Every year, the cable company rearranges its channel line-up which means that, for weeks, no one in Toronto is able to find what they want to watch.
Despite this past weekend's vernal interruptus where blustery winds and icy rain drove everyone back indoors around Toronto, you know it is spring. It's easy to spot, not because crocuses are popping up through the ice pack but because cable companies are busy informing subscribers that they are rearranging the channel line-up. again.
It has become almost an annual spring rite, seemingly timed to the lunar calendar much like Easter and Chinese New Year.
Every year, around the first full moon after the first day of spring, a telltale thick envelop arrives in the mail from the cable company. Sent along with a 12 panel brochure giving the new arrangement of stations is a friendly cover letter--so friendly and personal it is addressed "Dear Cable Subscriber"--explaining how they are making my cable service a more enjoyable experience by moving nearly every station around on the remote to where I least expect to find it.
"It's an exciting time to be a cable subscriber!" the letter enthuses, a sentiment repeated on the brochure giving the new channel arrangement. I never actually thought of being a cable subscriber as an exciting event in my life but I'll cut them a little slack for their marketing hyperbole. But why is it so exciting? It turns out that once the change-over is made at World Cable Control Centre, it will be an exciting adventure trying to find the programmes I like to watch. Where did Fat Boy Hackeysack go? What happened to Dating For The Bewildered? How come I can't find that popular reality show, My Life Is Worse Than Yours, that I've been following religiously?
I suspect that there is a hidden reason cable companies keep changing channel line-ups, and it has nothing to do with making it an exciting time to be a subscriber.
The day-to-day work in a cable company office must be incredibly boring. The tech-heads working behind the scenes don't have a lot to do to fill their time, sitting in a small cubicle surrounded by other tech-heads droning away in adjacent cubicles. By January, when they never see daylight, morale must be plummeting. So, a vice president of something gives them an assignment that will take up a lot of time currently spent playing computer games that they downloaded secretly, or forwarding jokes to their friends.
"Move everything around!" the executive proclaims in an e-mail. "Our subscribers are becoming complacent and, frankly, so are you. Employees in the department need a new challenge besides playing buzz word bingo at the Thursday staff meeting. Just make sure it looks like we're doing this for the customer's benefit."
Besides, whenever a monopoly or quasi-public utility such as a cable company plans to raise fees, it needs to have done something visible to justify the higher prices it wants to charge. What better justification than a spiffy new channel alignment? It looks like an improvement and even if it isn't actually a real one, subscribers are so overwhelmed trying to figure out where their favourite shows can be found that they don't have the energy left to file lengthy, written objections in triplicate with the CRTC regarding the fee hike.
So, from now on, for instance, I'll get to watch a Winnipeg station on channel 130 instead of on 247. I'm not sure how this improves my "cable viewing experience" but someone at the cable company is convinced it will. Never mind that people I know who grew up in The ‘Peg and now live in Toronto have no interest in ever returning to the city of their birth, let alone watch television originating there. They can do so if they change their mind. They just won't be able to find it.
as the cable company was busy shaking everyone up with new channel placement, it was also grouping networks and stations into new categories: Basic, information, networks, news, kids and so on. So, WTBS, the atlanta super station which carries Braves baseball games is shuttled over to 173, where other networks are stacked, from channel 47 where it has been for as long as I've been a subscriber.
But WTBS isn't a network, it's a single station. a definition of a network is multiple stations; NBC and CBC are networks because they have numerous affiliates scattered across the country. WTBS is a one-city deal, like CityTV. WTBS carries re-runs of situation comedies and movies somebody thought were funny when they were released when it isn't airing baseball. In fact, I generally only watch WTBS when a baseball game is on so to me, I think of it as a sports station. I spent a good 15 minutes with the not-so-handy 12-sided instructions scouring the sports channel listings trying to find a baseball game over the weekend because it never occurred to me that somebody thought of the local atlanta station as a network.
"Confuse ‘em if you can," the cable executive ordered in a follow-up e-mail. "Don't make the new locations too obvious. Keep it exciting!"
"Exciting" isn't exactly the word I'd choose to describe what's happening to my television. a pain in my something comes to mind well before anything resembling "exciting" pops up. If most Torontonians are anything like me, it will be mid-June before we finally remember where the stations have been re-located. By about that time, my hunch is that the cable guys will start planning the 2007 channel realignment.
James Charles is a Toronto writer. His next book is "Life In The Dominion: an american's affectionate Look at Living In Canada."
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