Why does it take so many remote controls?

In the world of consolidated technologies, why does controlling TV stuff remotely lag behind?

How is it that we’ve managed to cram virtually every necessity we need into one single cellphone, but I still have seven TV remotes on the table next to my chair?

I remember the first time I saw a television set with a remote. It was the early 1970s, and our new next-door neighbors had a black-and-white TV that had a remote.

The television looked just like ours. There was a knob to change channels, a volume knob, and a couple of other knobs that adjusted the vertical and horizontal hold. My sister and I had been threatened with our lives if we were caught touching the latter two.

But the difference between their TV and our TV was that they had a large, plastic box with a switch in the middle that allowed you to change the channel from wherever you were sitting.

The first time I saw it work, I was amazed. They could press that button and the knob would magically turn between the whopping three channels we received.

At my house, I was the remote control. “Johnny, get up and change it to Channel 12.”

That was 50 years ago. How has someone not made it a priority to integrate changing the television set, the DVR, the DVD player, the ROKU, Apple Stick, etc., into our smart phone?

How’d that slip through the crack?

I can even press a button on my cellphone and tell it to do things — and it complies and does them immediately. But try telling it to put the TV on “Columbo” and the lady who lives in my phone just sits there politely telling me that she can’t do that.

This has to change.

My poor wife constantly has to ask me which remote does what, just so she can watch “The Pioneer Woman” or one of those house fixer-upper shows.

A couple of times, I’ve come home to find that the wrong buttons have been pushed and we aren’t getting “The Pioneer Woman” or a house show, but we are picking up a police scanner in Wyoming.

I usually get the buttons all pushed back where they belong just about the time Ree Drummond is saying, “Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week”

Now, I know that you’re probably thinking, “Buy a universal remote.”

Well, I did that. A universal remote really isn’t. I’ve yet to find one that really works. I mean one unit that allows you to sync up to every single device you have in the living room so that you can take all of the other remotes and stick them in a drawer.

The latest device I bought is an antenna DVR. It allows us to record TV shows from over-the-air broadcasts. It even has a little microphone in the remote where I supposedly can hold down a button and tell it to look for “Columbo.”

I tried it, but all I got was that police scanner from Wyoming.

By the time I got all of the buttons pushed back to where they were supposed to be, Columbo was taking the bad guy to jail.

Look, don’t get me wrong. The TV remote control is one of the greatest inventions ever. It ranks right up there with canned beer and beef jerky. But why can’t they just make all of this stuff in my living room work off of a phone app?

I don’t think I’m asking for too much. It’s a truly reasonable request.

Anyway, I gotta go. My wife’s calling. The remote isn’t working and she just told me to put down my beer and beef jerky and to help change the channel. Or, at least try.

©2020 John Moore

(John Moore is a 1980 graduate of Ashdown High School who lived in Texarkana and worked at KTFS Radio during the 1980s. His books, Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now - Volume I and II, are available on Amazon. You can email him through his website at TheCountryWriter. com.)