I wish I caught this for last week’s Saturday Article Link. Digital antennas allow you to watch local channels and their network feeds without cable or satellite. DVR receivers or connecting it to a service like Sling allow you to even record digitally. Even cable and satellite boxes can be hooked up for local OTA (over the antenna) channels, and in the age of digital signals you’re local ABC station might also be bringing you the MeTV line-up of channels or something.
I come from the old days, when pixelization wasn’t an issue but static (we called it “snow”) was. The antenna had to be turned for each station rather than picking the best direction and going with it. We had this little box that would click as the antenna rotated, because you used it to position the antenna without climbing on the roof every time you wanted to switch from the CBS affiliate to the NBC one. Then cable came along. Then the local stations charged cable so much the prices rose until we went back to the digital antenna and free ad-supported streaming for our TV and movies, or paid services, or YouTube and other internet options.
Last week was the anniversary of when the old analog signals were taken by the government, allegedly for rescue radios and such, and Cord Cutters News founder and contributor Luke Bouma decided to look back on those thrilling days of yesteryear. Fellow old fogeys, which bugs you more, static or pixelization?
BW Media Spotlight 
The Sequel/Prequel/Reboot Problem
Watergate was a scandal so big that they started calling conspiracies “(x)gate”. Comicgate and Gamergate are the latest examples, but something words just leave their meaning and get used wrongly. Mary Sue and “woke” are both victims of that in our current discussions on lazy storytelling. Also in that discussion is “fatigue”. A certain genre or franchise is losing audiences? Must be “fatigue”. Then they keep making it so what was the point of that label?
Added to the list of fatigues are sequels, prequels, reboots, and re-imaginings, because Hollywood goes to the well too often since they’re afraid of new things. The old stuff is more familiar, they reckon, more safe. It’s actually lazy marketing even if the people who make those movies, video games, and shows try to do it justice. Among other media but for this discussion I’m sticking mostly to movies, as that’s where most of the examples are coming from, but we’ll discuss the other stuff as well.
To help frame the discussion I’m going to use this recent article by Variety contributor Rebecca Rubin. “Don’t Call It a Sequel. Or a Reboot. Or a Remake. Why Certain Words Trigger Hollywood” goes over some of the more familiar terms when it comes to these various forms or remake or continuation and I wish I could find the Nerdrotic video where Gary Buchler goes over even more divisions because I wouldn’t be able to find the list, either. It gets ridiculous, but even what Rubin lists here shows that Hollywood doesn’t like that term because they don’t think the audience likes that term. However, like all of the other fatigues in entertainment discussion, it’s not that sequels and company are bad, it’s that the current people in charge are doing them wrong.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on June 18, 2026 in Animation Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Streaming Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight and tagged commentary, gimmicks, Hollywood, movie sequels, prequel, re-imagining, reboot, Television and Movies, video games.
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