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Comment by j-bos | Hacker News Reader

But isn't it wonderful that they did?

It's vaguely disturbing that people "watch" films 10-12 hours a day. Many of them are using it as a radio, for background noise, without really caring what the program is beyond vague genre, tuning in and out without particular regard to the plot… and yet we have all the cost of transmitting high-resolution video point-to-point.

Surely we could just put better stuff on the radio, and accomplish most of the same goals for a far lower price?

My Dad was in the hospital, and just wanted to watch the Pirates play. The TV was filled with apps, some of them free to watch, others demanding a subscription and log in once you selected something.

None of them had the Pirates game.

I was thinking how the transistor radio was a far superior experience for this use case. Just tune to the channel broadcasting the game.

You mean the station that the MLB regulatory captured into not broadcasting when the local team was playing?

Radio has not gone anywhere you know? There is of course podcasts, but for instance Radio France has amazing music services like FIP: https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip

Then there’s NTS, BBC… Ypu can listen to them from online service, but at least in Europe there’s amazing national FM broadcastimg services.

TV is just bad radio with flickerimg lights.

Who has the time to watch films 10-12 hours a day?

I think the comment put forward that as an incorrect assumption that was made prior to the cable build-out.

Which is now an actual way that people use streaming services.

The quote in the original comment assesses the survey responses as "impossible". A good-faith reading of the comment is that the professor was not talking about a handful of respondents.

Nobody is doubting that there are some people who watch films 10–12 hours a day, every day of the week.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/essays/casual-viewing/ and its HN comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529756) argue that it's more than just a handful of respondents.

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