Well, kind of like living without television. I will be moving in about four months and I am giving some pretty serious thought to not subscribing to any television provider after I move. Right now, I have Time Warner Cable. Most of the time, when I have time to watch television, I find myself aimlessly flipping through channels and finding nothing that I really want to watch. I find it difficult to believe how there can be so little stuff that is interesting to watch when there are so many channels available.
Don't get me wrong. There are several shows that I enjoy watching. They are just on at times that are sometimes inconvenient to watch. If I have to miss an episode, it can be difficult to get caught up with what is going on. My favorite shows include the following:
Heroes, 24, Lost, Scrubs, Monk, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Burn Notice, Law & Order
Other than the shows listed above, the only things that I watch are news and sports. I enjoy watching the local Northwest Cable News.
CNN, MSNBC, FOX news...these channels are all a bunch of crap. All of these channels are so wrapped up in their own agendas, they fail to report news that I find interesting. They are just 24 hours of Conservative Talk (FOX), 24 hours of Liberal Talk (MSNBC), or 24 hours of watching them patting themselves on the back (CNN). Still, I do enjoy watching Northwest Cable News. They have a lot of local interest stories on and they do cover major national and international news.
I also enjoy pro baseball, pro and college football, and college basketball. Still, every year that goes by, I enjoy them less. I find it much more difficult to stay solidly behind a team when there are so few players that stay with a franchise for their careers. It seems that after watching a player develop for a few years or several years, they get traded and you watch someone else come in to play.
Another thing that ticks me off is the negotiations between networks and providers. I missed every NFC regular season and playoff games for an entire season here because of a dispute between FOX and Time Warner Cable. FOX wanted more money and Time Warner refused. Both of them appealed to customers. Two years later, I am still pissed at both of them. My parents just lost ABC (I think) on Dish Network because of the same crap. Anyway, it pisses me off.
I don't think that the sports and news are of high enough quality to keep me hooked up. I have been looking at various websites for each network, and, with the exception of Law & Order, I can keep up with the current season of every show that I enjoy by watching them online. In fact, watching shows over the internet tends to be more enjoyable because there are so few commercials to deal with. There are also a fair number of current and old television shows available at hulu.com. It is not a huge selection, but I can generally find something to watch there as opposed to the aimless channel surfing that I find myself doing with my cable service.
Using the internet to watch my favorite shows also means that I won't accidentally find myself listening to some dude talking about how his book is going to explain how to clean out years of gross, sticky, slimy crap out of my colon while I am eating breakfast. No more erectile dysfunction, KY Jelly, or male enhancement commercials either.
Northwest Cable News also runs most of their video online. That takes care of the news as far as I am concerned. I get most of my news by reading news stories on the internet anyway.
Sports will be the most difficult thing to keep up on. Of course, as I said before, I am not as big a fan of sports as I used to be. I think I can get my fill of sports by listening to the broadcast on the radio and maybe going to a friend's house or a bar if I really have to watch a game.
I figure that between what I can watch online and renting movies from Netflix, I should be pretty well off without enriching one of our cable or satellite television providers. Luckily, I live alone and don't have to worry about an entire family huddling around a computer screen to watch a television show.
Don't get me wrong. There are several shows that I enjoy watching. They are just on at times that are sometimes inconvenient to watch. If I have to miss an episode, it can be difficult to get caught up with what is going on. My favorite shows include the following:
Heroes, 24, Lost, Scrubs, Monk, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Burn Notice, Law & Order
Other than the shows listed above, the only things that I watch are news and sports. I enjoy watching the local Northwest Cable News.
CNN, MSNBC, FOX news...these channels are all a bunch of crap. All of these channels are so wrapped up in their own agendas, they fail to report news that I find interesting. They are just 24 hours of Conservative Talk (FOX), 24 hours of Liberal Talk (MSNBC), or 24 hours of watching them patting themselves on the back (CNN). Still, I do enjoy watching Northwest Cable News. They have a lot of local interest stories on and they do cover major national and international news.
I also enjoy pro baseball, pro and college football, and college basketball. Still, every year that goes by, I enjoy them less. I find it much more difficult to stay solidly behind a team when there are so few players that stay with a franchise for their careers. It seems that after watching a player develop for a few years or several years, they get traded and you watch someone else come in to play.
Another thing that ticks me off is the negotiations between networks and providers. I missed every NFC regular season and playoff games for an entire season here because of a dispute between FOX and Time Warner Cable. FOX wanted more money and Time Warner refused. Both of them appealed to customers. Two years later, I am still pissed at both of them. My parents just lost ABC (I think) on Dish Network because of the same crap. Anyway, it pisses me off.
I don't think that the sports and news are of high enough quality to keep me hooked up. I have been looking at various websites for each network, and, with the exception of Law & Order, I can keep up with the current season of every show that I enjoy by watching them online. In fact, watching shows over the internet tends to be more enjoyable because there are so few commercials to deal with. There are also a fair number of current and old television shows available at hulu.com. It is not a huge selection, but I can generally find something to watch there as opposed to the aimless channel surfing that I find myself doing with my cable service.
Using the internet to watch my favorite shows also means that I won't accidentally find myself listening to some dude talking about how his book is going to explain how to clean out years of gross, sticky, slimy crap out of my colon while I am eating breakfast. No more erectile dysfunction, KY Jelly, or male enhancement commercials either.
Northwest Cable News also runs most of their video online. That takes care of the news as far as I am concerned. I get most of my news by reading news stories on the internet anyway.
Sports will be the most difficult thing to keep up on. Of course, as I said before, I am not as big a fan of sports as I used to be. I think I can get my fill of sports by listening to the broadcast on the radio and maybe going to a friend's house or a bar if I really have to watch a game.
I figure that between what I can watch online and renting movies from Netflix, I should be pretty well off without enriching one of our cable or satellite television providers. Luckily, I live alone and don't have to worry about an entire family huddling around a computer screen to watch a television show.
3 comments:
My condo association gets a cheap group deal with Time Warner Cable. I piggyback Roadrunner fast access onto that and Vonage onto the Roadrunner.
I agree that most cable services are crap but I'm kind of married to it. It's cheap.
Well, cheap cable would probably be enough to keep me hooked up. I guess it would depend on how cheap it was.
The telephone thing doesn't matter to me. I have not had a land-line for 7 years now, getting by with my cell phone. I don't spend a lot of time on the phone, so I can do this without an expensive phone plan.
My husband and I can agree with most everything you're saying. The sports thing is ridiculous...he's a Buckeyes Fan, I'm a Tarheels fan, and rarely do we live in either region so we only get to catch his football or my b-ball if a-they're on major network (obviously not ALL their games) or b-we pay for the extra sports packages which adds up.
A friend of mine just told me about hulu, we're going to look into it. The weeks here we were without tv were almost blissful! And the few shows I watch outside of sports I can usually watch online. My husbands desktop monitor is a 21" so watching on it is like tv.
Living on Guam makes it awfully easy to give up the luxuries I'm used to (extended cable, texting all the time, etc). I somewhat like being slightly "unplugged."
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