The holiday conspiracy between cinema and television

Everyone loves holiday stories, and everyone is secretly attentive to conspiracy theories so I offer my own in the spirit of both.  I believe that broadcast (free and almost free) television is deliberately awful during the holiday season to promote the public’s attention to movies and alternative media.

 

First the films.  Holiday blockbusters and special releases have taken a disproportionate role in the annual revenues of the film producers.  (Without digressing too much, the summer releases have diminished in significance, and the long term franchise (DVD) international revenues are also boosted by the holiday ‘buzz.)  Even the ‘small’ films get major marketing investments, but there are multiplex-loaded offerings just begging for us to buy their (never discounted) popcorn whenever we have time, and at the holidays we all have time.

Next, alternative delivery media – those apps and casts and visually splendid technology based deliveries to our devices that we never quite have time to master.  At the holidays we have time to learn and practice, particularly when family activities reach the peaks of boredom.  And we do.  The online sales of everything have skyrocketed this year, none more that streaming delivery of everything from sports to reruns to new cinema releases. 

And then there is the entire catalog of television offerings during the holiday season.  Awful cannot to these pathetic schedules justice; at best they contain reruns of shows those who are DVR impaired may have missed, but most often they are low budget offerings loaded with commercials run repetitively until we are forced to……go to the movies at home or away. Even many of the sports are meaningless since they are before the championships or rarely unique (yes, I will watch the outdoor hockey game).And public television is no oasis, rerunning ancient episodes of Masterpiece or marathons of Dr Who.  No wonder everyone is, pardon the pun, left to their own devices.

Would I go so far as to speculate that the entire nonsense with the farce entitled ‘The Interview’ was exaggerated to force people into a demonstration project on how easy it is to stream a full movie?  Even if it was not intentional, it introduced millions to both movie downloading and a variety of new payment platforms – all heavily marketed. The technology press is declaring victory.  I declare conspiracy.

The best news of all is that in the year 2015 (the year of the tablet), the book industry is thriving so that on a cold winter’s night Zeke and I can sit by the fire and snuggle with Margaret Atwood.