Is cable TV for the best?

Ah, winter break. A month-long journey away from the college life that brings some of us to exotic locales, others to interesting winterships, and most of us to the monotonous livelihood that is home. Home is the setting for catching up with old friends, cursing slow dialup connections, and for one frustrated television reviewer, watching TV without cable. It is amazing how four months of cable television at school can erase the pain of eighteen straight years of a household with no exciting abbreviations like ESPN, MTV, HBO, or HGTV. But is it really all that painful? Would television be that worse off if cable didn't exist? Let's take a look.



The Boredom/Procrastination Factor: During long periods of procrastination or boredom, both of which are dominant in the college lifestyle, cable television is often the cure because it provides hours upon hours of mindless entertainment. Where other than TBS can you watch "classics" like The American President or Back to the Future three times a week?

On the Game Show Network you can see the controversial Richard Dawson kiss seventy-year-old grandmothers with mullets on Family Feud, and on Comedy Central you can reminisce with friends about how Saturday Night Live used to be funny.

The advantage cable stations have is that they can weed out the worst episodes of Cheers and The Cosby Show and show the best reruns repeatedly. All that regular network television can offer are cheesy soap operas, Judge Judy rip-offs, and pathetic syndicated talk shows which have the same five topics each week. By a landslide, when it comes to quelling your boredom, cable is the only option.



Sports: It all comes down to ESPN, the center for everything remotely athletic. They even cover figure skating. SportsCenter has become an American institution, with host Stuart Scott's signature "Boo-yah" close to becoming a mainstream exclamation. There is no equivalent on network television; sports segments have become increasingly shorter on local news to give more airtime to the constantly inaccurate weathermen. ESPN Original Entertainment is also churning out programs such as the enormously successful Pardon the Interruption and the enormously irritating Around the Hornwith Max Kellerman.

Yet when it comes to watching the best sporting events, network wins hands down. Watching highlights of the San Francisco 49ers-New York Giants finale on ESPN cannot compare to watching it live on FOX. Monday Night Football has been an institution on network television for the past 30 years.

The greatest sports television innovation since MNF is coming up in two months, the NCAA Basketball Championship. For two weekends in the end of March, the entire sporting nation is glued to their televisions watching Dick Vitale shout out inane comments praising Duke on CBS. So while cable leads the way in sports analysis, network has the best of the sporting events, with national rights to basketball, baseball, and football. The edge goes to network, but if ESPN gets rid of Max Kellerman, you have to reevaluate everything.



Looking for Something New: Producing new material is cable television's kryptonite. In the past two years, cable's efforts have improved with shows like The Shield on FX (which won Best Drama at the Golden Globes Sunday night). The rare competition that cable can offer is thanks to MTV and The Osbournes. All of this is ignoring the divine offerings of HBO, which shows the mind-blowing dramas The Sopranos and Six Feet Under and the hilarious comedies Sex and the City and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yet since HBO is not offered on most basic cable listings, it fails to meet the parameters of the debate.

Network television, however, has numerous interesting and entertaining programs currently on the air. In spite of many disappointing offerings such as American Dreams and Boston Public, dramas like CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and FOX's 24 bring innovative concepts to television and provide exciting entertainment. Even veteran programs have gained popularity over the last year as Friends, The West Wing, and The Simpsons have all recently had their contracts extended. The Simpsons is on track to become the longest-running prime-time comedy in history, as it enters its sixteenth season. Newer fare like Andy Richter Controls the Universe provides nutty and absurd commentary that bends the constraints of the typical situational comedy. Hands-down, when it comes to original programming, network television destroys cable.



Final Tally: Taking a look at three of the most common motives for watching television, its clear that network television is all that's really necessary. Then again, doing my school work is so unappetizing, and there is that E! True Hollywood Story on Saved by the Bell on now.....who am I kidding? Cable is everything a television junkie needs.