Remember the ancient days of pre-cable television?
Those days when there were special programs that everyone watched for free?
Ones that everyone talked about because everyone had seen them?
These were the big ones:
- The Olympics from the Opening Ceremony all the way through to the Closing Ceremony. We were immersed in stories about the serious contenders and the very long shots. ABC Sports coverage was legendary.
- The World Series. All the games or, at least, most of them in the days when the games were played during the day. I recall a television being wheeled into elementary school classes for some brief viewing during the school day.
- The Super Bowl. I recently tried in vain to find the game without paying for a subscription.
- Political Conventions once had gavel-to-gavel coverage. You got to know the famous, the infamous, and the fairly obscure political figures. For those of us who are political junkies, that was a Golden Age.
It was great to see personalities such as Everett Dirksen, Edward W. Brooke, Jacob Javits, Margaret Chase Smith, Harold Washington, Sam Yorty, and Richard Daley in a less-formal setting.
This may seem like a minor complaint, but when you take away (or make it difficult to find) that "free" coverage, you've removed some major unifying events.
The national community is diminished.
