DirecTv: Unending advertisements interlaced with massively marginal programming.

A cold rain here today in Central New York State. We are less than ten hours from April First – better known as April Fool's Day around these parts. Snow and ice fell this morning, Ma Nature is playing games again and more snows predicted for the morning. So did some messing around on the Internet it being too miserable to go outside. Then sat down to watch a bit of TV this afternoon. We have DirecTv satellite TV provider here in this rural Town of German Flatts location. Those couple hundred channels DirecTv “provider” sends are mostly insignificant and UN-watchable junk. Not a single program on now – not a thing is view-able by these old eyes.

The words almost every uses when approaching our home west-side deck – “what a beautiful view!” – and this is true. It is the main reason we purchased this property a dozen years ago. After considerable site work, it wasn't until our 28' x 36' garage was under construction in the second year of land ownership it became clear there was no AC power out front on our country road. Cost an unplanned couple grand+ to have Niagara Mohawk Power route some electric juice into our new place. Also unknown when this property was purchased – there is no cable TV provider like Time Warner around here and checks confirm there is seemingly no hope to ever get such competitive TV or Internet services. Further, there is one and only one land line telephone provider and ISP here – this being the dreaded Verizon. My gosh, what a non-choice indeed we must buy from a single source. These oversights were neglected service considerations when locating this building site far out of town.

Having vented enough on this, let me refocus this rant for a moment on DirecTv. Not much to do last weekend since easily two feet of the near 40 inches of snow deposited on us ten days past still prevents any meaningful outside activity. So decided to sit a while and watch a couple movies on DirecTv. Had noted earlier last week the “Godfather” series was scheduled for presentation. Oh great, something to do and watch this day! But here is the sad tale. First, DirecTv announces the films are cropped to fit our TV and chopped to fit their allotted run-times. Almost universally, the altered films run for less than eight minutes, followed then by four and a half minutes of commercials – over and over, sometimes as many as thirteen different commercials within these very frequent commercial breaks. Needless to say, the extensive and lengthy commercial breaks, coupled with an already altered film makes the viewing basically UN-enjoyable and far less interesting. After all, it is so believable when the various “F-bombs” are deleted from intense gangster communication. My gosh.

So, if readers plan to watch some DirecTv programming this weekend, here's some sage advice. Get your popcorn, loosen your pants, bend over, and prepare to take a hit on the butt. All this because a multitude of TV commercials are coming your way – commercials enough to make a senior saint scream in disgust.

Note to DirecTv management: Your claims to hold over thirty million subscribers logically gives you the collective corporate power numbers to insist that your program providers very significantly reduce the length and frequency of TV commercials interspersed within shows, and in particular those commercials presented within classic movie presentations.  DirecTv in concert with other similar firms have the collective power to better control program providers like AMC, et. al. to thus deliver better TV content to many millions of subscribers.