TV Expanded

I've discussed TV here before. All in all, our family is a non-tv family, especially in summer. But, there are totally exceptions. Like occasionally on a Saturday night when Ben and I want to watch something interesting, like Independent Lens. Or, I'll admit, I'm a sucker for Antiques Roadshow. And from time to time, it's nice to be able to show Zosia an episode of Sesame Street for a bit of a distraction. As you can see, just about all of our television favorites are on public television, so we were more than a little bummed when our tv provider stopped showing two of the three pbs stations. Given the fact that we only had about five stations besides these pbs stations, it was a serious blow. As we investigated options of getting our precious pbs stations back, we realized that if we switched from COX to Verizon's fios, we would be paying about the same amount of money for the same phone service, better internet, and much better tv.

Yesterday the fios guy arrived to hook everything up, and after hours of drilling and pulling wires and getting everything to my techie husband's liking, Ben and I sat infront of the tv trying to figure everything out. So aparently we get, like, hundreds of stations now. Ben and I sat with our jaws dropped for 20 minutes trying to figure out how to change channels, noticing that we now get a paralyizingly large array of shows and movies, and wondering how on God's green earth we will ever be able to pick anything, let alone even know what is being shown on TV at any given time.

Ultimately, we both became overwhelmed, and left without watching anything. I guess that 300 choices is a little too much when you're used to 3. I am definitely excited that, at least for now, we appear to get the Sundance Channel and the Independent Film Channel, along with the cooking network, and, thankfully, all three PBS stations (plus several more that I didn't even realize existed). And, there are something like 15 of those religious stations, including BYU tv, EWTN, and hopefully lots of televangelists-- maybe it's the theology student in me that can't get enough of these (did I ever tell you about the time I actually went to see Benny Hinn in person? Totally great.).

I'm remaining optimistic that the new array of choices will not influence our TV viewing at all. But who am I kidding? I'm already on the lookout for toddler yoga and something interesting to watch tonight.