Website Review: TV for Dogs

We’re going to review the website(s) promoting what we presume to be pay-per-view TV containing programming exclusively for dogs. Although we do not rule out the possibly that the channels will carry advertising anyway, simply in order to generate extra costs to pass on to the kind of idiots that would subscribe to this stuff, we are certain it is not a free service and we will endeavor to expose the scam. We wish we we’re making this up but we’re not. Before we can bring ourselves to delve into these websites more deeply, however, we are going out for a stiff drink away from any kind of communications technology.

Update 13/7/2013: Now reviewed.

spoof schedule of tv channel for dogs Well, we’ve looked at the website now, and confirmed that it is nothing more than an ad-scam designed to further ensure that a fool and her money, or more likely her husband’s money, are soon parted. Aimed at ladies, particularly middle-class ladies of the bored housewife variety, dogtv is a vanity product with which they might leap-frog over the Joneses. A oneupwoman’s-ship service that can be delivered online, or through classical cable for those ladies who find non-vibrating machines with more than one button overly complex.

I mean, who else would want to subscribe to a TV channel for their dog? When there is no evidence in the scientific literature that watching TV is beneficial, or even interesting to a dog? Dogs get most of their information about the world from their noses. They would only watch a TV set for the same reasons most people do – because they are bored and there is nothing else for them to look at. The underlying, possibly unspoken, assumption of dog TV is that canine viewers would find programming made for dogs more stimulating than any other kind of programming.

That is utter nonsense, and if you’ve got a dog that likes to watch TV you might as well change the channel to free-to-air mainstream news, with the added benefit that those channels also treat their viewers like dogs. Why pay for something that you are already getting for free? If you want programming pitched at the intellectual level of a dog, you can tune in to Fox News or CNN anytime. If, on the other hand, you think your dog is smart enough to be able to tell the difference between channels and would discover the ruse, challenge it to a game of chess and I’ll wager $100 it will beat you.

I had a cat once. I was lying down on my bed watching a football (association football) match and the cat was lying next to me. A midfielder had picked up the ball in his own half (on the left of the TV screen), dribbled around three defenders, megged the full-back and hammered a shot goalwards that thundered just inches over the bar and off the right of the screen. As the ball left the image my cat suddenly pounced to exactly where the ball would have gone if it had not been only an image on the screen.

spoof schedule dogtv2 The cat’s reactions, coordination, and reflexes were superior to the goalie’s in every imaginable way, although the cat’s situational awareness was somewhat lacking. This failure to establish even a rudimentary sitrep surprised my cat as he collided with the shelving around the television set, knocked over a whole bunch of ornaments, and fell to the floor. You know that look cats have when they realize they have just made utter cocks of themselves? That’s what he slunk off with, never to watch TV again.

Not wishing to digress any further, the observed reaction of my cat proves that some house pets, if they are bored enough, will watch a TV screen. Particularly when they are in a darkened room with the TV the only light source. There is overwhelming evidence of this among human behavior for it to be beyond dispute. Which brings us back to the insanity of dog TV and the fact that such an enterprise can even exist let alone generate profits in a world beset with conflict, poverty, and inequalities the likes of which have never been seen.

Do these subscribers, perhaps, objectify their dogs as possessions the same way they do with their children? Wake them up, leave them with the child-minder/dog-walker all morning, pick them up later in the day to get them a hair-do, then back to the child-walker/dog-minder, pick them up again, shove a hamburger in their mouths, plonk them in front of the TV, then get on the phone to brag to all their fair-weather friends about how they’ve got a dog tv subscription now. It would almost make having a major world war worthwhile, in that conscription would be required and society might rid itself of such people by transferring them to the front.

If there is any justice left in the world, the enterprise behind dog TV will be bankrupt by the end of the year, its executives and investors behind bars. Prison or madhouse, doesn’t matter. We have to get these people, and their customers, off the streets and have the police shoot their dogs.

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