Dear Rogers and Bell,
Late last night after reading a delightful reddit AMA with AGENTS OF SHIELD star Clark Gregg, this TV Addict got a hankering — due to the general all around awesomeness of Mr. Gregg — to check out the recent season finale of AGENTS OF SHIELD. So like any respectful TV Addict who has always gone out of his way to legally view and pay for content versus illegally download, I fired up my CTVGO App on my iPad. Unfortunately as a result of me being a Rogers cable customer and MARVEL’s AGENTS OF SHIELD being a Bell Media property, I wasn’t able to legally watch the episode. I also wasn’t legally able to access the episode on CTV.ca or via Rogers on Demand. Needless to say, this TV Addict is angry, or in the spirit of the show that inspired this post: HULK ANGRY!
What is so infuriating is that as a staunch defender of legally viewing both television and movies, I myself am punished for choosing one company (Rogers) over another (Bell)*. You’d think, in this day and age where not a month goes by that sees a major media outlet splash a headline like a recent one on CBC.ca, “Cord-cutting continues as Canadians ditch TV & landlines,” Rogers and Bell would be celebrating customers and making it as easy as possible for them to enjoy content they are paying their hard earned money for. Not punishing us.
[Editor’s Note: On the off chance any Rogers and/or Bell exec is reading this, content has absolutely nothing to do with my choice in choosing Rogers over Bell. I actually used to be a Bell customer, until an awful customer service experience.]
In a perfect world, short-sighted Rogers and Bell execs would realize this and outline some sort of win/win agreement that allows paying customers on either platform to watch any of their shows. Case in point, had I been able to watch AGENTS OF SHIELD on my iPad last night, Bell would have generated revenue thanks to my eyeballs taking in their incessant ads, Rogers would have made bank because I would be eating up my ridiculously restrictive bandwidth cap [I’ll save that rant for another post] and me, the humble hard-working paying customers would have won by enjoying an hour of witty one-liners courtesy of the always entertaining Clark Gregg.
Instead, Rogers and Bell’s petty squabbles and inexplicable insistence on using their customers as pawns results in everybody losing. Well, almost everyone.
As it turns out, there is one winner amidst this frivolous first world problem! Meet mediahint. Not willing to be punished for choosing one Canadian monopoly over an other, this TV Addict did a little googling around and discovered that for a measly $3.95 per month, I could get around both Bell and Rogers punitive ways and watch AGENTS OF SHIELD legally via ABC.com. Just thought I’d point that out for any Canadian tired of being caught in the crossfire that is the unholy war between Rogers and Bell.
End of Rant. 
