Television is a Confusing, Expensive Mess

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Reddit Comments

I haven't used cable in years. I only watch Drews videos now. 8 hours a day. Every day. He told me I had to.

👍︎︎ 48 👤︎︎ u/GrahamCarey1 📅︎︎ Oct 11 2020 🗫︎ replies

Yikes hadn’t realized television degraded THAT much

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/jospad11 📅︎︎ Oct 11 2020 🗫︎ replies

More Drew content?? A blessing like manna from heaven

👍︎︎ 13 👤︎︎ u/miniyellow 📅︎︎ Oct 11 2020 🗫︎ replies

At least the cake and baking shows are good

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/ravenpotter3 📅︎︎ Oct 11 2020 🗫︎ replies

Really like this video. Drew did a good job at highlighting why cable is dying. Outside of sports, you don't need cable anymore.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/SayJonTwice 📅︎︎ Oct 11 2020 🗫︎ replies

yeessssss, this sub coming thru again when yt notifications don't. <3

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/LouiseBelcheer 📅︎︎ Oct 12 2020 🗫︎ replies
👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/netflixnchillibeans 📅︎︎ Oct 12 2020 🗫︎ replies

Drew is wearing Uncle Iroh's Jasmine tea shirt. Just when I thought I couldn't love him more.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/AnnaK22 📅︎︎ Oct 12 2020 🗫︎ replies

Guys seriously HD Antennas! If you want NFL you can get all of your local CBS Fox and NBC for a $20 antenna off of Amazon. Best if you are in a city

