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I cut the cord around 2 years ago and wish I had done it sooner. I do have cable for internet but I stream using roku devices.
First I made a list of what channels I couldn't do without then I did my research.
I'm a TCM fan so I stream Sling Blue which allows me to record movies from TCM. I don't watch sports, don't watch the news except for Rumble which I can stream either on TV or computer. I do get certain apps but then I cancel then when the show I'm watching is over for the season.
I get to see more shows and movies compared to when I did have cable.
My swearing off of TV as we know it, completely, can be summarized, here, to Fed up and Fate. As far as Fed Up goes, I just got tired, after all the decades, of being jerked around. That does cover many examples but one of the ones in the end was that it got so hard to find something good to watch on TV.
Here we have an interesting thing about cable or for that matter, most TV, with "With hundreds of channels, you ought to be able to find something to your taste.". Ought to be able to find something should not mean having to search high and low to find it but rather, for what is being paid for, should be quite easy.
As to Fate, well, two big things......and a small one. First, in relation to the above, the TV guides had changed to being worthless, if you weren't watching prime time then they told you nothing, so I had to go out to each channel's web site and search for the week what was good on. Did it at work with its great computers (it was that kind of job), go home and program my VCRs but then, CLICK!. My power company had the habit of pulling the main switch for 2 seconds often, blanking out all my work in a blink. After a few passes of that, of having all my hours of work wiped out, I just gave up.
A small one was when I got a TIVO and I would tell it to record this or that......and then go back weeks later and find out it had recorded this and that, too, because it thought "I might be interested". I don't like machines behaving for me for that way, I don't like machines making that kind of decisions for me, especially when we consider that possession is 9/10s of the law.
And then the Big one. When I moved out to the country, cable does not exist out here. So my cable cutting decision was made for me about a bridge that had long been burning so saying GOODBYE was quite easy and never went back.
I canceled all cable tv years ago. There's nothing I want to see that I can't get when I want and how I want through streaming. Cable tv and list of channels seems very, very antiquated to me. To each their own.
Consumers are cutting the cords to cable TV. They are now streaming Sling TV, Amazon - Fire TV Stick or Roku TV. Cable TV is overpriced.
All pay TV is overpriced. It was not long ago that all TV was ad-supported and free to the viewers. Now the media companies are entitled and expect ad revenue AND fee revenue from viewers.
With streaming TV, it feels great to get a choice in the service(s) I choose. This is definitely better than the pure monopoly the cable TV service used to hold. My monthly fees are now 20-30% lower than what I used to pay for my favorite cable TV stations. Plus the ability to binge watch a series (without paying for, or recording, individual episodes) is a pleasure. Finally, there are some free-to-view streaming apps with some decent quality content. E.g. tubi, freevee, pluto, PBS, &c.
The main drawback has been the balkanization of many channels or long-running series. There's also a certain flakiness in the streaming video delivery; it can get glitchy and freeze at random times.
I get "basic cable" + a sports package as a part of my HOA fees. My lovely SO has the TV on pretty much all day and all night. QVC and HSN and HGTV, along with MASH reruns see to be her favs. Total waste of time.
I spend all day and night wasting my time on here.
With streaming TV, it feels great to get a choice in the service(s) I choose. This is definitely better than the pure monopoly the cable TV service used to hold. My monthly fees are now 20-30% lower than what I used to pay for my favorite cable TV stations. Plus the ability to binge watch a series (without paying for, or recording, individual episodes) is a pleasure. Finally, there are some free-to-view streaming apps with some decent quality content. E.g. tubi, freevee, pluto, PBS, &c.
The main drawback has been the balkanization of many channels or long-running series. There's also a certain flakiness in the streaming video delivery; it can get glitchy and freeze at random times.
No, I think the main drawback is that we are all addicts and we are hooked! We continue to take what they will give us......sell us.
I was watching a Charmed DVD this last week. Enjoyable even though it is just 42 minutes when it should be 50 minutes long, something uncomfortably watered down so it is barely there. But at least on DVD, they have the pleasant closing credits, the closure to what one just watched. Unlike when it was on the WB and it was slammed into one's face what was coming up next.
Just what are we, the audience, to this people?
Even with youtube these days, I am feeling very yanked around, when I am there intensely watching a Mayday and POP, mid sentence, they have a commercial for this or that. While it hasn't gotten like this yet on youtube, I do believe one of the causes of our stress are all these little ads of "if you have these 5 symptoms, your liver is dying".
So as I said, just what is the audience is to mass media......and why do we let them do it to us?
Looks like lots of Fox News peeps jumped to networks.
I don't even know what Univision is.
The #1 station only gets a ~1% market share. Only 1% of Americans are watching it, 99% are watching something else, or nothing at all (like me).
Broadcast TV AND Cable are still dying a long slow death.
Cable is 35%
Streaming is 34%
Broadcast is 22%
61% of younger viewers have never had cable tv...they stream instead.
Bottom line is this...those people and groups of people trying to brainwash American TV viewers w/ political propaganda, are much less influential than they ever were.
........I don't even know what Univision is.
.......
One of the Spanish networks. When I watched it in the last decade, it was the 3rd channel I would tune in on....if the other two weren't informative or entertaining in the morning news hours. Telemundo was the first I watched and shows like Levante (later Un Nuevo Dia)had my attention massively for while I didn't know what they were saying, the energy of Rashel Diaz and others was enough to keep me wrapped in.
Galavision was the second with Primero Noticas and that was mostly all news....and often a day ahead of the world news before English channels showed it. For a while in my work center, I had two big screen TVs that I could have a station on each. When one of the screens lost cable access, Telemundo won out.
Univision was so much more not news and a lot of morning show. The thing is, Laura G. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_G was on it and I became hooked on her when she was on Primero Noticias, so I tuned in at times.
To which we come to.......why was I watching Spanish in the first place? Well, they put the TVs in my work space to make it a show and tell room for the rest of the world. To me, I always disagreed with such because I found it to be a prime distraction. By complying with their wishes and putting it on Spanish, they got their wish but since I didn't know what was being said, I wouldn't get locked up in it.
Since where I work is very liberal, high on diversity, they really couldn't have me putting just English shows, such as how worthless I learned HLN to be, on the screens........even though my day boss soon switched the channels over to FOX, he was very right wing, soon after I checked out each day.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 06-24-2023 at 01:01 PM..
Were the tv's in a workplace break room, or in a central area? Was the volume on?
22+ yrs ago, I worked in a place that had TV's in break rooms, but not anywhere else. Hardly anyone watched them.
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