There was a time when the average Canadian might be heard to grumble something along these lines .. “Government can do a lot of things and not make me mad .. but don’t you dare mess with my cable TV”.
Here we are mere days away from the era of ‘pick and pay’, and we’re hearing almost nothing from the cable and satellite providers who are supposed to make all this happen in early March. Where is the information about the $25 skinny basic package?
Could it be that the communications revolution is moving faster than anyone realizes, and the heyday of the folks at Rogers, Shaw and Bell could soon be over? More and more of us, including the Boomers who didn’t know how to set the clock on a VCR, now have the confidence to seriously contemplate ‘cutting the cord’.
In the world of Netflix and a rapidly growing list of similar options, many thousands of Canadians have not been waiting for ‘pick and pay’. Some are still showing loyalty to local channels by reverting to rabbit ears so they can at least watch local news, but others are watching all of their favourite content online.
If you still have cable and you love movies as much as I do, here’s a shameless plug. Check out a Canadian-owned service called Hollywood Suite. It’s a group of four channels, plus an ‘on demand’ channel that might best be compared to Movie Central, only it’s so much better, and it costs only five bucks a month!
My beloved and I are actually watching Netflix a lot less since discovering Hollywood Suite. As these words reach you, we have about a dozen high quality movies, recorded and ready, commercial free! The great mystery is why more Canadians haven’t yet found Hollywood Suite.
Such a long road we have traveled since we were glued to that one black and white channel back in the 1950’s.
I’m Roger Currie
