uncabled
So, at my house we’ve ditched cable TV — not for Lent, but forever. (Maybe.)
Our reason is simple: we just don’t watch enough cable stations to make it worth seven hundred dollars a year, and in a time of personal (if not national) austerity measures, the spending of seven hundred bucks needs justification. My sixteen-year-old son watches almost all the TV he is interested in — which isn’t much — on his laptop. My wife is a politics junkie but is fed up with what the cable news stations bring to that table. I have historically watched almost nothing except sports on TV — and my interest in sports in general and televised sports in particular has waned dramatically in the past few years. I also realized not long ago that I simply rely on my RSS reader to alert me to cool stuff that’s on TV, most of which I can see on YouTube or Hulu within a day of its original airing. (Plus I don’t have to sit through an entire episode of The Daily Show to get to the good stuff.) So, goodbye Comcast.
A couple of weeks into this brave new world — it occurred to me the other day that I have had ESPN for thirty consecutive years — here are some thoughts:
• I may be getting digital content, but I’m fiddling with the position of my high-tech antenna like it’s 1963.
• Reception for Chicago’s Channel 2 is awful — just twenty-five miles away! (I’m told that this will be fixed soon. A likely story.)
• Since there is absolutely nothing on broadcast channels during the day, the murmur of the TV, which sometimes created background soundscapes in our house — say, when we’re folding clothes, or prepping meals — has been replaced by the sounds of Pandora, usually the Mozart channel, via our Squeezebox. This makes us feel elegant and cultured.
• Turns out I miss watching Pardon the Interruption when I come home from work.
• When I have watched sporting events, I have watched them more closely and with more pleasure — perhaps because of their relative rarity. I will be interested to see how invested I get in March Madness — though if I see it t home it will be through the blurry offices of Channel 2. Alas.
• Our Roku player arrives in a day or two. We’ll see how that changes things.
Yeah, you know – I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing. I’ll have to get (or build) an ATSC antenna and see what the digital reception is like, here where I live. Pretty much all the shows I’m watching these days are coming in over broadcast. My Xbox streams an incredibly broad selection of shows and movies, now, and I already have a PC hooked up to my TV as a DVR, and it could probably serve to display Hulu content, too.
I’ll have to see. If I can somehow get Battlestar Galactica via some other means, there won’t be much else tying me to cable TV.
— Chet · Mar 10, 10:39 PM · #
I have given up cable as well (at least, when I pay – right now, I’m in a house that pays for it, and the rent is still cheap – but I rarely watch it). As a fellow PTI watcher, let me tell you that you can get the full show via audio podcast from ESPN’s podcenter. You miss some of Tony’s weird outfits, but the show is there. Plus, look into the Washington Post’s talking points, which is Kornheiser and Wilbon backstage with Cindy Boren, talking sports in a more subdued manner.
— B. Minich · Mar 10, 10:59 PM · #
You won’t really feel the pain until you’re sitting around on a cold, windy Saturday afternoon in November and you have a choice of watching either Wisconsin taking on Purdue or Notre Dame getting crushed by St. Mary’s Girls’ Academy.
— Bryan · Mar 11, 12:24 AM · #
We have a longstanding plan that the cable dies as soon as March madness is over this year. I’ve had a hard time figuring out where sports content is available online, however.
— Justin · Mar 11, 01:37 AM · #
Alan,
Get thyself a powered multi-directional antenna, and set it up outside if you can manage. You’ll be amazed how much better reception you can pull down. Also, we have actually been getting better reception in the Denver area, as new stations get their towers up, so there’s still hope for your Channel 2.
As B. Minich said, you can get the audio version on ESPN Podcenter, I set up iTunes to download it every day, and it’s waiting for me when I get home from work.
And @Chet, check out scifi.com/rewind to get your BSG fix on. Still VGA resolution, like hulu, so it won’t look great on your HDTV, and you have to wait until Saturday morning to see Friday’s episode. But it does beat $50 a month!
— David Samuels · Mar 11, 02:46 AM · #
Alan, I’ve done the same thing, and March is really hurting. To avoid the cold November contingency, I suggest you try justin.tv for all your sporting needs.
For the last few weeks, it’s been my methadone (basketball).
— JA · Mar 11, 04:07 AM · #
I just keep tabs on what’s new on TV via the hulu mini-viewer for google
— Cotton · Mar 11, 05:46 PM · #
Alan, we have done the same thing and haven’t looked back. Roku is great…especially if you enjoy old movies and aren’t upset by the lack of modern day blockbusters (there are a lot more Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movies available than there are Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt flicks). We have also found that when you only watch tv in order to watch a specific movie or show (as is the case with Roku), you end up watching a lot less tv. Aimless channel surfing disappears and you find extra time for other things.
— Tim · Mar 12, 01:46 PM · #
The only (very tiny) possibility that I will ever get cable again (should I ever get a TV again) would be the advent of a la carte channels. I want about five channels total. I don’t want to have to pay for fifty channels just to get the five I’m going to watch.
— E.D. Kain · Mar 12, 09:15 PM · #