan. This year I was ready. I signed up for the additional charge in advance. I asked plaintively, “What about the World Series and the Super Bowl? Are there Americans who can’t afford to watch major sporting events?”
The answer is yes. Viewing sports is expensive and no longer easily available to working class or low-income Americans. An essay by sports journalist Joon Lee, published in the New York Times lays out the problem. It is entitled, How American Sports Leagues Sold Out and Shattered Sports Culture or $4,785. That is How Much It Costs to be a Sports Fan Now. Lee explained that the delivery of football is so fractured when watched through streaming services, that fans have to pay for several platforms to watch their team. Amazon Prime for instance has a lock on Thursday Night Football.
I tell myself to get a grip and stop being upset about something so relatively inconsequential. But yet, it just doesn’t seem right. Paying sizeable monthly fees of disposable income to watch television points to a larger problem. At a recent social gathering, I asked my friends and family, “Does anyone have trouble watching television these days?” The room erupted with pent-up resentments that included complaints about enduring endless advertisements, needing to subscribe to platforms, and learning that a subscription to Peacock was needed to watch that American of all events — the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Instead of providing comfort and escape from entertainment, turning on the remote leads to emotions ranging from irritation to seething fury.
Streaming services and the process of television viewing are a metaphor for how unrestrained corporate greed is running our lives. Every time I need to pay more to watch a show or sporting event, I remember how much I am paying for healthcare, food, gas, and that Capitalism is no longer working for anyone other than the very wealthy.
Audrey Levitin is Senior Counsel at CauseWired, a firm working with human rights and social justice organizations. For 15 years she was the Chief Development Officer at the Innocence Project. Ms. Levitin is an essayist and her work has been seen in the Star Ledger, The Weekly Forward, and Cape Cod Life. She has also written about criminal justice reform in Occupy Wall Street and the Innocence Project. She and her husband, photographer Nick Levitin, live in West Orange, New Jersey.
