So, tomorrow(or today), analog TV signals will go off. So, being the rather large nerd(I'M LOOSING WEIGHT, DAMMIT!) I have set up the 23 year old TV to watch at least one channel go off. That will be NBC tonight. Tomorrow, I hope to catch PBS(9:00 PM). God, this is going to be odd to talk to my children about.
To think, this is my family's first TV, bought the year I was born. My parents had debated getting the version with the remote, but it was $100($200 in 2009[$120 GBP{$220 Canadian<2669.5 Pesos>}]). The apartment we lived in was so small though, that my dad could change the channels with his toe(which he did).
Is it wrong to think that somehow defined the person I have become? I don't think so, when much of that has been PBS. It gave me a love of science(Nova), nature(Nature), and culture(um, a lot of things). I watched a lot of Star Trek on this TV. I watched a lot of MTV in the summer following us getting cable(back when it was good).
Now, as television goes forward, more and more of it can be found online, on demand, digital, HD, the works, for free. Will my children watch the end of broadcast TV? Will they see all signal television go away? Will I help be the facilitator of that? I could. I may. The systems are evolving to that. No difference between internet, television, phone, video game, and anything else we can dream up.
Really I guess it isn't the end of an era, but the continued evolution of mass media. Since the dawn of movies, when performances could be brought to the masses, the way we experience media and what we experience has been changing. It has seemingly gone from paid, to free, to some free but a lot more paid, to free, to free but you might be arrested for it. Now things are changing again.
So, I guess the point of this entire ramble, I'm awed by the changes we have seen in the past 20 years and I can't wait for the future.