So, Telly, huh? Remember them? The company that was gonna give you a “free” TV, a really fancy one with two screens, all for the low, low price of your soul (and constant ad bombardment, but who’s counting?). Well, guess what. They’ve only delivered, get this, 35,000 of those bad boys. Thirty-five thousand. That’s it.

Telly’s Big ‘Free TV’ Dream, Huh?

Look, when this whole Telly thing popped up, I had questions. A lot of questions. Because nothing is truly free, right? And a smart TV, a dual-screen smart TV, that usually costs a pretty penny. So when they said, “Hey, we’ll give you one! Just let us plaster ads on a secondary screen and track everything you do,” my internal alarm bells went off. Loudly.

The initial buzz was huge. Everyone was like, “Ooh, a free TV!” And Telly, they were talking big. Like, a million TVs by the end of 2023 big. A million! That’s a lot of TVs, a lot of logistics, a lot of shipping. But hey, free TV, right?

And then… crickets. Or, well, a slow drip of news that basically amounted to, “Yeah, we’re still… working on it.” And now, we find out they’ve only shipped 35,000. That’s, uh, less than 4% of their stated goal. Not even close. It’s like promising a private jet and delivering a tricycle. A tricycle with a billboard strapped to it, mind you.

The Catch, Of Course

Here’s the thing. This wasn’t just any old free TV. This was a TV designed from the ground up to be an ad-serving machine. You had your main screen for watching whatever, and then this smaller, secondary screen below it, always-on, always showing ads, always tracking your viewing habits, probably even listening in on stuff around the room. I mean, they were pretty upfront about it. You sign away a whole lot of privacy for this “free” gadget.

And you know what? Most people, even if they like free stuff (and who doesn’t?), they’re not that stupid. They understand the exchange. They know that giving up that much data, that much constant advertising, it’s a heavy price. It feels… invasive. You’re not just watching TV; you’re being watched by your TV. And for what? To save a few hundred bucks? For a lot of us, that’s a hard pass. A really hard pass.

Is Anyone Surprised, Really?

I gotta be honest, this doesn’t surprise me one bit. Not one bit. This reminds me of those “free” cell phones from back in the day, or those apps that seemed too good to be true until you realized they were harvesting every last bit of your personal info. We’ve seen this pattern before. Someone tries to push the boundaries of what consumers will tolerate for “free,” and usually, consumers push back. Hard.

“People aren’t dumb. They know the difference between ‘free’ and ‘I’m paying with my privacy and my eyeballs 24/7.’ The value exchange just wasn’t there for most.”

But wait, doesn’t that seem weird? You’d think with the cost of living and everything, a free TV would fly off the shelves. And yeah, for some, maybe it did. But 35,000 is a drop in the bucket. It tells me that the market for constant surveillance and ad bombardment, even for a free piece of tech, is way, way smaller than Telly (or, let’s be real, the investors behind Telly) thought it was.

The ‘Innovation’ Trap

What’s interesting here is how many tech companies seem to fall into this trap. They come up with something that sounds “innovative” on paper – like, “Let’s make a TV that pays for itself with ads!” – but they forget to ask a fundamental question: Does anyone actually want this? Do people want more ads? Do people want their TV constantly looking over their shoulder? Spoiler alert: Nope. Not really.

And then there’s the whole hardware side of things. Manufacturing, shipping, customer service for a million TVs? That’s a nightmare. It’s a massive, massive undertaking. And if your core product is something people are hesitant about, if the demand isn’t there because the strings attached are just too much, then all that logistical effort is basically for nothing.

This wasn’t just about giving away TVs; it was about building a whole new ad ecosystem, a new way to monetize your living room. And it seems like, from what I can tell, people are drawing a line. A pretty firm line, actually, right there in front of their couch.

What This Actually Means

So, where does Telly go from here? Honestly, it’s not looking great. 35,000 TVs out of a million-plus goal? That’s not a slow start; that’s a sputtering engine. It means either they can’t make them fast enough, or – and this is probably the bigger issue – not enough people are willing to sign up for the constant ad-bomb and privacy trade-off.

I predict we’re either going to see Telly quietly pivot, maybe scaling back their ambitions drastically, or they’ll just fade away. Because if you can’t even get people to take a “free” TV, a genuinely free TV, then you’ve got a fundamental problem with your value proposition. The “free” isn’t free enough to overcome the creepiness. It really isn’t.

It’s a stark reminder that even in an age where we hand over data left and right, there’s still a limit. There’s still a point where we say, “Nah, I’ll just buy my own TV, thank you very much, and watch it in peace.” Or, you know, maybe just read a book. That’s pretty ad-free, too.