Sunday, April 01, 2007
Flying with Television
At the movies, preceding the feature presentation there's typically a brief segment admonishing people to be less annoying during the average two-hour film. Why isn't there a similar public service announcement before a six-and-a-half hour flight?
The airline could put together a montage of comedians doing their obligatory routines about flying ("Don't you hate it when..."), which are always funny – just like blog posts about flying, which never fail to make interesting reading.
And now a word about media consumption on JetBlue. Instead of showing a limited selection of commercial-free movies (edited for language and sexual situations) as do other airlines, JetBlue has back-of-seat live satellite television. So, instead of sitting back and passively soaking in a new movie that's not out on DVD yet, I had to become an active channel-surfer in an attempt to stay entertained. Maybe that would be acceptable if I were flying during television's sweeps week, but it's not the best tradeoff on a Saturday night featuring nothing much other than a SNL rerun that was barely tolerable the first time around; a commercial-laden, expletive-deleted airing of "Friday" on Comedy Central; or an "I Love New York" marathon on VH1 (which I couldn't even watch, since I'm saving it for DVD).
Even a bad film can knock a two-hour chunk out of a cross-country trip. By contrast, live television segments the journey into hundreds of tiny moments, "Isn't there anything else on?" *click* "Another commercial for the electric knife" *click* "Oh look at that, Anna Nicole...still dead" *click*
I couldn't even stare at the map for hours at a time, since the flight tracker was punctuated with commercial messages from JetBlue. How many times do I have to see the drinks menu? Why, when I'm trying to remember how to pronounce Couer d'Alene, should I be barraged for the 100th time with the unappetizing suggestion of a pairing between the house merlot and a bag of Doritos?
In-flight entertainment should make the flight seem shorter, not interminable.
The airline could put together a montage of comedians doing their obligatory routines about flying ("Don't you hate it when..."), which are always funny – just like blog posts about flying, which never fail to make interesting reading.
And now a word about media consumption on JetBlue. Instead of showing a limited selection of commercial-free movies (edited for language and sexual situations) as do other airlines, JetBlue has back-of-seat live satellite television. So, instead of sitting back and passively soaking in a new movie that's not out on DVD yet, I had to become an active channel-surfer in an attempt to stay entertained. Maybe that would be acceptable if I were flying during television's sweeps week, but it's not the best tradeoff on a Saturday night featuring nothing much other than a SNL rerun that was barely tolerable the first time around; a commercial-laden, expletive-deleted airing of "Friday" on Comedy Central; or an "I Love New York" marathon on VH1 (which I couldn't even watch, since I'm saving it for DVD).
Even a bad film can knock a two-hour chunk out of a cross-country trip. By contrast, live television segments the journey into hundreds of tiny moments, "Isn't there anything else on?" *click* "Another commercial for the electric knife" *click* "Oh look at that, Anna Nicole...still dead" *click*
I couldn't even stare at the map for hours at a time, since the flight tracker was punctuated with commercial messages from JetBlue. How many times do I have to see the drinks menu? Why, when I'm trying to remember how to pronounce Couer d'Alene, should I be barraged for the 100th time with the unappetizing suggestion of a pairing between the house merlot and a bag of Doritos?
In-flight entertainment should make the flight seem shorter, not interminable.
Labels: movies, television, travel
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