Flashback to August 1998, when I returned to Dallas after having lived in the Boston area for almost two years. I initially lived with my folks for a few months, but in early 1999 I started the little Goliad experience.
For almost four years, I lived happily without a television set. I was quite proud of myself for finding other ways to occupy my time and avoid getting trapped in the routine of watching regular shows. Of course, I spent the majority of my time in a few pubs, which had its share of positives and negatives. I will take a moment and congratulate all of those students who were able to afford going to college from the income they collected from my generous tips and tabs. As I mentioned the other week, I got tons of great writing and reflection done in those wonderful establishments (2 of which still remain very popular to this day), and that alone is more than enough to justify the time.
In 2002, I did finally obtain a television set, albeit a hand me down from my folks, who had just purchased a new set for their living room. So, I suddenly had a 13 inch TV that was already about 10 years old. It served its purpose (I will get to that in a minute), even though it only had one channel that came in clearly; the reception in the area was not all that great, hence only one station.
Within a year or two, my parents again had to buy a television, for reasons I can no longer remember. But, it meant that I got the next hand me down, which happened to be a 25 inch TV.
OOOH! I was suddenly excited to have a large viewing screen in my small studio. I felt like I was advancing in the tech world, and ended up buying a region-free DVD player so I could enjoy international film. (Despite my averseness to television, I am a huge fan of cinema)
Well, I left Goliad for Spain in early 2006, moving in with my sister and her family. Midway through that summer, they purchased their first flat screen television, which was quite large (and expensive) for the time. Again, we all went "OOOH!" when first seeing the beautiful quality of the lovely set.
This "OOOH" feeling is almost identical to the feeling that most people had when sitting in a movie theater and seeing, hearing, experiencing the THX trailer before a movie started. I cannot be the only one who went "OOOH" during those experiences, and I still have the same reaction every time.
At any rate, once I got to Germany, my furnished flat had a 25 inch CRT television, which was a step in the wrong direction from my previous time in Spain. Unfortunately, when the television (which was already about 20 years old when I moved into the flat) stopped working, my landlord replaced it with another 25 inch CRT. By 2007, CRT TVs were on the decline, making them very inexpensive for landlords who had no desire to put an expensive flat screen television into a rented flat. I can understand their point.
It did not really matter to me. Soon after, the cable company enforced their service on all the tenants, and those that did not subscribe to the service simply had no television service. Because of this, I had no problems over the next decade declining to pay my FUNK tax, which is, to put it simply, is the way the government charges you for public broadcasting. For those of us who love PBS but hate the fundraising drives, the German solution is quite superior; they simply take the money from EVERYONE, regardless of who uses the service. (Now is not time to get wound up about this practice, reread the blog title if you need a reminder of what we are discussing)
So, for about a decade, I have had a television set without any available channels sitting in my living room, but I certainly used it to watch my DVDs. Finally, in 2017, during a visit from my parents, I finally decided to invest in a flat screen television. I checked around and made comparisons and ultimately decided on a medium sized model that fit my price range. Several friends had already made similar purchases and advised me to for the biggest screen I could possibly get. I stuck with a somewhat smaller version, which I am still happy with. Based on the prices of flat screen Fernseher these days, my model is comparable to what some parents might purchase for their teenager as a Christmas gift, which is exactly what happened to my nephew. He has the identical model to mine.
But you know what? I still go "OOOHH!" when I sit in my living room and watch a DVD.
Furthermore, because of the available apps, I have more access to some streaming content, particularly in German. This has helped improved my language ability, and a small part of me does kind of wish I had done a little more viewing of German language broadcasting in my early days of living here.
That being said, watching programming now (with a much stronger level of the language) is more like entertainment and less like a language study lesson. In short, I am more used to certain character actors with a German synchronized voice as opposed to the actual film star. In fact, I regularly forget which language I watch something in. Sometimes in English, and sometimes in German.
I waited for almost a year before accepting Nadja's offer to share in her Netflix account, and I must say that the additional available content as been very welcome. I still tend to stick to movies, but as readers of recent posts will recall, I am watching a few more series.
Still, I like the fact that it is on demand programming, and I still do not get enthusiastic about a lot of series that are constantly being discussed by fans and followers. I may decide one day to watch those shows, too, but for now, I am pretty content.
With one exception.
(Pause while a few readers go "FINALLY. He is getting around to talking Football.")
Precisely.
The whole reason that I got that little TV back in 2002 was simply to watch the World Cup. (Yep, Pablo, once again we can reminisce about those cries of "Korea fighting!" and the like)
A few people might remember one of the post-Christmas stories I wrote up after a wonderful visit to Valencia, where I refer to that super month in 2012 when I did not get much sleep, but saw EVERY game of the World Cup, despite the time differences. I got maybe a couple of hours a sleep a night during the group stage, was a complete grouchy jerk at work, and I loved every minute of it.
