Could I Really Do Without Cable TV?

[Alice The Goon]

So I just read this article (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/KillTheCableBoxGetFreeTV.aspx) about cutting off the cable, and it blew my mind. Could I really do without cable?? It... it doesn't seem possible. How could I do without it, OMG OH NOES! But, maybe? Maybe I really could stop sending those Coxuckers my hard earned dollars? Could I?

:eek:


I don't really watch that much tv, and most of the shows I do watch are on network tv, I'm starting to realize. The rest I'm thinking I can find online or from Netflix! Oh My god, I think maybe I could do this! Wow. Who knew? I've had at least basic cable since I was 13 years old and my dad was The Cable Guy. To think about cutting the cable off after 27 years, that is crazy talk!

Or is it? Have you done it? How's that working out for you?

[treis]

I'd say that 85% of what I watch is either Scrubs, Seinfield, Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy. Those can easily be replaced by DVDs. The only thing that keeps me tied to cable is sports. Gotta have my college football saturdays, and NBA games. If I could just get those two things, I'd cancel everything else.

[BiblioCat]

I gave up cable about a year ago when I moved and just couldn't afford it anymore. It cut down on my TV-viewing, obviously, but I've found I don't really miss it - and this is coming from someone who had cable for at least 20-some years, the last five or six being full-service, every-freaking-channel available and OnDemand service, too.

There are some things I miss, like Mythbusters, but I can live without it.
There's a pretty good selection on Hulu, and most network shows are available on-line for a few days after the inital airing, or I wait and buy the DVDs.

[Sunspace]

I suspect that TV is designed to make you think that everything you see is important. This is not true. The importance diminishes rapidly with distance in time and space from the screen. I found that after dropping cable for six months, I didn't miss it.

[The Shroud]

I haven't had cable since 1997, and whenever I get a taste of it, I don't feel I'm missing anything. YMMV, of course. There are a lot of trashy cable reality shows that seem to provide some water cooler talk, but I'm not into those (besides, Jimmy Kimmel can fill me in). Same with 24-hour news networks. I'm not into sports, nor Law & Order reruns. I like the occasional Daily Show, but I can see that on Hulu (along with reruns of Bob Newhart, woohoo!).

As for the occasional cable show I want to see, or BBC show for that matter, l can usually find a way to, er, borrow them.

[Alice The Goon]

Wow. It's really like a huge paradigm shift. Back in the day, cable was important. To me and my kids, it was a necessity. I paid that cable bill on time every time like it was something we absolutely couldn't live without, like water or electricity. That probably sounds very spoiled, but I don't think I am- it's just that when you've always had something, it seems necessary to live.

I am going to do this. I'm going to call tomorrow, pay whatever balance I have, and get it turned off (starting Monday- let's not rush things over the weekend).

Oh, wait! How am I going to know what time it is without the cable box?! I guess I'll have to buy a wall clock.

Freedom... oh, freedom... yeah, Freedom!

[Bayard]

Haven't subscribed for about 6 years. We subscribe to the 2-DVD/month Netflix, and we get DVDs from the library pretty often. There are some things I think I would really enjoy on cable, but not enough to shell out the money. Like the article linked in the OP says, the library is an awesome resource (at least our local library is). Old NOVAs, History Detectives, classic movies, great TV shows. And all FREE! FREE!

[don't ask]

I used to have pay TV but found it was consuming huge chunks of my time. During the football season I would watch virtually every game each weekend, that chews up about 12 hours. What was most disconcerting was that I don't really watch many TV shows on any regular basis however with channels like Discovery, History, Cooking more than half the time I flicked them on I would get caught up in whatever was on. "Oh, the Chicago riots of 1968. What was that all about?" "Gee I wonder what the average Albanian family does eat?" "So that's how they make those things."

I got rid of it and went back to watching free to air infrequently.

