Note: this is not a “you should stop paying for cable right now!” post. I’m legitimately interested in why people pay for cable TV. I personally don’t and I never have, but I have good reasons for this:
- I don’t watch much TV at all. This is reason #1 and probably the main one. It’s simply not worth shelling out however much it is for cable with as little TV as I watch.
- For most of the TV I do watch, I don’t mind watching it after it airs, either on Netflix or Hulu.
- The only TV I really like watching live is sports. I can watch all the Braves games I want with my MLB.tv subscription, and I can watch just as many NFL games in HD as someone who pays for cable with my rooftop antenna.
So … I guess if you do pay for cable, it’s probably for the opposite of one of the above reasons, right? Maybe you like several of the shows you can’t get on Hulu, like “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men”, and you can’t wait for them to come out on DVD. Maybe your favorite baseball team is local, and you need to get cable to watch them live (with MLB.tv, local teams are blacked out, which is ridiculous, especially if you live in Las Vegas or Iowa). Also, maybe you just love your TiVo? Though I guess that’s not really an excuse anymore.
So! Why haven’t you cut the cord?
July 21, 2011 at 4:46 pm
I watch a whole bunch of TV, for one thing. I also have a DVR (Comcast’s, not TiVo) and I record pretty much everything I watch except for live sports. Frequently I’ll watch sports that don’t involve teams I cheer for; I’ll throw on ESPN or Versus or what have you. Same goes for a random episode of South Park or Family Guy on WGN or something as i’m winding down my night. I like having the noise.
I suppose I could hook my TV to my computer, but I move the latter around a lot and i like having the TV and cable box doing its own thing while I use the laptop for actual computer-specific stuff. Rarely do I watch TV while doing nothing else.
July 21, 2011 at 5:22 pm
FU Hulu Plus! I’m going back to Netflix. I am not $$ to sit around and watch you get your shit together.
July 21, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Wow, that spambot has some pretty good AI.
Anyway, indiscriminate TV watching is definitely a good reason to keep cable. The TV I watch is very targeted and limited.
July 21, 2011 at 6:04 pm
i don’t watch anything other than live sports, but i watch a lot of different sports, so it’s not exactly cheap to go all-internet for sports-watching. (and in any event, my recent experiences with espn3 fail during the WWC made me extremely frustrated.) plus, my wife is one of the many sports fans who lives in the home market of her favorite team, so she couldn’t watch the red sox without NESN in any event.
this happens less than it used to, but we also got quite a bit of mileage out of free on-demand children’s programming through PBS sprout. i guess that’s also online, though?
one more nontrivial consideration is that it’s just plain more comfortable to sit on my couch and watch the TV than it is to sit in a chair and watch my computer, especially if i want to watch with more than 0 other people.
July 21, 2011 at 6:14 pm
There are plenty of ways to get online content on your TV. My PS3 has a basic web browser and apps for mlb.tv and Netflix (and Hulu Plus, if I decided to go that route). You could get a Boxee box and watch just about any online content on your TV. But the Red Sox/NESN thing is definitely a sticking point, and MLB’s arcane blackout rules don’t seem about to change any time soon.
July 17, 2013 at 6:19 pm
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March 1, 2015 at 7:20 pm
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March 12, 2015 at 4:12 pm
What happens with my computer? I can see only half of words
April 15, 2015 at 10:34 pm
How many smart people here. Engrossed.