And, I saw the all the matches on the one little channel I could get, which was Univision, the Spanish broadcasting channel. (Yes, my Spanish certainly improved during this time, hence the slight regret about waiting so long to get on track with German broadcasting)
After the World Cup was over, I continued watching Univision, and became a fan of their morning show (the equivalent to the Today Show or Good Morning America or whatever). Because my screen size was so dinky, it was still very easy to turn the set off and do something more productive, like go to the Old Monk.
During this era, I was frantically trying to keep up with English football, particularly the Arsenal. Back then, my local pubs did show International matches (Qualifiers and such) and we would regularly be at the Dubliner on Saturday mornings for 9am matches that were taking place on nice European Saturday afternoons. Those were good times, but sometimes a little inconvenient.
One day, Chris mentioned that maybe I could piggy back on his cable subscription service, and after a little contemplation, I had a little set top box and access to hundreds of channels. All pretty much worthless to me.
But, a network decided to market heavily the fact that they were going to show many of the English league football matches, and finally I was going to be able to have an opportunity to see the Arsenal. During this time, Arsenal were constantly in the top 4, if not champions, so their matches were being shown in markets where the sport was not so well known (by English speakers).
In order to get access to this one channel that showed the English soccer (yep...we all remember the Fox Soccer Network), I had to call up the nice people at the cable company to sign up for an additional package. The night I called the lady, she was really nice and pleasant, but still had to charge me 30 extra dollars a month to gain access to approximately 150 additional channels, just so I could get access to the ONE that I wanted.
"But I don't want to watch shows about catching alligators in the Bayou," I pleaded. "Nor am I the kind of consumer that wants access to high school football games from Wisconsin." (It was a sports package, I must point out.)
In the end, I paid up, and for probably two years, I spent about 60 dollars a month to have access to one station that I really wanted. In my opinion, it was again money well spent, and I can recall some wonderful Saturday mornings sitting in my apartment at 6h30 watching an Arsenal match with Chris, who had made the 5 second trek across the backyard. Sure, we could have watched those matches in his living room, but we would have disturbed the rest of the family, as we tended to get a little jumpy and loud. Arsenal 5 - Spurs 4. Nothing else to be said.
About this time, a couple of local pubs started arranging to be open for the early morning weekend matches, and this too, was a great experience to have. I met a lot of great people, all of them football fans that cared enough to get up at 6am on Saturday morning after 4 hours of sleep, raging hangover (sometimes) to have a little breakfast and enjoy the morning.
The great part about some of this was the fact that a 9h30, when most of the matches were over, one could get on with their regular Saturday activities, particularly those involving people who were not necessarily soccer fans.
Well, in 2006, I moved to Spain. Lynne and Fran bought their big screen super duper television, and it was a World Cup year. OOOH!
In my joy of moving to Europe, I had forgotten about the time difference, so there were some challenges with catching the WC matches, as I mentioned in one of my posts from summer 2006.
Once I got to Germany, a county full of football fans, I found no difficulty watching the matches in the pub, as I have described over the past 13 years of my life here. When matches are not being shown at the pub, or at least, not the matches I want to see, I would have to resort to using some suspect streaming website to try and follow the Arsenal, usually with commentary in some random language like Cantonese or Swahili. I had more than one problem with my laptop after using these sites, but again, that's another story.
Ironically, most everyone in the US has almost 100% coverage of all English football matches, now. This is somewhat convenient for me when I return to the states for a Christmas visit; I am usually able to catch the matches at my father's house.
However, in Europe, the competition for television rights has continued to be brutal, and expensive.
This never was a huge issue for me, since I always had the pub, or as a rather poor alternative, the use of dodgy websites. Somehow I have continued to be able to regularly see the Arsenal matches, even if the team have not been nearly as exciting as years previously. Once a fan, always a fan.
Last August, I realized that a web streaming service, DAZN, was offering English league coverage for a very reasonable monthly price. I have a lot of German friends who are football fans, particularly for the Frankfurt team, and through the years we have discussed the annoying charges associated with subscribing to whichever big network was covering the various Football leagues. The German league is obviously the important focus for the typical German football fan, so they experience similar headaches and irritations of having to pay premiums just to have coverage of Bundesliga, and the packages they are paying for include similar uninteresting channels like ones that show junior high handball tournaments or some other less popular sport.