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/timshady11 📅︎︎ Oct 12 2020 🗫︎ replies
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- Hey guy, what the hell's going on on TV? ♪ Every woman it's all in me ♪ - I got cable again recently, because sports are back on and I wanted to be able to look at them and I am so confused. So for the past couple of years, Fox has had a show called The Masked Singer, and I would be lying if I said it wasn't extremely entertaining. - I knew it, I knew it. - It's Ninja. - I knew it the whole time. What made you want to do The Masked Singer? Other than come mess with me. - What the fuck you say to me you little shit? - Basically, it's a show where you can't see the contestants but you can hear them and you have to guess what they look like. But now they have this other show... ♪oh ohh oh ♪ - Where you can't hear the contestants, but you can see them and you have to guess what they sound like. So it's pretty innovative. It was while watching the show that I was reminded of how everything on TV seems like it's a spinoff of something that already exists. First. There was American Idol, which was actually derived from a British show called Pop Idol, much like The Office, America took the idea of milked it dry and then ran it into the ground long after everyone's favorite character left. But by modern reality TV standards it was actually a pretty simple concept. It's just a straightforward singing competition. However, it became so popular that the question became, how do we rip it off? (upbeat music) Oh, I have an idea. I'm all ears. What about American Idol? But instead of one singer at a time, there's two of them. Oh, very nice. Okay. What if we did one that was like American Idol except they have to sing acapella? Yeah. That's different enough. We'll do five seasons of them. Oh wait what if we did one where they couldn't see the singers before they voted for them and the judges would compete too. Sure. I'm not gonna watch it. Oh, I got an idea. What about American Idol? Except they're all hunter singers? Yeah, you can do that, but that's going to go on your network. Fine by me. Okay. What about American Idol? But they have to write their own songs? Love it. Oh, what about American Idol? But they have to write their own songs. Love it. I just said that. Wait, Brian, are you even awake? Huh? Yeah. Well, since you've been paying attention, why don't you tell everyone your idea? I was going to, well, it's like American Idol obviously, except they're all wearing costumes. Brian. That is brilliant. Everyone. Give it up for Brian. A couple of years We'll just do the opposite. I'm realizing, I probably could have just made a whole video about weird singing competitions because Oh my God. There's so many of them. Did you know they did one in 2008 where the grand prize was, if you won, you'd get to be in High School Musical Three, sorta. He doesn't have like a speaking role. So he's pretty hard to miss. But if you look closely, that's him right... Oh wait, sorry. I got to fast forward a little bit right there. And there he goes. Well, at least his show is pretty good. Anyway, back to, I Can See Your Voice, the epitome of network TV laziness, much like the Avengers. It seems like all these singing competitions live inside the same cinematic universe. Ken Jeong went from being a judge on the Masked Singer, to the host of this show, which is judged by Nick Lachey, - Yes. - Who is the host of everything else. Really not a whole lot else to say about the show, but I do want to point out something I thought was interesting. when I was watching it. Something felt off but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It's very fake. Obviously all of these shows are, but this one felt even more so. And I finally found out why, according to Wikipedia they only completed one episode before the pandemic started and production had to be stopped. So they didn't film the rest until August this time without an audience. But when you watch the show it's edited as if there's an audience there they cut to the audience members, cheering and laughing. They do this a lot actually. - GI Jane, what ranking are you? - Sergeant, First class. - Wow. - Ohh. - Come to find out, all of those shots are recycled from other shows. All of the crowd noise is put in, in post. And when they do a wide shot of the entire studio you can see that the audience not only looks nothing like the shots that they intersperse. There's not nearly enough rows of people but it's actually just a screen showing a virtual audience. If you look closely, it's the same image on both sides, only mirrored. Now I'm just pointing this out because I thought it was interesting. I'm glad that they did it this way. I would much rather they do it like this than try to cram a bunch of people in a studio risking their lives just so they can watch this. ♪ Tell me how you gon be without me ♪ - But it at least explains on a subconscious level. Why this is so uncomfortable to watch. - And that is a medical fact. (crowd laughing) - So the next big genre of television and the one that consistently brings in the highest ratings is the government organization that catches bad guys show. You've got CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles and NCIS New Orleans, Blue Bloods, Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, SWAT, Seal Team, 9-1-1, 9-1-1 Lone Star, Criminal Minds, Chicago PD, Magnum P.I, The Rookie, FBI, FBI Most Wanted, And I'm just going to stop there cause I think you get the idea. Lately a lot of people have been speculating that the reason these shows are so prevalent is because they act as a form of propaganda, making us love and respect that government and see them as the good guys. And while that might be somewhat true, I really think it's just because they're popular, by design, these shows tend to be more episodic. There aren't necessarily a bunch of through lines you need to be following to jump in halfway into a season. Every episode tends to be an open and shut case. So there's that immediate resolution and the characters are usually pretty easy to figure out, Oh, that guy's a cop and that guy's a cop. Okay. I think I got it. That being said, I fucking hate these shows and they're all the same. - Hey Mike, I'm going to take out the trash. Like I always do, ooh, a dead body. That wasn't there before. (dramatic music) - Well, gentlemen, it looks like we have all the evidence. We need to pin this on the obvious suspect. Wait, main character, what are you doing? - I don't know. Something's