[Rachael Rage]

I only got cable (the cheapest I could possibly get) because where I live the rabbit-ears don't work and I want to be able to watch the news in case another building in my city gets knocked down. And the Oscars. So that's about $13/month. With the Internet, my cable bill is about $60/month. I really don't want to pay a penny more than that. When the SO is not home I hardly ever turn it on.

[Siam Sam]

We've always done without cable. We only get MTV Taiwan and BBC News because they get piped into our building in some mysterious way. We're just too busy to watch most television.

We could not, however, do without our DVD player. And I would probably have to break down and pay for basic cable just to get BBC or CNN if we didn't get BBC for free, although we did without even that for years in other places.

[Tamerlane]

I don't really watch that much tv, and most of the shows I do watch are on network tv, I'm starting to realize.


See, I'm exactly the opposite. I almost never watch network TV and could far more easily dispose of their programming. Original programming on Showtime and HBO in particular cover most of the serialized shows I've followed over the last few years. Lost is the about only exception I can think of off the top of my head. PBS once in awhile. Hmmm...the now defunct Veronica Mars was another, I guess ( but I watched almost 2/3 of that on DVD ).

So, nope - couldn't ( or at least wouldn't want to ) do without it. Now if I could get cheaper cable bills by cutting the main networks, I might do that ;).

[janis_and_c0]

Alice, is it just this particular cable company you're fed up with?

[SeaDragonTattoo]

I cut the ublilicable in 2005 and subscribed to the 3-at-a-time Netflix instead. I turn over about 15 DVD's a month with Netflix, plus their movies online (which have far superior quality to any other streaming I've found). Nope, don't miss cable at all. Especially if you have streaming capability on your computer, no need for cable at all.

[gardentraveler]

I had a pretty basic cable package for a few years because my roommate at the time was a heavy TV watcher. After she moved out, I watched less and less TV and trickled down to nearly nothing in 2003 when I couldn't stand the Iraq coverage and references on practically every channel any more. Not to mention the commercials, which have gotten more and more annoying to me over the years. I did the math and figured out I was paying more than $500/year for nothing and my inherent cheapness won out.

I still have cable internet (which I get more than my money's worth out of), but stick to DVDs, occasional online TV, and get all my news from NPR, newspapers and online.

So, yes, it's easy!

[Pixilated]

My kids were mostly raised on VHS and DVD's for "TV" - no cable in the house.
It was that way for several years.

They also had limited access to the computer.

Me, on a budget - cable or dial-up (and later DSL)?

Dial up won! =)

The kids are still living and breathing as well as myself. IMO, I HATE the TV being on and I cant stand letting kids watch it for hours on end. Same with the computer. Although, I tend to favor the computer over the TV.

IOW, Yes you can live without cable IME

[ZipperJJ]

We did this topic last week, btw. Two pages worth (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=479263)...

[cochrane]

I didn't respond in the last thread, but I couldn't do without cable. It's become too much of a habit. I'm hooked.

In 2005, and again in 2006, I had lengthy hospital stays. The only TV in the hospital and in the rehab facilities I subsequently entered was over the air. It drove me crazy. I had to have my Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, HBO. I needed to see Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, and the Sopranos. And I needed to see it now. Screw waiting a year for the episodes to go on DVD. I was glad to come home to my digital cable with DVR and On Demand programming. Even though I pay around $115 a month, I can't see myself voluntarily going back to broadcast TV.

[rackensack]

I've never had cable or satellite service as an adult. I stopped watching most TV shows at home when I was in junior high and my dad was finishing his college degree -- his only viable study area was in the living room, which was the same place as the only TV in the house. So by the time I left for college I was thoroughly out of the habit. Didn't have a TV in our dorm room in college. When I came to Atlanta to go to graduate school in 1986, I brought along an old 9" b/w set that my dad had when he was working on a temporary out-of-town posting. I used it mainly to watch Atlanta Braves games on WTBS (over-the-air Channel 17 here in Atlanta). For most of my single years, I was just too broke to blow that much money every month.

