I Got the Hots for TheCoolTv
I hate cable. Do you remember when The History Channel had programming about stuff that happened in the universe before this present moment and not: “WAS HITLER BIGFOOT’S LOVE CHILD!?!” “I just gotta find out!” The answer is always, “ummmm, probably not. Where’s the closest bank? I have to cash this check.” They slap down the cheese, we always leap for it, and then the cold steel bar slaps down on the breaking neck of our collective intelligence.
Or do you remember when The Discovery Channel was about something called “Sci…Sci-uh…Science! Yeah that was the word!” “Whatcha watchin’ honey?” “Well first up is “Ghost Punchers”, then there’s the “Dumpster Painter’s” marathon and then a new show called “Idiot.” “What’s “Idiot” about?” “I guess they figured out a way to mirror the surface of your TV screen from the other side!” “Ohhh I’ll make popcorn!” And don’t tell me the “Premium” channels are worth it. Its 160 hours a week of “Earnest Goes Cross Country Bowling” type movies and then 8 hours of the one show you want to see played once and rerun 7 times. Just buy the DVDs when the season is over and watch at your leisure. Be sure and tell your friends and enemies to shut up when they try to ruin the plot for you. And we all freakin’ know the so called music channels on cable are a cruel joke of reality TV mush.
So a couple years ago I bought one of those cheap flat screens to play Xbox on. That’s all I used it for. Then one day about three months ago I got a wild hare of curiosity wondering if broadcast TV still existed. Rather than simply switch input from my Xbox to the TV I had to call a man-friend for man-support about my man-question. Hey, it’s scary stuff. His answer was, “Wow, I have no idea. Switch inputs and see what happens.” So there we were, struck silent by this adventure, and BAM! No way! All in the Family!
I abruptly hung up and watched Edith Bunker for a good week straight. Then the fateful moment came when I had to take my first baby steps out of the Bunker household and change the channel and BAM! Music video channel. 24 hours a day.
TheCoolTV is based out of Lawrence, Kansas (In an old cabinet shop.) which actually makes sense because Lawrence has a hopping music scene. The channel was founded by Joe Comparato as an outgrowth of his studio and his concert video production company Cool Music Network which is one reason why TheCoolTv has a ton of concert footage some of which is in definite over rotation like the Styx DVD footage which was cool the first few dozen times. The spectrum of videos that are played range from pop to “huh?” to “rad!” and from ancient to “As soon as I’m done with my coffee I will send it over to CoolTv.” I have heard that the programming is tailored to your local areas tastes so if the programming director of your local station is a dunderhead or you live in the polka capital of the world then I guess things could suck for you. There are some actual “programs” which are really just videos of the same theme all clumped together and these range from “Over Easy” to “Dance/Tonic” to the “Big Heavy Rock Hour”. There is one actual show that is a traditional show called “From the Road” which has interviews and concert footage. There’s no VJs getting their hair stuck in the spokes of their egos to deal with and besides a bit too many Time/Life infomercials about CD box sets the amount of commercial breaks aren’t too overwhelming I think mainly because the demographics are all over the place so is all the advertising.
TheCoolTV is currently in a crap ton (technical term) of cities and as usual you can go to their website to figure out your situation and Wikipedia has a list as well. In ABQ it’s KASA-TV virtual channel 2.2 physical channel 27 and in Denver KMGH-TV virtual channel 7.3 physical channel 7. About as well as I can describe the “virtual channel” thing is that there’s actually four channel seven’s in Denver and the third one is TheCoolTv. The videos on this page are three that were played in a row while I was typing this to give you a sample of the programming.