No more cable!! Woohoo!

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Well, we finally did it. This morning, I called up AT&T and had them disconnect our cable TV. It’s been a long time coming.

Neither of us watches much TV anyway, mostly PBS, and the cable has been acting up all week. I hear it’s been acting up all over Pittsburgh. Anyway, my husband got home from work last night and wanted to watch McNeil Lehrer (well, it’s just Lehrer now) and the cable was out. He dug out the old rabbit ears, hooked them up and presto! PBS came in just fine! We also get the big 4 networks OK.

We’ll take the $50 a month (!!) that the cable cost, and invest in a really good set of rabbit ears. Does Radio Shack still sell rabbit ears? Hopefully that will get us some of the UHF channels. But even if it doesn’t, we’ll live.

I feel liberated!

The Cat In The Hat

#2

I have free cable in my apartment complex, but I’d miss Sportscenter too much to not have it. But $50 a month?!? Either you had every premium chanell, or you live in Podunk, I assume… I would expect to pay no more than $25 for the basic needs, and that’s all I have ever paid.

Though at this point, I would want to look into getting a small dish if paying for cable was again something I had to do. Sort of the “why rent when you can buy” argument…

Yer pal,
Satan

#3

We had every premium channel, AND we had fancy hot-shit digital cable. My hubby got it hooked up before I moved in.

I expect that the next time there’s a big news story, or a big storm, we’ll miss CNN and the weather channel. That’s what the Internet’s for, though.

The Cat In The Hat

#4

Cat-
I have rabbit ears that work pretty good…I’m also looking at another option- I’ll let you know if it works. (This is for our upstairs TV…the downstairs has an obscene number of Direct TV channels)

A friend is someone who likes you even though you’re as ugly as a hat full of assholes.
Zettecity

#5

I will be moving out of New Jersey and into New York in the next few months, and the only thing giving me pause is that I will probably lose my access to Turner Classic Movies (yes, OK, I know my money is going into Jane Fonda’s pockets . .). I hate Ted, but how I love those old movies!

#6

Hmmm. I have no premium channels, and I pay $41.00 a month. Monopolies seem to have that effect. If I wanted the premium packages, I’d imagine I’d be paying $65 - $75 a month. I don’t love TV quite that much.

Catrandom

#7

Good for you! I haven’t had cable for over 25 years. Whenever I think about getting it, I come to the realization that all it would do for me is have me watch more television. I waste more than enough time already. I can’t say I’ve missed out on all that much (well, maybe the final season of Babylon 5, though friends taped that for us).

www.sff.net/people/rothman

#8

Flora, New York City (I assume that Dorothy Parker’s alter ego is moving into the city itself, n’est ce pas?) is lousy with video stores that specialize in classic movies. You can have your old movies without financing Hanoi Jane; it just takes a little advance planning.

Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown

#9

Hallelujah!
IMHO, the only reason to have cable is to have a cable modem. Since they don’t offer that in my area, I don’t bother. Don’t think of the shows you’ll miss if you don’t have it, think of the life you’ll miss if you do!

“The world is not five hours old and evil has already entered it” - Aslan
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

#10

Democritus: Nice Sig line, but is that from LW&W, or is it from Magician’s Nephew?

I gave up cable many moons ago when I got downsized out of a job, and we had to cut expenses. Then, when we moved into our current house, the roof antenna connection didn’t work, so we went with the ultimate experiement - - no commercial television. We have a t.v., but only have it hooked up to the VCR.

SoxFan59
“Its fiction, but all the facts are true!”

#11

I wish I could convince my husband to let us get rid of cable. It’s too easy to just sit down in front of the boob tube and zone out when I’d be better off getting something done around the house or reading a book! Some days, ya just don’t want to think though!

#12

I let the last of my satelite programing drop when Direct TV took over USSB a few months ago. It was to the point where only about one thing came on in three months I would watch. I had two months to make the switch over and not one show came on I wanted to watch the whole time.

#13

I get cable…oh, this is embarassing… just for CNN. I’m a news junkie. Bad.

Because I’m also a haphazard paperwork completer, I found out what happens when you don’t pay the cable bill for three months. They don’t cut it off and give you static.

Instead, they remove the premium channels first. Then the standard enhanced. Then the local. Just PBS is left… and they replaced every other channel with Public Access. 98 channels of UW Engineering seminars ! Joy !

“You can’t tell me what sucks!” - Beavis, a true Objectivist

#14

We get cable, and the tv is almost always on in our house, but we don’t actually watch that much tv. I know that sounds weird. It is usually parked on either Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, CNN Headline News, or the History Channel… and it is just sort of background noise. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and watched tv.

>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://opalcat.com
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions

#15

You know, I’d ditch cable altogether if the satellite TV thing wasn’t so complicated. I called a couple years ago and talked to a rep about their network. Seems that you can’t get local channels (big deal most of the time, but during last year’s tornado season I was glad to have it) without an a/b switch, and the pricing was only good for one “controller.” Since I have multiple t.v.'s, I could have networked them, but we would have all had to watch the same channel. The other option was paying for a second controller, and that brought the price right up to what I was paying per month for cable.

#16

SoxFan, I’m sure Democritus will get back to you with this, but in the meantime, I’m indulging in something I never get to do–answer somebody’s question first. Even when I know the answer (which is rare) someone always beats me to it. Anyway, the quote is from The Magician’s Nephew. Refers to the fact that Jadis has shown up after the destruction of her own planet.

#17

I had my cable off for a year when i moved out of Jersey. I did not miss it. We had no time to watch it. By the time I got home it was dinner,homework,cleanup, bath, bed.(The boys stay at their dad’s house til I get home from work, so I figured they got enough TV while there) It was just a waste of money as far as I was concerned. Then my kids got hooked on wrestling so I had it turned back on. We still hardly watch it. I try to catch jeopardy and biography and thats about it.

And fyi, the cable reception pretty much all over america(don’t quote me on this) is expected to be crappy due to solar interference, or sunspots for at least the next 2 weeks. It happens every year about this time.

so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos

#18

Where are you in Cincy, PunditLisa? I use to live in Anderson, and we got a heck of a lot of channels, plus a nifty cable box with channel guide and music channels, all for something like $25-30 a month. That was with Time Warner.

Down here, we get MediaOne extended (?) service for $35-40 a month, with no cable box, no music, no channel guide. And only about 65 channels. The weird thing is, to get The History Channel or Sci-Fi, we’d have to get a cable box and pay $50 a month.

#19

Ohhh, bite me hard and call it toffy!. Cable TV can just lick my butt and call it ice-cream! I hate cable! Where I live we have the choice of airwaves or cable. TCI is the only cable that serves my area. I’d rather thrust my own fork to my tits than allow TCI to do it!

Forty dollars a month for them to bombast me with filth? Bite me! Hard and fast! Bite me! In the Salt Lake City venue, I can get most of what they offer for free. The rest, I wouldn’t pay them for with a loaded gun to my head! Cable, in my area, isn’t worth what TCI wants to charge. They are as grave diggers on the Egyptian plain. They just want to sucker me in.

FYI – it’s just me but unless you have to buy them, don’t. Don’t give up your hard earned money just to have them echo back to you what you should buy.

#20

I live in West Chester, Sanibel. I get the “basic” package now, which gives you CNN and ESPN, but no music and no premium channels. In order to get THAT, you have to get a “box” for each t.v., etc., and the bill ended up being $50 a month. Now I pay $30. But I like it better without the box anyway, because I can now program my VCR to tape one show while I watching another. Couldn’t do that with the idiot box.