thoughts about TV

I read an article on the internet news today about 800,000 US subscribers who dumped cable or satellite. Some of them watch their favorite TV shows for free online. Others subscribe to Netflix or Hulu. Still others returned to capturing TV signals by antenna like we did in the good old days when I was a kid.

Out here in the boonies where I live, we wouldn't gain much by using an antenna. And I can't see subscribing to a bunch of other programs to get the shows we watch. Having said that, if I were tech savvy enough, I'd replace my current TV situation with something cheaper. I'm frustrated by how my provider raises prices arbitrarily without warning, and how we have to pay for the 100 junk channels we don't watch in order to get the few we do.

A few years ago when we exchanged cable for satellite TV, the cable company offered me a monthly fee that was 40 dollars cheaper than what we had been paying as an enticement not to cancel. I refused. My thinking was that if they could give me a more reasonable fee to stay with cable, they should be offering that fee to everyone all the time. Now I'm in the same boat with satellite, seeing fees rise and having few options to lower our monthly bill. We have the basic service. No DVR, no HD, no premium channels, no sports packages.

I admire the 800,000 people who refuse to pay big prices for channels they don't want and services that are unreliable in any kind of bad weather. If that number increases, maybe I'll get my wish and be allowed to cherry pick what channels I want for half the cost of what I'm paying now for a hundred channels I don't watch.