The good news is it’s Friday and this is the last edition of “TV Watch” you’ll receive in your inbox that’s authored by me. At least until Wayne Friedman goes on vacation again.

The bad news is that I’m going to begin with a personal anecdote — part of an ongoing series of blog posts I’ve been making about my own experience trying to cut the cord.

Two reasons:

One, when I mentioned my failure to obtain a single commercial over-the-air broadcast signal after installing a state-of-the-art digital TV antenna during a session at MediaPost’s recent Publishing Insider summit, Graham Media Group Director of Transformation Michael Newman said: “We have to get that fixed.”

So I tried by contacting the antenna company’s customer-support team and they were great, but basically told me that due to hills in my vicinity, I wouldn’t be able to receive any commercial over-the-air broadcast signals unless I installed a 30-foot tower on my property.

The second reason is the appearance of a “NextGen TV” announcement on my Google News analysis of the top TV industry stories of my “TV Watch” fill-in week.

The NextGen news about a group of broadcast stations launching its “new, improved way for broadcasters to reach viewers with advanced emergency alerts” with “stunning video with brilliant color, sharper images and deeper contrast to create a more life-like experience” in Indiana made me wonder how many homes in their vicinity could actually receive them. Maybe it’s most, or all, because Indiana’s terrain is less hilly than rural Connecticut’s. Then again, they are prone to tornadoes.

In any case, it was yet another reminder that the transition America has made to digital over-the-air broadcasting doesn’t exactly live up to the spirit of the Federal Communications Act of universal access — unless you want to install a 30-foot tower in your backyard (see below), of course.

NextGen’s announcement Thursday has already indexed 67 stories in the past 24 hours, making it one of the top TV industry news stories of the week, based on my rudimentary analysis of Google News.

The top story of the week was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s wacko conspiracy theory that her television is keeping tabs on her, followed closely by The Wall Street Journal’s scoop about Adalytics data showing YouTube has been screwing advertisers.

Yeah, I know, YouTube technically is not TV, but after months of gradually untethering from a conventional MVPD to a virtual MVPD (YouTube TV) to an even lower quality one (Sling), I’m about to re-subscribe to YouTube TV — even though they jacked up their subscription rates — because it actually is the best TV viewing experience IMHO.

One thing I am unsubscribing from is HBO, which parent Warner Bros. Discovery has rebranded as Max, and created an inferior all-around viewing experience, including a litany of Discovery networks content I could care less about.

So after half a century of subscribing to HBO, I’m out, thanks to the infinite wisdom of WBD boss David Zaslav.

That said, I’m offering him a new tagline out of the goodness of my heart: “It’s not TV, it’s not even HBO. It just blows.”

But enough about me.

The last trending TV industry news story of the week was about the passing of long-time TV critics Marvin Kitman, who died Thursday at the age of 93.