not right here. I, I have a hunch. - Now's not the time to go rogue kid. We got our man. Now let's go grab something to eat. - I'm so confused. This just doesn't make sense. Sense, sixth sense. (keyboard tapping) Haley Joel Osment. - What's going on here? - You're under arrest Hayley, for murder. - Okay why not, I'll go with you guys. - I believe someone owes me an apology. - Alright. I'll swallow my pride. You did good rookie. But just so you know, this was real life. Your antics would have gotten you fired. - What? - But of course you have essentially the same sub-genre but with doctors instead, there's Grey's Anatomy Scrubs, Chicago Med, The Good Dr. Attaway general, RugRats MD. Even if you want to delve into the depths of cable, your best bet for entertainment is probably going to be in these so bad, it's good categories. Also known as the, these people are idiots but I can't stop watching them categories. It's going to be your TLC shows Bravo, the CW, E! You've also got the Travel Channel. If you don't want to watch people travel anywhere and you just like ghosts. If you're hungry, there's the Guy Fierri channel. If you're white, there's HGTV. - We are going to love it. - Oh, come on. They always love it. Many of the channels that I used to watch religiously either aren't around anymore or have just become functionally obsolete Sports Center used to be the coolest show on the planet. But now that you can just watch the highlights of any game on your phone. There's no reason to turn on ESPN, unless you want to watch two guys yell at each other, even though they're both wrong. - Yes - no. - My other favorite channel growing up was G4. If any of you guys remember that, when I was in high school, I would come home almost every day and watch X play and Attack of the Show, I loved that channel. At that point in time, you couldn't just watch original content centered around video games. It didn't exist. Obviously things have changed a lot since then in that regard, I mean Disney XD straight up just plays Jack Septic Eye videos now but even with the shifting landscape I feel like G4 could have kept evolving. They could have been one of the pioneers of this new age of content but instead they decided to just cancel all their original programming and start playing 24 hour marathons of Cops. Good plan guys. And then there's IFC which I think a lot of people may not realize is responsible for many of the best comedies of the 2010s, Portlandia, Comedy Bang Bang, Documentary Now. These might as well be Netflix originals because that's where 99% of people watch them anyway. But they're technically not, even though, yeah, I guess you could just watch them on Netflix. (upbeat music) There's still plenty of reasons to get TV if you want it there's live events like sports The Big Brother Eviction episodes, The Debates. Okay. Yeah. So maybe it's just sports, but if you don't like sports, which you probably don't because you're watching my channel, don't worry. There's still 20 random ass movies playing at any given point, which you can watch the way that movies were meant to be seen, in 720P, censored and constantly interrupted by commercials. Let's be honest though. And I've talked about this before, but the best thing cable has going for it is that it's just always on. If you've got like 15 minutes to sit down and eat your lunch you could easily spend that entire time just scrolling through the Netflix selection page or hey look, a random episode of The Office I've already seen you catch the last half of it. You eat your sandwich, and you manage to go your entire lunch break without being alone with your thoughts for even one second. And I'd call that a success. But the problem is if you were to think about all the pros and cons of cable and then without doing any research, assign a price to that in your head, it's probably a single digit number. Let's say for 1299 a month, I can use Netflix an internet library with a billion movies and TV shows that I can share with someone else. And we can watch two different things in different places at the same time or, you know, there's cable, ♪ Ohhh ohh ♪ - Where I can watch animal planet and sometimes the news but I'm going to be spending half that time sitting through commercials. My brain tells me that something like that should cost $0 because I now subconsciously associate being advertised to with free services, like YouTube videos or the Words With Friends app. But since cable does offer a few things that you can't get anywhere else let's say it should be like $10 a month. What's that? It's like a hundred, dollars? So Netflix is $13. Hulu is 12. HBO max is 15 and Disney plus is seven. Even if I were to get all four of those it would still be cheaper than almost any cable provider. I could get cable for $66 a month. If I go through the same company I use for my internet, who I hate, this is a company that has the audacity to charge me extra for sending me my bill even though before we started using them for internet they sent us junk mail every day for two years. So I guess it's not that expensive to mail stuff. This is also the company that when we set up internet here charged me a $200 activation fee. When all the guy did was plugged the modem into the wall and give me a thumbs up. But to be fair, that $200 is nothing compared to the potential hospital bills I could have accrued. Had I tried to plug that thing in myself? Do I use my mouth to plug it in? Yeah. So safe to say, I'm not a big fan of Spectrum, but let's humor them for a second and pretend that I thought this double play silver package was a rocking deal that I had to take advantage of. First, we need to figure out the actual cost because if I know Spectrum, and unfortunately I do there's going to be some hidden fees. Obviously going to be an activation fee. There's no way around that. They're going to charge you to come hook everything up, in this case, it's a $50 one time fee really not too bad, but just keep that in mind. As we keep going and things start getting worse. If you look closely at your bill, you may notice a Broadcast TV service fee for spectrum. It's an extra 13.50 a month. So if the price you saw was $66 it's actually going to be closer to 80 for now. You might be thinking, what is a Broadcast TV service fee? And do I have to pay that? Well, it's a made up bullshit. And yes you do. If you dig real deep into Spectrum's fine print, they'll tell you that. Due to some law that was passed 28 years ago, local TV channels, charge us so much to broadcast them that we're simply