In 2018, DAZN proudly announced that they would show ALL English top flight matches, and I did not need much more incentive. Okay, so there was virtually no coverage of Bundesliga, but that, too, was fine. I follow Eintracht, I consider myself a fan, but a fan that can live with seeing a handful of matches during the course of the season.
My friends who were forced to pay hefty monthly fees for Bundesliga coverage would regularly complain, and I was able to say, "yep, I used to pay about the same price just to see a couple of matches a week back when I was still living in the states."
Well, for 10 euro a month, I had sufficient coverage of the Arsenal during the past season, and even got used to the German commentary. It is not like the language was a challenge, but more so the style of color commentary. I have commented on this in previous posts, and it really just comes down to personal preference. It is no real surprise that the English matches televised in the US markets get covered by a British commentator. It supposedly "sounds" more authentic, and in fairness, I will admit that when a German native tries to say something like "into the fray" or "what a naughty tackle, indeed," it just is not the same.
And commentary certainly has its place. My childhood and adolescence is much more enriched because I got to watch Keith Jackson talk about college football (American) for so many years. Likewise, announcers for basketball or baseball find their niche and their voice.
DAZN would show some of these sports from the USA and although I hardly ever watched, I would always kind of chuckle as I listened to a German announcer try and replicate an American announcer.
I have a couple of favorite announcers for the English football leagues, and I still enjoy listening to them when the opportunity arises. In truth, I would prefer the English accent when viewing a match, and I was always irritated listening to an American commentator try and call an English league match, since they always tended to make it sound like a baseball game instead of the actual sport on display. As I mention above, the Germans have a similar difficulty, since it is not as if they are all that familiar with many American sports. Listening to a German guy talk about "driving the lane" or "going downtown" just sounds, well, almost silly.
Of course, fans of a sport learn to adapt to the environment, and I am the same. After all, I am fan of the sport not because of the commentary, but because of the sport itself.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a notice from DAZN indicating that they would be increasing their monthly fees from August 2019, but they would also offer an opportunity to pay the same previous monthly rate (10 euro) if I chose to pay for one full year. I am still deciding how I want to continue with them, but the price difference is marginal, especially for someone who put 5 people through college just from my pub tabs. Almost 20 years ago.
What did slip past me with DAZN is that THIS year, they will not have the English league broadcast. I discovered this yesterday morning when I checked to their schedule to see when they would show the first Arsenal match. One of the small irritations I had with DAZN last year was (partially my fault) not realizing that when they said ALL matches, they did not mean "live."
Thus, several times during the course of the last season, I did not get to watch the Arsenal match until a few hours later. The first time this happened really ticked me off, as I had spent the hour before kick-off cooking a large meal, intent on sitting down to feast during the football match.
After that mishap, I would always check ahead of time, so knew when I would be delayed or when I could get the live feed. Still, DAZN showed all of the Europa League matches, and since Arsenal were in that, I still found the 10 euro monthly fee reasonable, even if I was not watching all that frequently. Additionally, it was not as if I was watching any of their other programing. In short, I calculated the monthly fee for 12 months against the number of league matches (plus Europa) and came up with a price per match. Again, very reasonable. In my economic world.
So yesterday when I suddenly realized that I was in a real pickle, I had to quickly search for other options. No, I did not want to invest in cable/satellite television, since none of that is very interesting to me. I have enough options with my streaming channels and Netflix, probably more than enough.
But, I needed a football solution, and came across, gulp, Sky. This, in fairness, has always been an option for me, and one that I never really wanted to opt for, but I discovered there is a way to get broadcasting without having to get a set top box, and so, I am now a subscriber to their streaming service, which does give me access to all the Premiership games. Live. Yes, it will be a tad more expensive than I had initially planned, so I may have to rethink my DAZN deal, although they have the rights to Europa.
Now, part of the reason I have always liked about NOT having a television is the fact that I never had to deal with the distraction. I am still very glad that television viewing was very limited in our household when I was growing up. That is one of the big reasons that I continue to be an avid reader, and still average maybe 20 to 30 books a year.
Likewise, I do not like paying for something that I do not use, or at least, find some value in. On the plus side, I am able to pay a nominal fee (in my opinion) for the ONE service that interests me, and I am rather grateful for that. Sure, I may miss out on the extensive sports package, which means that I will not be able to watch a junior high handball tournament or see some obscure German sport, but I think that will be okay.
Meanwhile, the English league kicked off last evening with a Liverpool match, and I tuned in to my new subscription.
I got a little irritated as the German commentator tried to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone," but hopefully he won't do something similar during the Arsenal match tomorrow.
So, with my Arsenal solution in place, I am ready for the season. With joy, excitement, and hope.
It is a perfect time to say, "OOOHH!"
see you out there
bryan
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