Just a mundane slice of my life ...
This initially wasn't that big a deal to me. These disputes usually only last a few days, and I don't really watch any FOX show regularly these days ( Well, I do love The Simpsons and Family Guy, but they are not really what you might call "appointment viewing" anymore. Considering how many stations show reruns of those shows, if I miss any new episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy, it's only a matter of time before I see it as a rerun on another station ( Plus, there is always Hulu. ). ).
However, I was concerned about one thing; My beloved New York Jets would be playing against the Green Bay Packers on October 31st, and they only network with broadcast rights to that game is FOX. I probably wrote enough about my devotion to the Jets in this post, but I'd just like to reiterate that the Jets have not won a championship in my lifetime ( The last time they even played in the NFL Championship game was when they won the Super Bowl back in January of 1969 ), and watching the Jets win the championship is one of the items on my bucket list of things I want to see before they put me in the ground.
Well, the Jets are still a long way from the Super Bowl, but they are 5-1 this year ( in a 16 game season ) and are among the 3 or 4 teams in the league with the best chance of winning the championship this year. I'm as excited about this team as I've been in many years ( though as a long-suffering Jets fan, I'm still very worried that this team will far apart like all the promising Jets teams have in my lifetime. ), so I'd really hate to miss a game this year.
Anyway, I wasn't too concerned, because Jets games usually are not even broadcasts on the FOX network. The Jets usually only have one game broadcast on the FOX network a year, and I figured things would probably get resolved by October 31th. However, as we started to get closer to October 31st, and the FOX/Cablevision dispute became more contentious, I started to research contingency plans.
I looked into any and all options for watching the game online via a live feed, but I really couldn't find any non-sketchy websites that could guarantee access to the Jets-Packers game. The best option was probably this site, but this company has only existed for a month or so, and is being sued by every major broadcast network. While their 30-day free-trial sounds like a tempting offer, I didn't feel comfortable about giving my credit card number to a new company that might be sued into financial ruin soon. So, I started to research antennas.
FOX is actually a broadcast network, so by law all their programming has to be broadcast for free over the air. However, getting reception via an indoor antenna can be sketchy at times, and as much as I love the Jets, I wasn't going to buy a big outdoor antenna and install it on my roof to watch just one Jets game.
Still, an antenna was really my only option other than unreliable online feeds, so I started to do research. I started to do LOTS of research. This blog post has gotten long enough, so I won't bore you by writing about any technical details, but lets just say I now know a shitload about antennas, far more than I even wanted to know about antennas.
So, after lots of research, I bought a $15 indoor antenna today ( well worth the price, if the thing actually worked ), brought it home, hooked it up to the TV, pointed the antenna in precisely the correct direction ( Google Maps was involved here ), crossed my fingers, and tuned the TV to the correct channel.
Voila!!!! At 6:30 PM on October 30th, FOX was back on my TV! About a year ago, all over the air TV broadcasts in the USA switched from an analog signal to a digital signal. The nice thing about a digital signal, is that you never get the "snow" or "ghosts" you would often get using an indoor antenna to get analog signals. With digital, you either get a perfect picture or no picture at all, and my little $15 dollar precisely-aimed indoor antenna was getting a perfect picture.
I was actually stunned by this. Despite all my preparation and research, I really didn't think the antenna would actually work.
Anyway, the amusing postscript of this story is the following: After watching the baseball World Series on FOX via my antenna all night ( much better than watching it on crappy online feeds), I switched my TV back to my Cablevision cable box input and started channel surfing a bit. After about an hour of surfing ( just before I decided to start working on this blog post ), I discovered that FOX was available on Cablevision again. Apparently, as I was hooking up my antenna, Cablevision and News Corp were resolving their dispute. As far as I can tell from news articles, FOX became available on Cablevision just minutes after I hooked up my antenna.
Well, I guess I've now got 2 ways to watch the Jets tomorrow, though I must say I'm a little disappointed with Cablevision. It seems like they caved a bit in the negotiations with News Corp, which of course will mean higher cable bills soon ( Switching cable providers is a bigger pain in the butt than you might think, because we get our cable TV, internet access, and phone service all though Cablevision. I'm not fan of Cablevision, but I must admit that their internet service is ultra fast. All non-biased reviews indicate that all other internet service providers in our area offer much slower upload/download speeds than Cablevision. I could cancel the Cablevision TV and keep the Internet and phone service, but the price of the Internet and phone service goes WAY up if you do that. ).
Oh well, at least I got a good antenna for situations like this in the future, and I have all this antenna knowledge that I could use if I ever find myself on one of those oh-so-popular antenna-based quiz shows.
Rich
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