#313 Cancel My Cable
When I moved to LA, I lived in a house that didn’t have cable. But I was only 23 at the time so I probably couldn’t have afforded it anyway. Then I moved out with my girlfriend but we still didn’t cable. I didn’t get cable until about 6 years ago. Hard to believe, but I lived without cable for that long. Not only that, at the time there wasn’t really anything you could watch online. There was no NetFlix or Hulu and highspeed internet connections were expensive.
When I finally got cable, I only got the basic channels. I was still using my 27” tube TV. But when I got my 50” Plasma, I had to get the HD channels, the DVR, HBO, Showtime, the works. I didn’t get everything at once. I added services over time. Before I knew it, my cable bill was $140 a month! $1680 a year!
I’d heard about cord cutting before. It’s a movement started by people who were keeping up on current TV and movies without being tied to a cable company. Using a combination of free and paid legal services such as Hulu and Netflix and perhaps some illegal ones (ahem), digital antennas, gaming consoles and computers, people claimed they didn’t need cable any more.
To me, it sounded like a lot of work. It seemed a lot easier to just pay for cable and get everything in one place. However, I was getting sick of paying so much money to the cable companies which I don’t even like. They operate legal monopolies as far as I’m concerned and I didn’t want to fund that.
I decided awhile ago to cancel my cable. I even wrote it on my little SYED list of scary things to do. But I kept putting it off. Why?
I was actually scared to. Cable’s been my friend during a lot of lonely nights over recent years. There’s always something you can watch on cable. What would I do without it? Was I really going to be able to see everything I could using a bunch of different resources? I was so used to cable. It was so convenient, any time of day, click of the button and I could watch hundreds of channels.
Plus, I still had a bunch of shit on my DVR that I hadn’t finished watching like Game of Thrones! And Californication and Shameless were starting on Showtime. Maybe I should cancel when those series were over. And what about the Superbowl??
In the end, I realized that like getting married or having kids, there’s never an ideal time to cancel your cable. And yes, that’s where cable used to fall in my life’s priorities.
So I made the decision today to go ahead and finally pull the trigger. I sent an email to Time Warner saying I wanted to cancel my cable TV but not my internet. As of right now there is now decent viable internet alterative in my area. If there was FiOS or some other optical network, I would’ve gotten it. And finally I was done.
Well, not really. Because even though it’s an option on the contact form, Time Warner won’t let you cancel your cable over email. You have to call them. You have to be put on hold. You have to talk to a retention specialist who throws a whole bunch of deals and offers your way in hopes of making you stay. But if you hold out long enough and are strong enough, you finally cut that cord.
It feels good to be honest. Freeing to simplify my life a bit. How was watching TV really adding value to my life? I did need to stay on top of pop culture and entertainment for my writing, but that’s what the internet is for. Best of all, I’m giving a lot less money to a company that I loathe (Time Warner).
In the meantime, does anybody mind if I come over to their place to get my Food Network fix? I’m starting to miss Giada already…
