Streaming apps have ruined watching sport and movies | David Penberthy
Modern technology has not made everything better. In fact it’s made trying to watch sport and movies far worse, writes David Penberthy.
This might be the oldest old guy column I have ever written, but I’ve had enough.
My son came home from his part-time job the other night and asked if I was watching the Test between Australia and South Africa.
No, I wasn’t watching the Test because I had (a) forgotten it was on, and (b) had absolutely no idea how and where to watch it anyway.
Once upon a time you knew the Test was on because the Wide World of Sports music would start playing and you’d be summoned to the couch by Richie Benaud and remain there happily for the next five days.
Now, just finding the Test has more twists and turns than the Test match itself.
Is it on Optus? Is it on Paramount? Amazon? Has Disney acquired the rights to it with the added exciting benefit that you also receive unlimited access to 101 Dalmatians for the rest of your life?
Why the hell do we need to download or subscribe to anything to watch a sporting event featuring our national cricket team?
Why, with about 37 different streaming services to choose from, and every movie ever made apparently available online, is it harder than ever to find something you actually want to watch?
Why have we digitised everything?
Why am I being asked if I am using the app today at the Maccas drive through? I don’t want to download the quarter pounder, I just want to eat it.
And, hey – restaurants – I don’t want to scan a QR code. I’d like the waiter to bring me the menu and talk me through the specials.
How did it all get so hard, under the empty promise of never being easier?
Why do I have to get my credit card out when I am lying on the couch trying to engage in the once simple act of watching TV?
Why do I have to remember 38 different passwords? Why has the simple act of using the remote been replaced with a confounding process of having codes and links emailed to your phone or laptop so you can stand like an archer aiming your device at a code on the TV before your desired channel will even come on?
If this is what passes for modern convenience and unprecedented access, take me back to 1990.
The enjoyment of sport and cinema reached its apex in that year when the VCR ruled the earth.
There was nothing better than family trips on Friday night to load up on seven weekly rentals for $7, perhaps an overnight new release if Dad was feeling generous, not to forget a big bucket of peanut M&Ms.
Dad showed me so many great movies that resonated with him in his youth – 12 Angry Men, Inherit The Wind, The Night of the Hunter, the original version of The Manchurian Candidate – along with modern classics such as Apocalypse Now.
When I lived in share houses a mate had a Beta VCR and for a while there the local video store was getting rid of its Beta tapes, selling-them-to-keep at their rental price.
We amassed an eclectic collection of films which included horror classics such as Halloween and Evil Dead, early Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen films, the superbly offensive early John Waters movies, and some appalling made-for-television schlock cinema such as Idi Amin: A Portrait in Terror.
Then there was soccer.
Take me back to the days of Les Murray and Johnny Warren and Rale Rasic and Andy Paschalidis, when you could stay up all night in free-to-air heaven watching Cameroon almost beat England, then some random pre-dawn clash between Honduras and Scotland, the games interspersed by a movie called Astrid’s Garden, about a bored Swedish housewife who spices up her loveless marriage by having sex with complete strangers down at the local park.
Now that was television!
I am not a total Luddite. I’ve got a backgammon app on my iPhone which the kids downloaded for me.
I’ve also had Foxtel for 20-odd years and I love it because it gives me a great spread of shows that suit my appetites across food, news, Aussie rules and the need to watch The Departed once a month.
But when it comes to the rise of apps, put me down as Not Appy, Jan.
And the outrage over the non-screening of the Test between Australia and South Africa’s has proven one thing.
The anti-siphoning laws are not worth the paper they’re written on.
These are the federal laws which are meant to ensure that major matches involving our national teams are available to everyone on free-to-air, as well as on subscription TV or streaming services if they have paid for the rights as part of a broader deal.
But they’re being sold off anyway and the average punter is missing out.
To their credit the Seven Network tried to argue the Test should be available for free broadcast but were bafflingly told that Amazon Prime would get it alone, as India and England were the only two opponents which were deemed worthy of coverage by anti-siphoning.
The same thing happened with the Socceroos qualifiers for the World Cup where away games were sold off to the highest bidder, in this case Paramount.
As a result of that I am now a Paramount subscriber, having coughed up and joined a few months back to watch all the Socceroos games, a point I only remembered last week when my credit card was debited for the privilege of having access to a network I may never watch again.
Oh, for a gentle stroll through the Blockbuster aisles with my old man, or a night in front of the World Cup with Les Murray and Astrid the Swedish nympho for company.
Originally published as Streaming apps have ruined watching sport and movies | David Penberthy
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