Dear Editor:

When I moved back to the upper Midwest from Washington, D.C, at the end of my active duty in the military, it was common for households to have a television antenna on the roof with which you could pick up two or three local stations from some small market such as Sioux Falls or Mankato. Within a couple of years, these antennas developed a new look which was known as a UHF antenna. This was the earliest beginnings of what we then called “pay TV”.

As I assumed my first teaching job I began to offer an elective which we called “Mass Media”. Little did I know just what we were in for back in 1974. Both my students and I agreed that no one was ever going to pay for anything more than a fancy antenna, and that was the end of it.

As time went by and we began our own cable company in Westbrook, we were fascinated to learn just how wrong we had been. Not only were we willing to pay for certain things, we were often willing to pay for them over and over again in many different ways. My pet peeve of stations, which we could never afford to put on local cable was the Big 10 network. Many of us left our local cable and paid much more for nationwide systems which could provide us with games from the Big 10, a group of universities which were largely state sponsored at taxpayers expense. In addition to this, many of us were willing to pony up another ten bucks a month, (or more), to watch a bunch of young men or woman whom we were already paying by virtue of scholarships.

The NFL, NBA, and other professional sports became other entities which could command even a few more bucks if we wanted unlimited access to these events. Last week’s event which the NFL and NBC decided would be better “streamed’ allowed people to buy into “Peacock{” which is already owned by NBC just to watch one wild card game in the NFL. Thus became the latest “heist” of the century as millions of users decided that this was a good idea.

Incidentally, I do know a few people who still have an antenna, who have no internet access, and who are quite content to watch one of three or four local channels. They seem very happy.

Dennis Phelps

Westbrook