Ode To “Rabbit Ears”
Millions of my fellow New Yorkers are very unhappy today because they can’t watch the Oscars or anything else on ABC. Why? Because their cable company, Cablevision, is having a financial feud with Disney-ABC.
My mother-in-law, for instance, doesn’t know or care who’s at fault. She just figures that for all the money she pays each month, she’s entitled to her nightly dose of Diane.
Ironically, my husband and I have no such problem because we don’t have cable-TV. In fact we don’t pay for TV access at all.
It’s not that we don’t watch television. It’s just that there are other things we prefer to overpay for.
Besides, we get ABC and the other networks plus sundry other stations just fine with a $40 pair of Philips “rabbit ears.” It may
not be an elegant-looking solution. But it sure beats those monthly bills.
And that brings me to my latest limerick:
Ode To Rabbit Ears
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Some New Yorkers with cable-TV
Are freaking — can’t get ABC
And its Oscar show bash,
Though they pay tons of cash,
While our “rabbit ears” get it for free.
Tags: Cable-TV Humor, Digital Antennas, Disney-ABC, Entertainment Limerick, Minimalism, Money Poems, New York Verse, Technology Limerick, Television Limerick
Rabbit Ear Revolution! Rite on!
You know, we might have purchased an antenna and a converter last year had we known Cablevision was going to start playing silly buggers with networks. Isn’t this illegal? We’ll be watching the Oscars online via some stream or other tonight…
I don’t believe it’s illegal. It’s a contractual matter between Cablevision and Disney and between Cablevision and its customers.
I don’t know how the Cablevision contract reads, but if there’s a contractual obligation to deliver the feeds for all the networks to its customers, a partial rebate might be owed if this ABC outage continues. Of course, Cablevision is unlikely to pay up unless pressured by the government or by a threat of a class action.