So I just read this article 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 ;).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.