Satellite

It has been a while since I criticized anything, something that I find great joy in. so today I am going to talk about satellite dishes.
Almost 10-12 years ago the craze of satellite channels started to rev in Syria. Similarly to anything new, they were illegal, pricy, and everyone wanted them. They almost became a matter of superiority (socially speaking). This doesn’t mean that everyone had them, but especially in Damascus none but the two local public government channels were available. And that wasn’t enough. So the idea of having more than a hundred channels was really stimulating. Many people got the old analogue dishes first. Building roofs transformed into dish harbors, and became very ugly. Many quarrels happened between owners and renters on the right to have a satellite mounted or not. Those who lived on the roof (at least one in every building) got it worst as every time someone wants to install, update, or fix a satellite they had to be bothered.
Even almost-fallen buildings or houses had satellites. Rich and poor alike had satellites (like cellphones now). The disease was transmitted to these areas that had better channel reception from Lebanon, Jordan, or Turkey.
What’s funny is that some channels (specifically Polish or Turkish) used to broadcast nude game shows, or playboy soft porn at night. And in a quiet night you can hear the dishes (all powered by engines that rotate them to face different satellites) turning at the same time to face the same direction. Instinct is powerful.
Nowadays (since my departure to the US), everyone has a digital satellite receiver. And subsequently thousands of channels of which the same old ones they used to watch on analogue are watched again. Definitely there are many new channels that are more specialized and oriented. And the digital receiver was a new groundbreaking machine in this neck of the wood. Even I love it.
But what is displayed on these channels (I shall by the way write about the music channels separately later)? I made a survey trying to classify the channels. And they can be classified into the following:
News, music, local channels (Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, etc…), and 99.99% of people watch these types. There is like 10 only-news channels (maybe more) but normally only 2 or 3 are regularly watched; 20 music channels at least (excluding music played on the local channels); numerous local channels (more than 40) of which only few (usually Lebanese) are watched.
There are, and I wasn’t expecting to see them, some educational channels. Others are religious, sports, and variety channels.
In summary, this has created a good exercise for the right thumbs (in rightists) or left thumbs (in leftists). The reason being that a lot would spend their day skipping channels. There is rarely a time when someone would stick to one channel and spend more than 5 seconds of watching. I know it is good to get as much knowledge (knowledge here used metaphorically) as possible but this is not the way to do it.
My brother doesn’t like TV or satellite very much; he says it deteriorates family ties. He may be right, so next time I will tie him to the family and let him enjoy his time.