AT&T Announces In-car Satellite TV, but at What Cost?

Sunday January 11, 2009

At the recent CES (Consumer Electronics Show) conference, AT&T announced a CruiseCast in-car satellite TV service that is set to launch this spring. Channels like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon (Among 22 satellite video channels and additional music channels) will be available, but at what cost? According to the CruiseCast website, it will cost $1,299 (MSRP) for the kit and about $28 per month for the service.

I can't see paying that to watch TV in the car. I guess commuters who carpool could watch CNN Mobile Live on the way to work, or people who travel in RVs might enjoy being able to watch regular TV stations, but the lineup of channels features a lot of kids' TV networks and the service seems to be strongly directed toward families. While I don't think that the average family is going to go for this at that price, the product will be offered at dealerships, so it will probably turn into one of those things that gets tacked onto the price as an upgrade to the vehicle and gets buried in the financing. Consumers would then just have to swallow the $28 a month.

There may be another cost associated with this technology and others like it, though. It is an interesting commentary on our society that 1. the product is being offered in the first place, and 2. a large number of the available channels are targeted at kids. Pretty soon, kids will have the ability to be glued to the tube almost 24 hours a day. Someone could make a movie out of the premise -- something about a TV network that takes over the world by sending messages to kids who are watching TV in their bedrooms as they fall asleep and waking up to it in the morning only to watch some more TV as they eat breakfast, and then it's into the car to watch TV as they travel to school.

The charge to protect children and raise them to be happy, productive contributors to society requires more diligence from parents as technology becomes more pervasive, and it is only going to get harder. While technology is great in many ways, it is also dangerous in some ways. Kids have easier access to inappropriate content, and TV, video games and other media can be addictive for anyone. Hours of life pass away with hardly any notice as kids and adults become entranced with shows on TV or determined to attain some achievement on a video game. Not that TV and video games are all bad -- they provide fun, and sometimes even educational entertainment -- but it can be challenging to teach kids how to find a good balance. How all of this will affect the future is hard to say exactly, but I do know that it's a whole new world now even just compared to when I was in school. Kids now have the potential to accomplish more than ever, but they also have more temptation to waste their lives away. It's daunting to realize that it is up to us to help them make wise choices and find that balance.