The Gawker

As the year rolls to an end, awards season is upon us. But this time we’ve decided to single out the least-deserving — those companies, apps, and individuals who let us down in 2023. It is in this environment of malfeasance that I nominate these candidates to be recipients of what I affectionately call the Trasher Award. Imagine a golden trophy rising out of a trash can and being presented to organizations and people whose dubious achievements are recognized far and wide.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Trasher goes to:

Amazon Prime for its promise to introduce commercials into its program streams early next year.

Elon Musk for X-ing out Twitter.

ABC for cancelling Alaska Daily and CBS for ending East New York, two of the best freshman dramas on network TV.

The Privacy Nightmare caused by every new car gathering troves of personal data from drivers and passengers. Then again, automatic recording does take the weight off the singer’s shoulders in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” for having to “remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday.” Now, the car has Meat Loaf’s memory covered.

Gannett for hiring a full-time Taylor Swift reporter.

Paramount+ for bleeping Parade director Michael Arden during the 2023 Tony Awards that it carried verbatim from CBS. Arden didn’t have to be censored since the Federal Communications Commission’s obscenity rules don’t apply to the internet.

Dish Network for failing to clean up its space junk. The FCC fined Dish $150,000 for not boosting its EchoStar-7 satellite into a position that wouldn’t threaten other satellites. Dish’s excuse was that it didn’t foresee (or didn’t care) that the satellite, which has been in geocentric orbit for more than two decades, might someday run out of fuel. Ugh.

Disney and Spectrum for playing a game of chicken. When the cable giant blocked channels like ABC and ESPN, viewers were denied tennis, baseball, and football games — not to mention reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club. Both companies were guilty of living in a past when the cable monopoly meant something.

FiOS, the cable operator, which in reaction to my trying to cancel Showtime after realizing it was included as part of my Paramount+ streaming subscription, said it would charge me $25 just to make the change.

Max, for erasing the HBO name despite decades of premium brand building. It’s not TV. It’s Max?

Shazam, the app that identifies ambient music through a phone’s microphone, for failing to recognize a version of the Pink Floyd song “Another Brick in The Wall” neuroscientists assembled from the recorded brain waves of patients who were listening to the track while undergoing surgery for epilepsy.

Yours truly for placing Alexa and Hey, Google devices within listening distance of each other in my home, inadvertently triggering them to fight it out whenever I address the wrong smart speaker in the room.

Sony, who this year sold me both a big-screen TV and a pocket-size camera but failed to include a manual with either one.

Sony (again) for not warning me that gesture controls initiated by raising the palm of my hand in front of the TV’s camera work only in a lighted room. Doesn’t the company that gave us Trinitron know that many of us watch TV in the dark? Shouldn’t the company have deployed night vision in its camera?

Apple for introducing its iPhone 15 Pro with the ability to capture spatial video but delaying its Vision Pro glasses for viewing it until next year.

WCBS Radio, for promoting its Mets broadcasts every hour on the half hour since April, thereby confusing non-baseball fans with what seemed like a gibberish call by an umpire. It turned out to be Mets broadcaster Howie Rose screaming, “Put it in the books!” (I should have known that since the favorite expression of my Granny, an avid Yankees radio listener, was: “That’s one for the books!”)

Robbie Robertson for bad timing in dying before I was able to move The Last Waltz to the top of my Netflix cue. The resulting “long wait” for the disc negated any chance of it becoming a keeper when the company’s DVD-by-mail service, which shipped its last discs on September 29, announced that subscribers could hold onto their last titles at home in perpetuity.

Finally, the Trasher goes to supermarkets such as Stop & Shop, which have increasingly narrowed the selection of toilet paper to mega rolls or single-ply normal size. Customers with in-wall bathroom dispensers are unable to accommodate the bulging mega rolls; and users detest the porousness of single-ply paper. The extra time required to unfurl and fold it to an equivalent cushy wad wastes precious minutes. What, may you ask, does this have to do with consumer electronics, the subject of this magazine? Well, why do you think the pause button was invented?

The Author
Michael Antonoff is a freelance writer specializing in audio/video technology and industry developments. He was a senior editor for Popular Science, executive editor for Video magazine, technology editor for S&V, and a tech columnist for USA Today.