2014: The year of living cable TV-free

In April 2013, I quit being a cable customer after more than three decades of paying monthly for TV. It's been more than 20 months since then, and 2014 marked my first full year as a cord cutter.

And I'm not alone. While the number of people who have dropped cable and rely solely on Internet streaming to watch TV shows and on-demand movies remains a very small percentage of all TV watchers, it's steadily growing. A May 2014 report by Experian Marketing Services put the number of cord cutters at 6.5 percent of TV households, up from 4.5 percent in 2010.

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***** Moderator's Note *****

In 2004, I told the Comcast sales department to stuff it, and after a decade of not paying for TV, I can attest to the benefits of doing without it.

Take it from me: it's all the same. I don't mean that the plots are all the same, or that the outcomes are all the same: I mean it's *all* the same. *All* the actors are tall and conservative, and *all* the actresses wear tight sweaters, and *all* the problems are solved in 60 minutes with time out for commercials.

I'm actually looking forward to power outages in the comming blizzard: you'd be amazed at how interesting your neighbors are when you all sit down around a fire and talk to each other.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Monty Solomon
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Cable cutting isn't a very interesting option where DSL is slow and undependable [no FioS] and the only other internet option is the cable company.

? jt - snipped-for-privacy@jt-mj.net

He who laughs last is at 300 baud.

Reply to
Julian Thomas

Funny, I don't think I'm paying for anything that matches that description. In fact, I don't think I've ever watched anything of that sort in my life.

Different strokes for different folks, you know. That's just about the only thing the modern "cable TV bundle" has going for it.

-GAWollman

Reply to
Garrett Wollman

Per Garrett Wollman:

While I wouldn't take it as far as what I perceive as [the Moderator's] poetic license, I *would* say that when I go down to the #2 daughter's house where they have cable my overwhelming impression is that the stupidity compared to OTA is just multiplied by however more channels they get.

I'll grant them CSPAN and History Channel and maybe a couple others, but mostly I think it's just The Vast Wasteland writ larger.

OTOH, I think much of network "News" is flat-out moronic... so I may be at the edge of the bell curve on that stuff.

- - Pete Cresswell

***** Moderator's Note *****

Pete, please contact me off-line.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Pete Cresswell

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