Cancelling Cable?

[frogboy4]

I've lived without cable for nearly a year now. I'm pretty much covered for entertainment via NetFlix, Hulu and the cineplex across the street. Any important clip eventually goes viral on the web so I'm never far behind. I do love cable, but at this expense - what's the point? So, maybe I'll have to wait several months for some shows to be available on DVD, but I was raised in a time before movies transitioned so quickly to home video. We've been spoiled by instant gratification so much that we think we're entitled to it. There's so much, "I'm angry at this free service changing things around!" that we forget how friggin' amazing it is that regular TV shows, YouTube and so many other services are free in the first place!

So, anyway...when the cable company sends me another "discount" flyer outlining "savings" on a crummy basic package that used to have twice as many programs costing half as much per month...they know where they can shove it. I'm not entitled to cable, but there's competition out there and the cable man isn't trying hard enough for my hard earned dollars. It's just interesting to me to be capable of living without something I once considered oxygen. I wonder how much longer that will last.

Who else is cancelling cable?

 

[Drtooth]

Cable is one of the most unregulated industries out there. Price fixing, monopolies in some cases... they purposely are holding back an ala carte deal so people can pay an extra 50 bucks a month for the super packages while they get stuck with useless channels of nothing and noise and infomercials. If there was a way to get Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Disney XD, and basically any channel that has cartoons (I'd kill for the Hub rerunning Fraggle Rock... cheaper than getting the box sets) I'd look into it. But cable is too expensive to even consider.

What's worse is, and this is my conspiracy here, digital TV seems to be running terribly and on purpose. They still use antenna technology, meaning 3 channels come in at a time and when you try to get a fourth, you lose all the others. I'm very disappointed my Spanish channels don't come in, only because I liked watching Plaza Sesamo. And the trade off is I get a channel that runs MGM surplus movies, qubo (which is only good for watching He-Man if I want to bother staying up past midnight... really.. thanks for getting rid of weekday airings of Jacob Two Two), and a bunch of PBS's I never watch. The PBS kid's line up stops being kid's shows at 5, and they run some dry, unwatchable craft's show in the middle of the day.

I do like 90% of my cartoon watching online... but the problem is, legal sites SUCK. I get stuck loading up something, only to have a cheap advertisement crash the load (I tried very unsuccessfully to watch a South Park on the South Park site a while back), and it's risky watching old cartoons "illegally" uploaded on Youtube, because they keep getting taken down by third and fourth party distributors of out of print DVD's. Or even foreign channels that aired them once. Not even the companies themselves bother taking them down half the time. You can't even buy DVD's anymore because they never finish off the sets, or when you finally get enough to buy them, they're long out of print.

I've never had cable and never will, but there's so little everything else out there.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

We used to have comcast cable back before digital cable was an option. Its kinda funny how the used to say how much better cable was than sattelite. Now we have directv and its so much much better. Picture and everything. The only time it really goes out is during heavy rainstorms. And cable did that too :/

 

[frogboy4]

Cable is one of the most unregulated industries out there. Price fixing, monopolies in some cases... they purposely are holding back an ala carte deal so people can pay an extra 50 bucks a month for the super packages while they get stuck with useless channels of nothing and noise and infomercials. If there was a way to get Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Disney XD, and basically any channel that has cartoons (I'd kill for the Hub rerunning Fraggle Rock... cheaper than getting the box sets) I'd look into it. But cable is too expensive to even consider.

One of my friends started watching that new zombie show from AMC. He likes it, but he also wondered why they were showing this original content instead of "American Movie Classics". I had to explain to him how the Cartoon Network doesn't really show cartoons anymore. His head head exploded. I miss him!

We used to have comcast cable back before digital cable was an option. Its kinda funny how the used to say how much better cable was than sattelite. Now we have directv and its so much much better. Picture and everything. The only time it really goes out is during heavy rainstorms. And cable did that too :/

I've finally learned through the years that word of mouth from people you trust is the only way to shape an accurate opinion on the best buying trends. Everything else is just advertising noise. My non-creative friends are still bewildered that I don't own an Apple, but the truth is all the software I need (and more in some cases) is available for my PC. Most options in cable and electronics shouldn't really be measured as being "better" or "worse". It's just a matter of personal preference, budget choices and how much freedom users are given by the products they choose. Our friends usually know us better than advertisers. Not always, but usually.

