We continue our new tradition of posting music videos to fill in for holidays and other off days. In this case, Songs of Birdland has taken the bittersweet Auld Lang Syne and made it somehow peaceful and gentle. And very, very long.
IA #17: Our Town (1940)
Our Town, an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. It’s set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners NH in the pre-World War I period of the 20th century and follows its residents as they grow up, get married, live, and die.
William Holden starred in one of the first lead roles of his long career, but many of the other parts were filled by the actors who originated them on Broadway, including Martha Scott who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Aaron Copland was nominated for Best Musical Score. All those awards and star power was enough to land it this high on the Internet Archive Top 100.
I Forgot To Remember To Cancel FuboTV
(Updated. See below.) I subscribe to a lot of over-the-top, internet-based streaming services. I want to try the different interfaces, to see what each is like to use, and to keep tabs on bad news. When a service is happy about something, it sprays a news release and everybody hears about it. When something less happy occurs, often only the affected subscribers hear about it, as happened a couple of times recently.
In December 2016, I ponied up for a year’s worth of fuboTV, the upstart OTT service that was about to expand from a niche product into a more comprehensive service. I wanted to play around with fuboTV apps and to see what kind of upgrade offer I’d get later on. (Answer: Alas, nothing worth writing about.)
It’s December again, and I hadn’t seen any emails from fuboTV for a few months, so I logged on to cancel my subscription. I found out that fuboTV had already auto-renewed it for another full year. I sent a note to apologize and ask for a refund of my 50 weeks or so of as-yet unused service. Today I received a reply that said in part, “you would not be eligible for a refund at this time as your request does not fall within our 24 hour Refund Policy window.” But don’t worry, now they definitely have it on file not to bill me again in mid-December 2018.
Does any other subscription service do this? Satellite radio provides a refund in similar circumstances. So do newspapers and magazines. So do cable TV companies, Dish Network, and Sling. I honestly can’t think of another subscription service that refuses partial refunds. (If you know of one, please leave a comment so I’ll stop thinking fuboTV is alone.) (Sling also keeps the monthly subscription fee after a service is cancelled.)
And so, dear reader, if you are considering a subscription to fuboTV, an otherwise interesting sports-centric collection of channels, please pause to read its Refund Policy. You might find your purchase is more like buying a non-refundable ticket for a flight than subscribing to other streaming TV services.
Update 1: With more time to search, I have found other subscription services that don’t offer partial refunds – NBA League Pass, HBO Now, and Dropbox – except where it’s legally required. MLB.tv probably doesn’t either, but I know it emails me before its annual renewal.
Update 2: A couple of days later, fuboTV offered to convert my annual subscription to its more comprehensive fubo Premier monthly package and refund the difference. It’s a lot better than nothing, and now I’ll get a few weeks to experience the dozens of channels on that plan. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Wednesday Notes
Most of the TV pundit industry seems to be taking off the last week of 2017, so I am especially glad for Jon Lafayette‘s note at Broadcasting and Cable. Lafayette said that the NBA’s Christmas Day game ratings were way up this year. The Golden State v. Cleveland Cavaliers matchup drew a 5.5 rating, “the fifth highest ever on ABC for Christmas”, and the Oklahoma City Thunder v. Houston Rockets game drew a 4.1, “the highest for a primetime ABC NBA broadcast since 2003.” There are more and more cord-cutters these days, and they’re hungry for live sports. The NFL, which recently posted a new record in TV ad revenue, remains hugely popular with most of its games freely available to anyone with an antenna. More major sports leagues need to put more games where they can be seen by such casual viewers, especially the new generation of cord-nevers, so they can capture another generation of fans. I hope the NBA can find more excuses for games on free TV.
And this one’s not really video, but it felt like it. Dick Orkin, the man who created radio serials of Chickenman and The Tooth Fairy, passed away at the age of 84. Orkin did an amazing job, despite little budget and a tiny cast, of creating coherent, deeply silly worlds that filled listeners’ imaginations better than most TV sitcoms. Here’s a YouTube video of The Tooth Fairy’s first episode – because it’s radio, you can’t actually see anything.
FitzyTV Adds Some Out-Of-Market Locals To Pay TV
If you’re a pay-TV subscriber, there’s another way to watch some of your channels away from home. FitzyTV provides a nice selection of free channels, including four possibly out-of-market local stations, after authentication through your provider.
Based on its domain’s whois information, FitzyTV is a product of James Fitzgerald of San Diego. It’s currently available in the Google Play App Store, though its web site promises that the iOS version is coming soon. (The Android version, published by Fitzgerald Technologies LLC, is still in beta.)
That App Store description reveals its main emphasis. “FitzyTV turns your Android phone into a DVR for the online TV channels you have access to as part of your cable or satellite subscription.” Although watching live channels on an Android phone (or tablet) is free, the cloud DVR is $5/month for 20 hours of recordings.
Even without a DVR, FitzyTV’s free version has its uses. It includes Chromecast, even for channels that don’t otherwise support it. Four full-time local stations – WNBC and WABC New York, plus KNTV and KRON San Francisco – are available even for pay-TV subscribers outside those cities. There are also primetime feeds for Fox east and west, though CBS is absent.
The other channels in FitzyTV are: ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPNews, HGTV, MSNBC, CNBC, FX, FXX, FXM, AMC, Bravo, E!, Oxygen, USA, Food Network, Disney, Disney Junior, Universal Kids, Syfy, Comedy Central, TV Land, MTV, NatGeo, Olympic, Golf, NBC SportsNet, and a few NBC RSNs. If the associated pay-TV subscription doesn’t include the channel, FitzyTV won’t play it. For example, when I logged in with my Sling Blue account, it wouldn’t play ESPN or ABC, but both were available when I logged in under my cable subscription.
As a Mountain Time resident, I’m really surprised that my locals would be okay with me watching the earlier east coast feeds of NBC and ABC. FitzyTV seems like a helpful service, but I wonder how long it will last.