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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.