Sometimes I miss broadcast TV. Not in a nostalgic, rabbit-ears kind of way, just in the very specific, muscle-memory way that shows up every football season when I’m holding a remote and trying to do something that used to require exactly one button.
You remember the button. The sacred toggle: Game on NBC.
Tap. Game on ABC. Tap. Back again. Tap.
Now checking another score feels like navigating airport
security. Exit the game. Home screen. Open the right streaming app. Confirm I’m
me. Find sports. Find the game. Click in. Wait. And by the time it loads, I’ve
missed too much of both games.
And if I want to go back to the first game? I repeat the pilgrimage. Because nothing says progress like a longer walk to the same couch.
To be fair, the modern TV universe is dazzling. Infinite choices. Every game somewhere. Highlights, stats, alternate angles, documentaries about the long snapper’s childhood goldfish. It’s abundance on a cosmic scale. The problem is that abundance now comes packaged with friction: tiny bureaucracies of clicking and confirming that sit between me and checking in on other options.
Old broadcast TV had limits, but it respected momentum. It
didn’t ask who was watching. It just switched the channel.
I’m not giving up streaming. I like choice. I like having
every game within reach. I’d just like one honest button again. One small,
beautiful shortcut between curiosity and knowing.
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