I bought my first smart tv yesterday. I looked forward to watching streaming movies with the sound syncing perfectly with the picture. I knew replacing my dumb tv with a smart one would make my life better with no drawbacks.

That’s not how it went.

After I set up the new tv, I connected the digital antenna I use to watch local broadcast tv. Then I spent half an hour talking to a customer service rep for Hiro Roku tv. He guided me to go to the settings, to click on Live TV and to have it search for channels. But when I went to find my favorite channels, they weren’t there. I asked why I could find “CBS News Atlanta” and “CBS News Chicago,” etc. but I couldn’t find plain old CBS. The rep couldn’t answer that.

It turns out my new smart tv doesn’t allow me to watch local broadcasts, even major networks. All those “Live TV” channels are actually streaming content. I cannot see what local stations are broadcasting right at the moment. I felt cut off from the world.

Do new owners of smart tvs not care about local broadcasts? Or have we been shuttled down a consumer path that’s caused us to forget that local broadcasts have value?

I want to watch my local news at 8 a.m, live, as it’s broadcast. I want to flip around the local channels at 1 a.m. when I can’t sleep, pausing on the old game show channel and the movie channel that shows nothing more recent than 1988. I need the channels that only have commercials for captioned phones, life insurance and incontinence products. I need to play football and baseball games in the background, live, as they happen.

Also, smart tvs don’t broadcast weather alerts or breaking news. This is bad for those of us who don’t stare at our phones while we tell ourselves we’re watching a show. If a tornado is coming, I want that to scroll across the bottom of my tv screen as only dumb tvs can do.

Local channels make me feel connected to the world, in real time. Using only streaming channels feels claustrophobic, stifling, like I want to look out the window, but all I get is a screen with pictures from yesterday. 

The rep actually explained as if it’s a good thing that if I want a specific channel I simply go to the Roku home screen, click on Live TV, enter the name of the channel I want in the Search field, then choose the channel from the options that come up. Is that supposed to be easy? Is that supposed to be better than turning on the tv and flipping directly the channel I want?

Also, what do you mean “the name of the channel?” I don’t want Beverly Hills, 90210 (yes, there’s a streaming channel that’s only that show). I want plain old local station WGN, but searching for “WGN” gets me channels like WGN Morning News. I can’t find the local WGN channel showing me what’s broadcasting right now. Why call it Live TV? The streaming channels my smart tv “found” are absolutely not live.

Why do smart tvs make it so hard to watch regular tv? The most obvious reason is that Netflix and Hulu and all the rest make money from subscriptions and advertising. But also the different platforms, even the free ones, clock what we watch. They constantly collect data to market to us, adjust content to make us more likely stay on their platform, and who knows what else?

In this way smart tvs watch us while we watch them. But when I watch local (truly live) tv, HBOMax and Tubi and all the rest of them have no idea what I’m watching. I’m beyond the system, off the range, out of the pool. No wonder you can’t walk into Best Buy or Walmart and get a regular tv anymore. 

I thought I was going to get rid of my 2016 dumb tv as soon as I set up the smart tv, but I’m not doing that now! At the moment I have both tvs set up. On one I can only watch streaming content. On the other I can only watch local broadcasts (I had a Roku unit connected to the dumb tv, but it stopped working and new ones aren’t compatible). I guess I need another tv stand.

It’s a stupid situation, but I’m an old woman who needs her nostalgia channels and goofy local news. Knowing the platforms can’t see what I’m watching is just a bonus.

UPDATE TWO DAYS LATER:

A wonderful TV expert named Gabe figured it out! The key is to click on the “Live TV” tile on the Roku home screen, NOT on the words “Live TV” in the menu on the left. (Why didn’t the Roku rep know this who I talked on the phone for 30 minutes??)

NOW you see regular tv channels, or over-the-air (OTA) channels which is the technical term. Instead of ridiculous channel names like Love Kills or Leave It to Beaver, there are plain old local station channel numbers! I was so relieved to see this! Thank you, Gabe.

I have no idea why Roku calls both the OTA channels and the streaming channels “Live TV,” but it’s a lie. So I changed the name of the tile option that leads to the OTA channels. On the home screen, I selected the tile, pressed the star (*) button, and clicked on “Rename input.”

I chose the “Antenna” option because I use a digital antenna.

Now it’s clear where to go for the OTA channels.

I HATE HOW HARD THIS WAS.

 

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