Most of the time you’re lucky if a hotel has more than a few channels of TV to choose from. As someone who travels fairly regularly for work I’ve come to accept that in most hotels, you’re going to have to put up with a small number of crummy options to veg out to after a stressful day. Until this week.

This week the hotel I’m in not only has a lot of choices, it probably has more than I have at home. In fact, it made me think about how while I may have 100+ channels to pick from, I only watch a small subset. Sure, there are a few that I don’t get that I’d like to, but those require buying a more expensive cable package and who wants to spend dozens of dollars more per month just to get one channel you want?

I think the ideal situation for me (and many people) is for an a la carte situation where you can choose only the channels you want and not bother to pay for channels you could care less about. Some have tried to point to the model of paying per episode of the show you want to watch but that’s very expensive and it also is very limited in that you have to know what you want to watch before you download it. The beauty of television channels is that someone else is doing the programming and you can sit back and consume and discover new shows of a similar genre and quality, just by staying on that channel.

Unfortunately the content providers and communications companies seem to be content not to allow this to happen with the way their licensing is set up. I’m only hopeful that some entity with enough influence can come to the market and upset the now tired old model of content delivery. In the mean time I guess I’ll just enjoy watching some channels I don’t get at home, even if I had to travel across the country to do so.

7/90