forced to pass those charges onto you. The word forced is of course being used incorrectly here because the only thing forcing them to do this is their own desire to bankrupt each and every one of their customers. Sorry guys. But the price is now demanded by broadcast stations have necessitated that we pass these costs onto customers. Okay. Well, how much do they charge you? It sounds like it's a lot, oh sorry. We can't provide that information. You're just going to have to trust us. We've earned your trust. Right? So to reiterate this 13.50 is a non-negotiable fee that will be tacked onto your bill every single month for as long as you have cable. So why isn't it included in the advertised price? well because then it wouldn't look like as good of a deal, which it already didn't. This is an extremely misleading and unethical marketing practice. That's used to convince people. The cost of something is lower than it actually is. So they commit to paying for it before they realize they're being overcharged. It's so deceptive. In fact, that in 2016, Comcast had to refund $700,000 to customers after a class action lawsuit over this exact practice. Pretty cool, huh? Well there is more, up next. We have a DVR service charge, which is another $5 a month unless you have more than one cable box, then it's 10. Let's see the DVR was invented in 1999, but sure, let's not include it in the advertised price. Even though at this point, it's a commonly standard feature. One would expect to be included in any cable package. It even says here that the DVR is built into the cable box, but no that'll be extra. And then there's perhaps the most egregious fee an $8 monthly charge for the TV receiver and remote. Look, I understand if they want to charge you for the cable box. Sure. But a monthly fee, does the remote get more expensive as time goes on, is it going to grow more buttons next month. Let's say, God forbid, you paid for Spectrum TV for five years before canceling it. In that time, you will have paid $480 extra just to be able to use the remote. So for those of you playing along at home without the addition of any extra content any premium channels or anything extra whatsoever, the $66 price that you saw advertised on the website is actually 97. This is what they advertise. And this is what you're actually paying, for the first year. Because then after 12 months, the price goes up another $25. Why did we raise the price you ask? Well, because we fucking hate you. That means after one year of using Spectrum TV you will now be paying double what was advertised to you just so you can watch this. ♪ Always complaining ♪ - Maybe they are not all that bad. Obviously I haven't used every single cable provider. We did have Direct TV for a little bit, which I got because I wanted to use the NFL Sunday ticket thing. And if there's one thing the NFL loves it's using monopolies to destroy their product. In my experience that worked pretty well. As long as rain doesn't exist where you live, otherwise you're going to be looking a lot of buffering symbols. The other problem was they made me sign a two year contract which was fine at first, but seven months later we had to move out of that house because it was being eaten by termites. Then the apartment complex we moved to told us we're not allowed to have a satellite dish on the roof. So I called DirecTV and told them that. And they said, well, we think you're allowed to have a satellite on the roof. So you have to keep paying us. The bad news is I had to pay a big cancellation fee but the good news is they let us keep the satellite dish. And now I use it as a soup bowl. (upbeat music) Luckily it's not 2006 anymore. You don't have to have cable if you want to watch TV there are plenty of cord cutting options available. And right off the bat, I'm going to be bold here and say, all of them are better than cable. Every single one of these is more flexible and probably cheaper than just about any cable service you could find. The only reason cable might be a better option for you is if you live in an area where your internet is extremely unreliable, because then if your internet goes out, your TV goes out too. But as far as cable alternatives go there are a bunch of these to choose from there's YouTube TV, sling, fubo, philo, Hulu Xumo. Basically, if you type four random letters into Google it's probably the name of an internet TV provider. It's also worth noting that every single one of these comes with a free trial. So if you just need TV for a couple of days to watch the Superbowl or the season finale of Real Housewives, just start a trial, watch your show and then cancel that shit. I won't tell anyone. Personally, I've used these three and they're all pretty decent. Slings' pricing options are kind of confusing. They have an orange package and a blue package and they're conveniently set up so you're going to be missing channels you want either way, but it's only $30 a month. So it's one of the cheapest. Compare that to fubo and YouTube TV, which are about $65 a month. It's a pretty good deal. It makes sense that these two are the same price because they're extremely similar. Although I would give the edge to YouTube TV just because they have unlimited DVR space and more stuff to watch on demand like the 2016 classic Pixels starring Kevin James as the president. It also works the same way that YouTube does where it figures out what you like and tailors your homepage to you. So if I go on right now they're like sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. Good morning football? Did you sleep good football? I made breakfast football. Sounds very cool. I've never seen an algorithm like that used in a cable service before, all of that being said, it doesn't really matter because I'm gonna cancel it as soon as football season is over which might be sooner than I expected. So now we've talked about what's on TV and how to watch TV. I guess the only question left is what even is TV anymore? Like when your friend says to you I just started watching this new show. It's so good. You got to check it out. Your next question is never going to be, what channel is it on? You're just going to assume they're talking about Netflix because they probably are. When I was writing this video, I was looking up articles about the best and worst TV shows of 2020. And in those articles every writer's like, well, the best show I saw was on Hulu. And the worst show I saw was on CBS. This standard for network television is so low now that the only shows that seem to work are dumb ass