Up until this Tuesday morning, my wife and I watched the Rachel Maddow Show through a Roku channel that streamed the entire show that had been archived from the night before. At least four days a week, we sat down with our coffee after breakfast and enjoyed a usually 43 minute commercial free video podcast, courtesy of Roku's Nowhere Channel and MSNBC.
Then on Tuesday, they changed the format and cut back the video podcast by more than half, explaining the show was no longer available in its entire format. So for the last three days, our morning routine has been somewhat adrift without the full dose of Rachel. Seventeen minutes out of 43 just isn't the same, especially when you know the rest of the show is otherwise being viewed as produced.
The matter came up at dinner with friends last night, who are also Rachel fans that felt our consternation (what WILL we do?). They know our arguments with cable, its costs and contractual servitude, and the penalty we paid upon release from this lopsided merry-go-round.
The escape was precipitated by financial difficulties where we were forced to cut expenses, and the cable bill loomed large in the monthly nut. So we became members of the cord cutting universe. (more below)
Interestingly, we hadn't had access to MSNBC with our previous provider, and Rachel hadn't then become part of our daily diet. But with the Roku setup, the show was available every morning, almost like clockwork (they tended to be lazy on Fridays and it occasionally didn't make it into the queue). And we became hooked.
Anyway, this week, Tuesday morning, our loyalties were challenged. NBC spoke from their corporate boardrooms that there be paywalls to watch their networks' programming, and Rachel Maddow is on their list of now-you-have-to-pay-tv-shows. They didn't bother to give notice. They didn't bother to attach ads to their podcasts, to help themselves defray costs.
They didn't seem to consider that those watching the Roku, Apple TV, and other free streaming access channels to this show - that these are the early adapters - these are often the more progressive among their audiences. And that by declaring these hundreds, (or is it perhaps millions?) of prospective viewers now roaming the non-cable universe - by declaring them unwelcome without their cable dollar bills - that in taking this action, they are alienating future audiences, influencers and present cultural creatives who today shape the public's behavior at dinner tables, over coffee, in breakrooms, at ball games, and in conversations everywhere.
Cable TV and the networks have set up a cabal of political and financial influence that holds the consumer in rather low esteem, if not a kind of cynical contempt. And while paywalls are their answer (one of their early answers anyway) to net neutrality, the cultural and media transformation that's afoot will not be turned back.
The paywalls might even help accelerate the transformation. The more proprietary and territorial the media giants get about the 'news' in all its permutations, the more consumers will seek out and dig even deeper to get to the meat and gristle of stories, as well as the media that's truly relevant to their lives.
Even Rachel falls short sometimes. On what we saw of last night's show, she went on about how the media sometimes goes wobbly on important issues - then spends the next few minutes hashing over stories about Bill O'Reilly's chronic distortions of the truth. (O'Reilly's lies have been all over the web for a week) But wasn't it just a couple days ago that Bernie Sanders stood up in the Senate, along with colleagues, to say that the media has failed to report on the US/China trade talks, which have received NO airtime on ANY network? Zero. And weren't the networks tellingly silent on the net neutrality debate that elicited over four million comments from the public - two million from Kos alone? A debate that went on for months and was by no means a forgone conclusion. Fortunately, the online community was on it with that one.
We have been at this crossroads pass for a time now - the one where corporations strategize to take more and more power and choice away from the people. And while this singular paywall issue seems perhaps trivial, it reflects much of the underlying transformational conflict.
So much depends on how progressives (like Rachel? and certainly Bernie Sanders and co.) are able to frame issues like the trade talks, and net neutrality and environmental issues.
But a huge part of it depends on how much of that framing actually makes it into the considerations of people motivated to vote.
And for that, we need more and better access to media. Not less.