Last week I bought a HDTV antenna to replace the service I subscribed. Now I can watch up to 60 HD channels for free. What a relief  after 30 years of paying subscription fee.  For a long time, TV channels that came free with the purchase of a TV set were delivered through semi-monopolistic cable companies which left free airwaves unnoticed for the average consumer. During the 1970s the cable was introduced as a common carrier that passed the airwave to transmission towers and delivered through cable to people living in mountainous area. The cable companies became conglomerates by merging all kinds of media business and provided a package deal with telephone and the Internet service that we therefore hardly can get the price down. Technological development used to be good for providing the convenience with lower cost. You know that most high tech gadgets got better and cheaper except new models. But caveat is in its service. Look how much we pay for the service. Most households pay between $100 and $200 for cable service and over $300 for mobile phones. If we can use free wi-fi (perhaps too ambitious?) or unlimited 4G/LTE, the cost would be reduced by half. But irony is here. Broadcast stations collect $3.02 billion in retransmission fees from pay-TV systems this year. Recently they brought the case of Aereo, Inc (providing broadcast signals to online viewers with just $8/month - now available in N.Y) to the U.S. Supreme Court for its illegal operation. In other words, broadcasters actually love the subscription system to compensate the competitive advertising revenue.