My wife grew up watching TV, but got out of the habit also when she spent a year teaching in Taiwan. When she moved back to the U.S., she decided she would see how long she could go without one. Her classes of fifth graders were so flummoxed by the notion that someone could not have a TV that the three classes pooled their efforts and bought her a 13" Sharp color TV as their end-of-the-year present. That was the only TV in our house from 1993 until a few years ago when we added a 9" TV/VCR combo with DC power adapter to let the kids watch videos on long car trips. Last November or December we finally bought a 20" LCD.

We resisted getting cable because of the expense, and because once we got cable we knew we'd want a better TV to watch it on. Likewise, we resisted getting a better TV because we knew that would make us more tempted to get cable.

Conservatively, I figure we've saved at least $60/month for the last 15 years or so of cohabitation. That's nearly $11,000 that we have been able to save or spend on other things. That doesn't even count the seven years between when I graduated from college and we moved in together -- that would be another $5,000. It also doesn't count the money we haven't spent on bigger/better/fancier TVs and other accoutrements.

As good as some cable programming is (and I do get a fair amount of it in hotels when I'm traveling on business), I really don't think my life would have been better had I had a dozen years of cable TV instead of that $11K.

[nashiitashii]

Haven't subscribed for about 6 years. We subscribe to the 2-DVD/month Netflix, and we get DVDs from the library pretty often. There are some things I think I would really enjoy on cable, but not enough to shell out the money. Like the article linked in the OP says, the library is an awesome resource (at least our local library is). Old NOVAs, History Detectives, classic movies, great TV shows. And all FREE! FREE!
The library really is a great resource for all sorts of neat shows that you may never have heard of when you had cable. If you can figure out your library system's holds policies (most of them are pretty simple), you can watch a lot of stuff for cheap or free. My library has a TON of television on DVD, which is how I got into Doctor Who, Rome, House, and The Tudors. I can still get my fill of Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, and Deadliest Catch from the library as well, and I've discovered some really cool PBS specials this way.

We haven't had cable for over a year, and I find that I turn into a TV zombie whenever we visit someone who has cable and is interested in watching it while we're there. I don't feel that it's a good thing, though. The only thing I really miss is being able to watch the Olympics, as our local NBC provider (WESH) doesn't want to send out a strong enough broadcast signal for those of us with bunny ears style antennas. When we purchase a home, we'll probably invest in an outdoor antenna, but for now, bunny ears will do just fine. This isn't the first time I went without cable access (I didn't have it for about a year in college and learned I didn't need much in the way of TV to be entertained), and it might not be something we invest in next time we have that kind of disposable income.

[Otto]

I could live without cable and did so for a number of years because of the expense, but I wouldn't choose to live without it. I watch next-to-no broadcast TV and enjoy far too many cable shows. I pay about $85 a month for cable, which includes subscriptions to Showtime and an on-demand channel. That comes out to less than $3 a day and I definitely get at least $3 a day in entertainment.

[control-z]

I've been on antenna-only for about 1.5 years now. It's not too bad. I have a HDTV and TivoHD to record shows. I get about 21 channels even though I'm 40 miles from the nearest city. My total TV expense is $12 a month for Tivo service. High-def over-the-air broadcasts are really beautiful, the olympics look great. Cable and especially satellite compress their broadcasts to a certain extent.

I've bought a couple series through eBay on DVD recently (That 70's Show, The X-Files, Reno 911, etc.) But even if I bought one series a month I'd still be paying less than the ~$50 a month for cable.

Also remember if you have a fast Internet connection, you can see tons of shows for free on http://hulu.com, and I believe you can pay NetFlix about $20 a month to watch as many movies as you want.

[Projammer]

Unfortunately there are too many shows that I really enjoy for me to be able to cut the cord. I do, however, have Tivo record them so that I can watch them on my own schedule and fast forward through commercials so I can watch an hour show in 45 minutes.

My biggest complaint is the lack of a la carte programming. I expect that 90% of the channels that I recieve are never watched by anyone in my household.