 

[Drtooth]

One of my friends started watching that new zombie show from AMC. He likes it, but he also wondered why they were showing this original content instead of "American Movie Classics". I had to explain to him how the Cartoon Network doesn't really show cartoons anymore. His head head exploded. I miss him!

The whole thing about the niche market being dead REALLY confuses me. Everyone HATES live action on CN, most of the shows bomb... except the lame stoner comedies on adult swim... sigh.. I miss funky stuff like Harvey Birdman. Now it's the same generic Family Guy knockoff over and over... and Venture Bros, but that's the only exception... man I wish I could watch that regularly.

That gets me, though. Do kids actually watch the live action on CN? And the lame 1990's movies? How come the movie channels don't wanna run movies but the channels that should never run movies ALWAYS run movies? No wonder why no one watches TV anymore.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

I think the fact no one watches tv is WHY they do it. In Cartoon Network's case, i tihnk they were prbably starting to lose ratings to begin with so they decided to try live action shows as something "new" and "fresh" to draw people back. Its obviously not working. Though, I do miss when they showed Goosebumps...

 

[StreetScenes]

yay! i'm not the only one! i never had it growing up, had it in the college dorm but only ever watched things on networks like law & order & snl, and now i don't even have a tv.

my boyfriend, a food network & travel channel addict, just got rid of his cable because of the expense, so we went to find a digital converter box and they looked at us like we were from mars. but it shocked me that even the smallest widescreen flatscreen digital tvs are so expensive compared to what regular tvs used to be when i sold them at k-mart not even 10 years ago...add that to a cable package & television is now something for the well-to-do, like it was in the 50s when it was new.

but i don't think i'm missing anything, seeing as netflix has a better selection of television shows than television has.

i just went the extra step of getting rid of my internet connection. i live 3/4 of a mile from the library, if i need a youtube fix. i read more now, and take more walks. and save another $45 a month.

 

[Drtooth]

I think the fact no one watches tv is WHY they do it. In Cartoon Network's case, i tihnk they were prbably starting to lose ratings to begin with so they decided to try live action shows as something "new" and "fresh" to draw people back. Its obviously not working. Though, I do miss when they showed Goosebumps...

I could go on an 8 page rant but really... NO ONE watches live action on cartoon network, no one LIKES live action on cartoon network, and half the stuff was stolen from Discovery Kids shows from 5+ years ago. Why they can't call back the likes of Craig McCracken or David Feiss to come in and create something new is beyond me. Why they're refusing to make more Cartoon Cartoons is beyond me, and why they had to cancel Chowder... well, that was stupid on all counts. Cartoon Cartoons MADE the network more than a rerun station. We need to get some more voter based "What a Cartoon?" contests to see what cartoons people want to see. But overall, I hate how the toon industry is dying from the same factors. Even Disney's trying to slowly distance themselves from that live action mess... but they're still heavily involved in it.

Nickelodeon was ALWAYS a partial cartoon, partial sitcom network. And even they have more of a yen to do animation. None of them really stick around other than Spongebob, but they're at least making a small effort. CN, other than the Looney Tunes cartoon and a new Scooby-Doo, they haven't really unveiled anything.

But then again, the network was horribly run since that PR firing of the former head of the network no thanks to Mooninite Gate. No one blamed the ad company. And now we got a bunch of trustfunders who are miserable because they clearly want to be the ones who ran MTV into the ground. MTV might as well rename themselves the Pop Sleaze network, CN should call itself the "Why didn't we come up with the idea of stealing The Monkees, we desperately want to be popular, we're considering ourselves a kiddy network and we feel we need to compete with other kiddy networks Network."

 

[redBoobergurl]

We cancelled our cable last winter and I haven't missed it one bit. The handful of shows I do like from cable networks are available on Hulu usually the very next day or on the website for the tv channel (like Psych on USA's page). My husband and I found that it was a crutch for nothing better to do - and would usually watch movies we'd seen a million times or reruns of old shows we have also seen hundreds of times. Now we utilize our Netflix more and we spend just less time in front of the TV overall. I may feel differently if we ever have children - though the quaility of things like Disney and Nickelodeon is pretty low these days in my book anyway.

 

[Slackbot]

A few years ago I realized I wasn't watching TV any more because Cartoon Network's programming no longer interested me, and decided to pull the plug. That $50 a month now goes toward the principal balance of my mortgage. I don't miss cable, as Comcast's service was lousy and they could never get me a clear picture, and my TV is basically a monitor for my PS2 and DVD player.