Sure, you can create a favorite channels list on your set top box. But, what I really want is to block shows. I don't want to see "Paternity Court." I don't want to see any show with Stephen A Smith. I don't want to see "Hunting Bigfoot." When will cable TV take a hint from streaming radio and give us a thumbs up and thumbs down button by show title, artist, etc.?

I used to watch espn and NFL a lot. I haven’t had either on my tv in a few years now and I don’t miss it at all. Wife put the TBS app on our Roku last night and I just about puked. She just HAS to watch The Alienist though. Been trying to convince her to cancel Dish for a while now but she’s hooked to some stuff like a tweaker.

I'm not following you. If you don't want to watch them, don't watch them. Or are you saying you don't even want to know they exist?

he wants to be able to remove them from his playlist of available shows put on during that timeslot by that station.

The biggest issue is that a song is 3-5 megs of data, a hour long tv show can be 400 megs up to 4-5 gigs based on Video Quality level.

So what’s wrong with your DVR that you can’t use it to record the shows you want to watch, thus allowing you to not see those shows you are so offended by?

To be more clear, I want the cable TV system to allow me to flip mindlessly between channels, but if I have already "blocked" a show or an artist or a host, that flip button bypasses the show (and of course, the channel it is on). But, since the channel has shows and artists that I do like, from time to time, it shows up if the show or artist is NOT blocked.

I don't use a DVR.

AI and providers could allow subscribers to "block" certain shows and content and "learn" the curve.

Based on that, when you select something you have the option to say "yes" or "no" to adding that content to your "blocked/allowed" list and over time, you would have less need to "interact".

Another thing and similar is figure how much "revenue" the providers get from "advertising" and such crap, and let a subscriber pay a tier to avoid having to deal with the crap.

Yeah, we get that TANSTAFL, so we might be willing to pay to eat the "lunch" we desire.

And, speaking of ad revenue, wouldn't the ads be more valuable since they would be shown to me on the shows I am watching, rather than me surfing looking for shows? All the time spent flipping takes me away from shows, and with AI the advertisers would have data on which shows were truly rejected or accepted, without Nielsen ratings.

^^^
Yes.

I am not buying a box of tampons because they show them to me 20 times in 2 hours.

I'll use QuikClot...

So you love Dwight Yokem (example) and hate Steven Smith and you want something to decide for you wether to allow you to view a program that has them both listed as part of the show?

There’s an on/off button on that remote for a reason.

The system operators could easily - nay, trivially - put the logic in place to let subscribers customize the listing directory. (e.g. remove channels and have them shown in whatever order you want, remove certain shows, etc.)

The fact they don't means either 1) they think giving the subscriber those features would cost them money, somehow, or 2) maybe the show/channel providers all have contractual terms which force the system to display their offerings 24x7.

If it's the latter, and all the content providers have colluded to force identical terms, that might be a valid anti-trust issue.

Anyone work inside a CATV/SATV system and know which it is?