Though you might not believe that if you actually make it all the way through this.
I was doing some math and came upon something surprising. Let's assume, as I did, that your average cable company charges you a dollar an hour for cable. We know, however, that cable fees are a monthly rate. The average montly bill is somewhere between forty and fifty dollars- this is for your absolute basic cable, the base package offered by your local network.
(If you're paying more for cable each month than this, you're pretty much wasting that money, as I'll show you.)
OK, so, assuming that "dollar an hour" thing, how much television do you have to watch a week in order to get your money's worth? Between nine and ten hours a week, every week, without fail. Now, I'm not counting the news, because hypothetically you should be able to get some sort of local news with an antenna. Not counting the news, do you really watch nine hours of television a week? That's 18 half hour shows a week.
Now, you might say that being charged a dollar an hour is being really lenient on the cable company, but if you do an average of the price for a television season DVD box set, it works out to anywhere between 89 cents and a dollar an hour, depending on the newness/popularity of the show. And then you're getting it without commercials, without the little "trims" that stations sometimes do in order to show more commercials, and most times with extra content (that not many people watch, but you're still getting it).
I wondered how this could possibly be worth the money when I remembered that there is a demographic who fits this bill. Kids. I used to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers every weekday, and four hours of cartoons on Saturday morning. That was just what I made sure to watch. Once you add in all the Webster, Kate & Alley, Who's the Boss?, Murphy Brown, M*A*S*H, and Cheers I used to catch (Child of the 80's, who, moi?), plus all kinds of random PBS stuff, that's quite a lot.
And I only had five channels. Imagine how much time the little channel surfers can put in now, between Nickelodean, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Disney, and that channel that doesn't seem to show anything but Funniest Home Videos rereuns. (If you're over twelve, under fifty, have fewer than six cats, and stone sober, the only reason you have to spend more than three minutes on that channel is if your brain has melted out your ears into a little runny puddle.)
Anyway, all of this comes from the fact that I started looking up Dr. Who on DVD. Doctor Who is sort of ubiquitious in my childhood. When I was very young (before I could walk), my parents went to the local PBS station which was exhibiting a lot of Dr. Who props. My guess is that it was between the end of Peter Davison (Fifth Doctor) and beginning of Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor, no relation to Tom Baker, Fourth Doctor).
I always felt there was something oddly familiar about the TARDIS, like I'd been inside it. I could remember seeing those funny circular walls, not like in a dream, but like in reality. It was a memory associated closely with rain. And then I finally saw a Tom Baker episode with K-9 in it, and knew it would be all too strange for this to be some sort of coincidental deja vu.
My parents confirmed, yes, we took you to the PBS station for a Dr. Who convention. Yes, there was a TARDIS set you could walk through, and there was a K-9 on display, and how did you remember it was raining that day?
So, Dr. Who is one of those shows I watch when it's on (unless it's post Peter Davison, I'm just not a fan of the later doctors). Heck, at the time, this would be 97, 98, I had crushes on both Matthew Waterhouse (who played Adric), and Peter Davison. I watched a lot of All Creatures Great and Small then too.
The funny thing about it is that getting episodes is a monumental task. Not all of the earliest episodes exist, including episode of the regeneration from the First Doctor into the Second Doctor (I think they have the sound and a couple still shots). Aside from that, not all of the episodes are out on DVD.
The Boy wanting all eleven seasons of M*A*S*H pales in comparison to 21 seasons of Dr. Who (well, it's only about fifteen if I decide to pick up with Jon Pertwee).
BUT, it's still a better deal to try to buy them all on DVD than to pay for the cable that would let me get decent reception on PBS down here, and I'd get to have the episodes until technology changes again (fifteen years?).