A friend recently mused about whether I was still in touch with the goings on in the States, and it reminded me how different things are today, communications-wise.
Back in 1983, I was assigned to a US Army unit in what was then called West Germany. We had access to German television stations and one or two British channels over-the-air. If you lived in Army housing, you had access to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, a unique cable system which provided a smattering of shows from any of the major US networks, minus the commercials. Some shows were a season or so “late.” Others were series which had never made it, so they were provided free to the military. News was the national edition of one network (NBC, as I remember it) recorded and shipped over, then shown a day late. AFRTS got their first satellite access in 1984, which meant we started receiving actual channels and news in real time, which was a major change. We got the morning shows late in the afternoon, due to the time differential: one of my strongest memories from those days was watching the Challenger disaster live as we sat down to dinner.
Phone service was provided by the BundesPost: think MaBell without the charm, and it was ridiculously expensive (as all long distance phone service was). Many times, you had to call an operator and schedule an overseas call; alternatively, family back home could call you collect, in effect notifying you they were at home and wanted to talk. You would deny the charges, then return the call to save them some money.
Mail took an extra week or so to arrive. The only papers available were the International Herald-Tribune, a weekly compilation run jointly (at that time) by the Washington Post and New York Times, or the daily Stars & Stripes.
And of course there was no Internet.
The net effect was to to be somewhat distanced from the news and the culture. I have always had trouble placing music from The Clash into any timeline, because right as they became famous back in the States, we were out of touch in Europe (which is an excellent excuse to embed one of their songs).
What’s different today? In place of the government-provided infrastructure described above, we have an organic, commercial one in Mexico. Because of the demands of primarily American and Canadian expats, we have access to several cable, streaming, and satellite TV services. I have Dish network, ostensibly in Cincinnati, Ohio, so I get some fifty channels, including all the major networks, local affiliates, PBS, CNN, Fox, HBO, Disney, ESPN, etc. For television news, I watch one major network (usually ABC), BBC America/International, and Special Report on Fox.
Using web applications, I listen every morning to WTOP, the DC-area news and traffic radio station, but now I get to smirk when the traffic or weather is bad. My favorite magazine subscriptions (The Economist, First Things) have gone digital, delivered to my tablet. Online I use GoogleNews to aggregate several feeds, and I use an incognito tab on my Chrome browser to read the Washington Post and New York Times every day. When I run into something behind a paywall or subscription-only, I use the Internet archive (tip: bookmark this site and use it; it works great) to get free access.
Mail delivery is even worse in Mexico, but is improving due to the introduction of Amazon here and its delivery system for packages.
We still have T-mobile cell phone service, with free calling to the States, and we can Skype/Google-chat when we want video. Whatsapp, an app which is used all over the world but not that often in the States, gives us free text messaging and asynchronous communications.
Not to mention, with the time I have as a retiree, I can pretty much choose how much news to consume, and when. One thing I haven’t mentioned: social media. Given our internet connectivity, social media is as ubiquitous here as in the States. However, if you get any of your news from social media, I suggest you reconsider. I can tell you the biases of all the media sources I use, but as the Russian troll operation demonstrated, the online world is far more complicated. With so many people trying to spin or distort what they call news, you are better off using social media for connecting with friends, not gathering information, wherever you are.