Les Jones is becoming a cord cutter. We did it about two and a half years ago, and haven’t looked back. I don’t miss flushing more than 100 dollars a month away on 557 channels and nothing’s on. I don’t even use rabbit ears. Our TV is idle most of the time. I think TV reached its zenith (no pun intended) with the baby boomer generation, and it’s going to be downhill from here for any industry that makes its livelihood of selling people traditional television programming.
9 thoughts on “Cutting The Cord”
Comments are closed.
It’s been fifteen years since cable made its exit from my home. I haven’t missed it a bit. And now that the tiny handful of shows that I might want to watch are available to stream on the intertubes any time I want I can’t imagine ever going back!
Not me, I’m addicted. I am watching Days of Thunder and typing.
I just can’t do it, mostly because of sports.
I was cable free for almost an entire year, but then football season started…
I love my 60″ monitor. It also works when I want to watch blu-ray and DVDs. Don’t even have an antenna.
Bought my first and last television in 1998. Moved it to the basement in ’05, and tossed it when they went all digital.
You have no idea how much I regret not being able to watch American Big Brother Survivor Idol in high def with surround sound.
I have this odd habit that I don’t like to “channel surf” looking for shows, but if someone is watching something, my attention is drawn to it (regardless how bad it is). And if someone, like my dad or my sister, has the attention span of a gnat, and changes the channel as soon as a comercial break occurs, it drives me nuts–because now there are two shows that have my attention, and that I want to see resolved!
My wife is kindof like this, too.
Because of this, I haven’t really watched television for probably a decade and a half. It didn’t interest me to own one before I was married, and it doesn’t interest us now. I do like to watch a good Anime show every now and again (Anime is great, because it’s like a very long movie, and the story is typically resolved at the end of the season); I also like to watch a movie. I’d watch more, but I don’t, due to time constraints.
Computers are very nice for this way of viewing things: you just pop in a DVD (or resort to NetFlix, which I haven’t done yet), and have fun!
I would also like to play video games, but I haven’t yet figured out how to attach a game console to a laptop.
Of course, it’s irritating, when considering various internet companies, to have a Cable Rep try to convince you to get Cable TV bundled with phone and internet….
My big problem is I’m addicted to a couple of channels – all things NFL, espn, history, discovery, and now on HD FIOS Palladium (basically classic rock movies and HD live concerts).
We currently pay $225 a month for FIOS. That gets us phone, cable and Internet. The huge costs isn’t the service (though that’s expensive) it’s real annoyance is the cost of the rental boxes.
So what I really need is a way to still get te service, but avoid the equipment rental fees (they even charge for the chip if I have my own box). Simply canceling cable, but getting an Internet and TV connection doesn’t save money. Especially when I have to factor in the cost of roku boxes and Hulu subscriptions.
And no, we can’t cancel our home phone. Wife won’t let me.
But …. we don’t have cable in our bedroom. And she just had emergency surgery. So I ordered a analog to digital converter. And a Roku box. Gonna try it out up there this week as she recovers. Who knows. This might work!
OK, unlike some of the others here… I was the kind of kid that had a TV in his bedroom in high school (first half of 60s) and I piled clothes on it, covering the screen. Even at that point, I couldn’t see much worth watching.
However, on family get-togethers I can sit through a televised football game easily, provided the beer and snax keep coming. Televised Baseball is almost as tolerable. (The real thing is too boring — I bring a book.)
As for the shows with “content” — well, again, I prefer a book. (And it’s ink-on-paper, too. I read electrons all day for work, I’m damned if I’ll read them for recreation.)
With books I’m in control of the pace of the narrative. TV, video, movies, podcasts — all are too damn slow and I”m not in control. These media unfold at an unvarying pace of 1 sec/sec. Arrrggh!
So — cutting the cord? Been there, done that — and I was in my teens…. What’s keeping you?