And I had to go to the second tier subscription to get 2 channels that were on the must-have list if I was going to have satellite at all.

[Thudlow Boink]

I've never had cable or satellite service as an adult.Me neither.

I can take some of the money I would have spent on cable, spend it on TV shows on DVD, and my TV-entertainment needs are amply met, with no commercials to sit through and no worrying about what's on when.

[Alice The Goon]

Alice, is it just this particular cable company you're fed up with?

No, I have no particular beef with them except that they take my money every month. I'm lately on a saving spree- I stopped smoking, made my son a latchkey kid, and now no cable bill. Maybe I won't be broke all the time anymore, and that's what I'm looking forward to! Any extra family time or time for hobbies or reading will be a bonus, but it'll be nice. I'll still have my high-speed internet and my Netflix.


Oops- I must've missed the thread a couple weeks back because I wasn't thinking about d/c'ing it at the time. Sorry.

[Surbey]

I actually want to get rid of my cable but my roommates won't let me...

[Kuboydal]

When I was 17 I became bored. I looked over and realized I was watching TV. I got up and went outside. I have not had cable since. I can paint, play guitar, do rudimentary plumbing and carpentry, garden like a mofo, play drums, fly RC airplanes, have an extraordinary collection of books I tend to reread, and fix all sorts of strange and odd things.

I'm 33 and I believe releasing the TV addiction to be one of the best choices I have ever made.


(Netflix is a good idea tho')

[Apocalypso]

I went for 3 and 1/2 years without television. Didn't miss it at all. The only reason I have it now is because I live with people that can't stand the idea of being without the idiot box. If I was on my own again, I'd go tv-less again.

It's not really the expense, although basic cable around here is something like $60 a month. It's more that I can rarely find anything worth watching. The endless stream of reality shows the past few years doesn't help matters. 98% of what's on is garbage, and the other 2% isn't enough to justify the price. I wouldn't spend $60 a month on books, games, music, or movies, and those are things I like a lot more than television.

How I got rid of my cable was, I was writing a check to the cable company one day when I realized the last thing I watched was the Super Bowl. Which aired around the time I wrote the last check to the cable company. That made me start thinking about whether it was worth it to pay for a service I rarely used, so I called Comcast, told them to come pick up their box and other crap and cancel my service. For Steeler games, I just went to someone else's house to watch, and bought most of the sitcoms I did watch on dvd.

[Full Metal Lotus]

A guy at worked asked me if I had seen wsomething on TV.. I said no, and realised that I hadn;t "sat and watched" TV for some long time.. at least a month..

I am moving soon, and will get a nice big TV, probably, but won't bother with cable.. DVD's and ps2 are what I am into anyway...

Cable costs will porbably go topwards paying for more DVDs and PS2 games anyway...

Once digital TV comes in, I might get an antenna, and run the signal through a "box"...I am more into local stations anyway, and its free.

FML

[Quasimodal]

No cable here. Haven't had it for 4 years. Think of all the money I've saved. I've spent more time exercising and pursuing other interests. Anything I want to see can be downloaded or found on DVD. I even threw out my TV the other day, so I can proudly claim I don't own a TV anymore as well!

[Vihaga]

I could, no problem. (My husband could not.) I only watch TV at all when I'm *really* too tired to do anything else, so I could watch anything and not care. Even with a DVR, I just don't have the time to stay caught up on shows.


You'd have to pry my high-speed internet from my cold, dead hands, though.

[Fish]

My brother Cervaise once made a very good point about television — and he may not have been the first, I admit. Television is Time Pornography.

You sit down and burn hours in front of the television watching people, all of whom have time to do interesting things because they're not watching television. At six you get home, microwave some burritos, and plunk down in front of the TV. On television people have time to hold dinner parties, make cookies, go skiing, visit the beach, have a bake sale, wash the car, take the cat to the vet, see the kids in the school play, take a vacation, try a new hobby, draw, paint, sculpt, read, sing, dance, embrace, weep, laugh, mourn, and fall in love.

