The Comfort of Free TV

Several years ago, I donated to my local NPR station.  I do listen to NPR often and the local affiliate was at risk of disappearing, so I thought this was the right thing to do.  There were two outcomes to this.  One, the station was taken over by another NPR affiliate - while this did keep the station with similar programming, the truly local segments were no longer.  Two, that donation created voluminous junk mail asking for donations - I know this is the source since my name was misspelled and that misspelling now shows up on the resultant instant-recycling.
I once looked online to see what some of the NPR voices looked like as people - they look absolutely nothing like their on-air personalities and it has greatly affected my listening.  You just can't unsee that.

I don't currently pay for TV.  The cost is really hard to justify with the fact that, even when I did have satellite, I only watched a small number of the channels that I paid for.
I live in an area without any good options for unlimited internet access; streaming TV is also out of the question.  This leaves me with over-the-air television which means I am somewhat destined to know of many cultural phenomena only second hand.  I'll live with that.
Over-the-air television means I watch a lot of PBS.  Interesting shows will often show up while flipping, but there are only a few shows I target to watch.  My normal TV routine is currently being disrupted by the pledge week.
What I find most curious about the PBS pledge weeks - I think they happen about four times a year - is that PBS seems to get rid of their usual good and predictable programming, replacing it with a redundant clutter of rehash.  The strategy seems to be one of, "If you don't donate, we'll put more of this crap on..."
I don't know how many times I've flipped past Suze Orman oversimplifying personal finances during pledge week, or shuddered at the horror of The Big Band Years.
There is another possibility - I may not really be in PBS's market.  They want money from someone other than me.
PBS claims to be commercial free.  This is disingenuous.  You can call Subaru an underwriter of Globe Trekker, but Subaru is not handing out cash out of the goodness of their corporate soul - they want to sell more Foresters.

I still believe digital TV was a ploy by Michael Powell to kill free TV by limiting who has access to over-the-air channels.  It was possible to watch a fuzzy analog The Simpsons episode; it is impossible to watch a massively pixelated episode.  Mr. Powell's evil ploy was thwarted, largely because he did not envision what would happen in streaming media.
For those of us who can get a decent antenna TV signal, the result is more digital channels than we had analog ... sort of.

Many of these digital channels are quite redundant.  But they are often playing reruns from the late 70's to the 90's.  I'm surprised how some of these shows hold up after so many years.  Early Hunter (a show I loved in the mid-80's) is fun to watch when I'm in the right mood, but gosh did that show get bad in the later years.

Miami Vice is still good, but only in the context that, it in many ways, defined TV for several years.  The dialog is as over-the-top as the pastels are.  I was quite depressed that after watching a recent episode start-to-finish, the Ferrari never made an appearance once.  It is sad when the true star of a show is absent.

It is refreshing to see long lost episodes of Night Court.  Bull Shannon (Richard Moll) makes that show as much as Harry Anderson does.  I can only hope we'll get to see reruns of It's Your Move, but I won't hold my breath.

A few of the shows demonstrate absolute genius.  Newhart is as good as anything on TV now and I can't help but find the opening theme be unquestionably comforting.

I guess I should probably donate to PBS, but I really don't want the increased mail to recycle.  Maybe I'll just by a Subaru instead.  Do they still make the Baja?