reality shows weird-ass singing competitions white belt style obstacle courses and the 400th season of NCIS. And it's ironic because I truly believe we are in a golden age of television. It seems like every couple of weeks people start raving about another 10 out of 10 show that just blew their minds. It's just that none of these are on cable. Ozark, Watchmen, Cobra Kai, Succession, which I will plug in every video. Yet these extremely original well written shows with movie level production and there's no fluff. They're just condensed into that 10 best episodes jam packed with content. And you can watch them all back to back if you want or, you know, - I'm not seeing enough movement. - It's probably better this way too because for the first time in decades cable is now one of the least accessible medium. The fact that you even have to call someone and then let them into your house so they can install a box for you is enough for most young people to be like yeah, I think I'll just keep doing free trials of Hulu. So as the quality continues to decline and the user base continues to age, what does the future of cable look like? It's still several times more expensive than streaming services. There's no ad-free version. And in most cases, you're probably gonna end up tied to some shitty cable company. That's going to do everything in their power to take every dollar to your name. That's not an attractive package to young people who are new to this market. It's really not even an attractive package to older people, but I think a lot of them just do it because it's what they're used to with the way things have so drastically evolved in the past two years. I don't think it's inconceivable to think of a future where cable is just a distant, expensive memory. So what does the future look like? Is it just everything's on demand? Do you want to see a football game? You just go to like watch.nfl and pay like five bucks per game, or maybe there's a fee for just all of your team's games or maybe a premium fee for every game. If you want to spend that much money, it's not a crazy idea. I'm literally just describing a service that already exists for the NBA and NHL. And as far as other shows go most of them are already available to stream after the season ends. Or in some cases you can pay per episode to watch them on like iTunes the day after they air, bottom line is cable companies absolutely suck ass. And if you have the power to, avoid them at all costs. I promise you cable is not worth it. Do you imagine watching something and being like invested in it and then they cut to an advertisement and you have to watch that instead. Can you imagine that? Well, this video is sponsored by Hello Fresh. Dude, you eat it. I eat it. Hell. Sometimes I eat a little bit too much. (crowd laughing) but if there's one thing I think we can all agree on it's that food is too hard. I wanna be able to make stuff that looks like this and this, but my brain looks like this. That's why for the past three years I've used Hello Fresh to deceive my wife into thinking that I know how to cook. Every week, Hello fresh sends me a box straight to my door with three, ready to make meals. The ingredients are all pre-portioned and the recipe cards are idiot proof. They even have pictures. So I almost never mess up. And every meal can be prepared in about 30 minutes. One of my favorite things about Hello Fresh is how flexible the meals are. If you get the app, you can plan ahead every week. And if there's something you don't like you just swap it out for something else. There's a bunch to choose from every week, they have multiple veggie options. They have quick prep meals, low calorie meals. You can even skip a week altogether if you're going to be out of town or you've just decided that you're not gonna be hungry. I've never been a big fan of grocery shopping especially now, the less time I can spend in a store the better and since Hello Fresh just shows up at my door every week. I can make my shopping trips shorter because I know that I already have three meals accounted for. I also think they do a really good job of limiting waste. Number one, I'm not wasting as much food as I normally would. When I go to the store and get a little overzealous and buy a bunch of produce, that ends up going bad. Then number two, according to the university of Michigan, Hello Freshs' carbon footprint is 25% lower than store bought groceries, which makes sense. Cause you're not using all these extra plastic bags just to put one onion in. More than anything though, the food is just really good. I wouldn't use Hello Fresh for three years. If the meals didn't taste good, and that goes back to well before they started sponsoring me. So, you know this is an unbiased opinion, everything you're seeing behind me, is a hello fresh meal that I've made sometime in the past couple of months. And I got to say, it feels really good to think that I actually know what I'm doing. If you want to give it a shot click the link in the description or go to HelloFresh.com and use the code '80IMALITTLESTINKER' to get $80 off your first five boxes and free shipping on your first box. Thank you to Hello Fresh for sponsoring today's video and for feeding my wife. Now, please enjoy this outro that I already filmed. Well guys thank you so much for watching this video. I want to ask one thing of you. If you have an older relative who still watches cable I want you to ask them why they still pay for it. And if they think it's worth it, if you like hearing me talk about TV, I have several videos like this. There's a playlist on my channel. If you want to do that. Okay, I'm done now as a reward for watching to the very end of the video, you now get to watch a commercial I made that I couldn't find a place for in the middle of the video. So I'm throwing it in at the end. See you next time. Hi. When I was hit by a rogue bus driver, I broke all my bones and lost all my teeth. But attorney Dan fought for me in court and won the a hundred thousand teeth, it's more teeth than I need, but it's good to have them just in case.
Info
Channel: Drew Gooden
Views: 2,081,873
Rating: 4.9788537 out of 5
Keywords: drew gooden, comedy, commentary, reaction, vine, drew gooden vine, road work ahead guy, parody, rant, cringe, television, tv, cable, fox, masked singer, i can see your voice, ken jeong, netflix, hulu, scam, rip-off, cable sucks, spectrum, comcast
Id: va4P3RKW7T0
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)
Published: Sun Oct 11 2020
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