Then at eleven o'clock at night you yawn and say "Well, time for bed. I'd do all those things too but I just don't have time."

[Crafter_Man]

We don’t have cable, satellite, Tivo, HD, or any of that stuff. Just an old pair of rabbit ears. And we somehow survive.

[Justin_Bailey]

My brother Cervaise once made a very good point about television — and he may not have been the first, I admit. Television is Time Pornography.

You sit down and burn hours in front of the television watching people, all of whom have time to do interesting things because they're not watching television. At six you get home, microwave some burritos, and plunk down in front of the TV. On television people have time to hold dinner parties, make cookies, go skiing, visit the beach, have a bake sale, wash the car, take the cat to the vet, see the kids in the school play, take a vacation, try a new hobby, draw, paint, sculpt, read, sing, dance, embrace, weep, laugh, mourn, and fall in love.

Then at eleven o'clock at night you yawn and say "Well, time for bed. I'd do all those things too but I just don't have time."

I've heard other people make the "time pornography" quip and I think it's bullshit every time. It only makes sense if you ignore the fact that you aren't always watching television and do do those interesting things at other times. My parents liked TV and still made it to every Little League game, did all sorts of yard work, cleaned the cars, took us kids on yearly vacations and spent plenty of time with extended family members. Oh, and to say that "reading" is a worthwhile activity and not time pornography is a joke (at least in this librarian's opinion).

Also ...and this is the biggie, so wait for it... The people on television shows aren't real. They NEVER watch TV. The only activities that make up their lives are "interesting" things. If the people on TV shows were real, they'd kill for a few hours of mindless television watching.

[Harmonious Discord]

The less you watch television, the less you turn it on at all. It's a downward spiral.

[Kiros]

Nope. Sports. If it wasn't for those, though, I'd get rid of it in a heartbeat and go the all-DVD-Hulu route.

[middleman]

Sports and news.

I could live without all of them but:

1. ESPN
2. ESPN2
3. ESPN News
4. CNN
5. MSNBC

I could get South Park on iTunes.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

In post-Soviet resurgent imperial Russia, cable will watch you!

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Cable TV content reminds me of what Benjamin Bernstein (IIRC) said in the 1960s of popular music--to the effect that it was about 95% garbage, but the other 5% was so creative and well executed that it was worthy of a thinking person's time and attention. To me the five percent makes it worth the time and money. I'm too busy these days anyway to spend much time watching the other ninety-five.

And, of course, I've never lived in an area that didn't have reception issues.

Crafter_Man, will you get a converter box next year, or just drop the TV altogether? BTW I liked the picture of your house in the other thread.

[Sage Rat]

To the OP: Yep, TV is pretty well unnecessary these days. I pay $15 a year for the Straight Dope which gives me several hours of entertainment a day. hulu.com has free movies and TV shows with a pretty decent selection and very minimal commercials. And for anything hulu misses, you can generally purchase via either Amazon Unbox or iTunes. Shows available online are usually made available during the middle of the night following their showing on regular TV.

There are some things I miss, like Mythbusters, but I can live without it.
Seasons 1 through 5 are fully available on iTunes.

[Fish]

I've heard other people make the "time pornography" quip and I think it's bullshit every time. It only makes sense if you ignore the fact that you aren't always watching television and do do those interesting things at other times.
Many people don't. The average person (http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html) watches 4 hours of television daily. 49 percent of people in the U.S. say they watch too much television. 70 percent of parents say they want to limit how much television their children watch.

Sure, you can use TV responsibly. Not everyone does.

[mhendo]

We just moved and, for the moment at least, we've decided to go without cable. We've signed up for high-speed internet, partly for fun, and partly because it makes our academic work much easier. But we're on a budget, and felt that we could live without cable TV.

We're keeping the 3-at-a-time Netflix subscription, and the university where my wife teaches has a good (and growing) collection of DVDs available at the library, so we'll have plenty of stuff to watch.

