We Cancelled Cable

On October 31st, we cancelled our cable subscription.  Or rather, I should say, DH cancelled cable.  I resisted.

His rationale - saving money.  Which I totally get.  But I refused to let him cancel it while I was still on maternity leave.  I needed the "company" that the TV provided; it made me feel less alone.  Now that I'm back to work, I don't miss it very much, mostly because I don't really have time in the evenings to watch anything, and we haven't been home long enough on a weekend for me to get a chance to really relax.  While I had suspected that this would be the case (me not missing it), I'm glad to realize that it's true and that I don't really miss it.

We did get an antennae, and DH installed that on the roof recently.  That has allowed us to get - in full HD quality - most local network stations such as CBS, Fox, NBC, and the CW.  There are a few other channels as well.  No ABC though - apparently they went el-cheapo on their broadcasting equipment so you can't pick that up with an antennae.

I had originally pushed to get something to replace cable - such as an antennae - so that at the very least I could get NBC to watch my morning Today Show, which was the only way I ever managed to stay on top of current events.  As it turns out, I leave my house now right around the same time the Today Show starts, so it doesn't seem like I'm going to know what's going on in the world anymore, ever again.  I feel SO out of the loop when it comes to current events, and I'm pretty sure I'm getting dumber by the minute.  BUT, the good news is, we can watch the Steelers games whenever they're on one of the channels we get, and the picture is great.  (Yep, dumber by the minute.)

We still have Netflix (for now, although DH wants to cancel that too) and we subscribed to HULU Plus, which we can access through our Roku, to get some of the shows that we really wanted to see.  We also hooked up a computer to our downstairs television so that we can get all of the shows that are on ABC.com, which makes up for the lack of live ABC shows.  And hopefully, for Christmas, we'll be receiving a DVR, which will allow us to start recording things and watching them at our leisure (most notably anything that we want to watch on our upstairs TV that we can't get on HULU.)

In the long run, it will probably be good that EH has limited opportunities to watch TV.  And although in many ways our TV watching experiences just got more complicated - HULU? or online? or live? or what? - it's also simplified by having less viewing choices in general, in particular if we want to watch something live.

Now, the question is, what to watch!?!?  I am so out of the fall-tv-lineup-loop these days!  Any favorite shows that you can recommend?

4 comments:

Corinne said...

I don't watch too much TV at night but I do catch up with shows online (Hulu, mostly). The shows I'm enjoying this season are: New Girl, Grey's Anatomy (although it's starting to drag on but I've watched from the beginning so I can't seem to nix it), Parks and Rec and Up All Night :)

Laura said...

We don't have cable either. Never have.

I'm loving New Girl... Tuesday nights at 9 on FOX. That's all I watch other than the Sing Off.

Lisa said...

I watched the pilot of New Girl and thought it was only so-so. Guess I'll have to give it another try!!!

Suzi said...

Up All Night, Wednesday 8PM, NBC. Fabulous. You'll appreciate it! :)

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