The main thing i miss is the sport. It's OK during baseball season, because i have an MLB.TV subscription, and now that we've moved away from Baltimore the Orioles games are not blacked out for me. The only games i can't see online now are Padres games, and i really don't care about the Padres, although that might change if we stay in San Diego for any length of time.

When football season starts, i'll still get a few games a week on the free networks, which is plenty. The main thing i'll miss is being able to tune in to ESPN for SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight and other similar highlights shows.

If we decide after a while that we simply can't live without Project Runway, or TCM, or endless reruns of Law and , then we might cave and order cable again, but for the moment we're happy without it.

[Crafter_Man]

Crafter_Man, will you get a converter box next year, or just drop the TV altogether? BTW I liked the picture of your house in the other thread.
I don't watch TV, but Crafter_Wife and the kids do. So I guess we'll have to get the converter.

[Justin_Bailey]

Many people don't. The average person (http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html) watches 4 hours of television daily. 49 percent of people in the U.S. say they watch too much television. 70 percent of parents say they want to limit how much television their children watch.

I'm sorry, but the study in your link was done by an anti-TV group. Of course they're going to find that the average American watches too much TV. But "too much" is subjective (what if someone wants to watch TV because they honestly feel they get something from it?) and someone is buying more books and attending more sporting events than ever before. I don't think that's just a small handful of people that are part of the intellectual elite.

[mhendo]

I'm sorry, but the study in your link was done by an anti-TV group. Of course they're going to find that the average American watches too much TV. Sure "too much" is subjective. But they never presented that part of the study as an objective finding. They never said that most Americans watch too much TV; they listed quantifiable statistics about how much TV Americans watch, and then they noted: "Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49. " (emphasis mine)

So, the poll probably asked something like "Do you think that you watch too much TV?" And in response, 49% of people said they felt that they did. The poll measured the subjective responses of the respondents. That does not equate to a finding that the average American watches too much TV.

And there's also no inconsistency between loving TV, on the one hand, and feeling that you watch too much of it, on the other. I love TV, and (until we recently cut off our cable) watched a damn lot of it. I enjoyed watching it, and feel that i'm aware enough of its influence that i can watch it without suffering trauma or other negative side effects. But i also think i probably watch too much TV, and that i might be better off if i devoted some of my TV-watching time to reading, or exercise, or whatever.

If i were asked in a poll whether i watched too much TV, the answer would probably be "yes," but that doesn't make me anti-TV.

[Boyo Jim]

If I cut off my cable, I'd be reduced to READING! :eek:

[Tripler]

I just set up a new apartment while I'm in EOD school, and while I simply must have Internet access, I can easily do without cable.

I've had practice: On deployments, I never needed it. If I wanted to, I would just watch some old DVDs or play some war games. I found I just don't need TV. So long as I can get to CNN or NHL.coms, I could get all the news I need.

So yes, you can really do without cable TV. It just takes a little practice.

Tripler
. . . or in my case, just do without and you'll adjust accordingly.

[Lakai]

I moved into a dorm room two weeks ago and have been living without TV since.

I get my Daily Show and Colbert Report fix on Hulu. Political happenings are available on Youtube and various news sites. The only thing I really miss is Mad Men.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I agree with those who place a higher priority on internet access.

On the other hand, I'm a little startled to observe how most of us, including me, have barely mentioned the technical aspect of the OP, which was whether she can still get content without being a subscriber. Instead we've just been rehashing the issue of whether cable (and TV) is good or bad, whether it's worth the money, and whether there are better things we should be doing with our time. There must be a name for this phenomenon in social science--bring up a topic, and nearly everyone just states their heartfelt opinions without looking at the question.

On behalf of myself, I apologize to the OP.

[Desert Nomad]

I haven't had a TV in many years, so yes, it is possible.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I haven't had a TV in many years, so yes, it is possible.
And there we see it again.