Recently I’ve been debating eliminating my cable service.
I pay approximately $70 a month for the HD channels, DVR and HBO. And that’s probably relatively low.
When I lived in Philadelphia and had Comcast the same package was $100. (One of the few benefits of living in the Deep South is that everything costs less.)
I’m not short on funds, but paying $840 a year to watch a few stations, most notably HBO, is a waste (I realize that I am not exactly the first person to complain about having to buy 200 channels of which I only watch 20). Because HBO shows are not shown online at websites like Hulu, if I want to watch new episodes of their programing I either have to pay for cable or wait for them to be released on home video. So is it worth $840 to be able to watch new episodes of shows when they first debut?
This past summer I only watched four shows that weren’t available for free online or available at all: Hung, True Blood, Entourage and Mad Men.
Mad Men episodes can be rented for a few dollars, but Time Warner has made it clear it will not participate in cheap online rentals with its HBO shows because that would cannibalize DVD/Blu-ray sales. Given that the current seasons of these shows will be out on disc within a year, I’m paying for the privilege of seeing the shows when they first air. That’s the value of paid TV.
The obvious benefit of seeing episodes when they first premier is that you can talk to fellow fans about them and read what critics and bloggers have to say. I think that’s really it, and I’m growing skeptical of how much value there really is to that.
Last year I was moving when the final three episodes of Mad Men aired. As a result I missed them. Even though I had to wait until the spring when they were released on Blu-ray to find out what happened, surprisingly, it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t waking up at night in a cold sweat, desperately needing to know what was going to happen to Don, Peggy, and Joan. And it was pretty easy to avoid finding out how the season concluded.
Similarly, I never watched Lost when it aired but decided to watch the entire series this summer. Not only do I prefer watching a season of a show straight through in a short amount of time, but I was still able to talk about episodes with friends even though they had not seen some of them for five years.
In the last six months these are the shows I’ve been watching that aren’t available online:
Treme
Big Love
Entourage
Hung
True Blood
After thinking about it, I could deal with waiting for these shows to come out on home video. And when I consider the cost of cable, I could reinvest that money into outright buying these shows and still have money left over. And for even less than that I can just Netflix them. I’ve already decided to do this with Weeds. It’s the only show I like on Showtime and I really didn’t see a point to paying for the channel for just 30 minutes of TV a week.
The other perk cable TV and especially premium channels offer are movies, but again thanks to Netflix, anything that I didn’t see in theaters that I want to see at home I can rent long before it comes to a cable. So has Netflix killed paid TV and we just don’t know it yet?
The only thing Netflix cannot provide are live sporting events. But I can easily watch them at bars. That being said, if I were to drop cable, the one thing I would miss about sports is the surround sound. Networks typically do an excellent job mixing the audio to make it feel like you’re sitting in the stadium. And as for news, like most people I use the internet.
I think I’ve laid out a good case for convincing myself why I should dump cable, but there is something scary about going off the live TV grid. I just have this terrifying feeling that as soon as I drop cable TV there’s going to be something on it that I absolutely have to watch live week after week so I don’t miss out on any conversations about the show. But the chances of that are probably unrealistic.
TV viewing has become so fractured that the water cooler effect is on its way out. Fifteen years ago the four big broadcast networks provided most TV programing. Since then, HBO expanded its lineup and USA, TNT, AMC as well as others began producing tons of original content. When I have lunch with co-workers and talk about TV shows, it feels like everyone is watching something different. Not only are there more options, but thanks to DVRs some people are weeks behind on the latest episode of a popular show.
So am I going to turn in my cable box? Probably not. I’m just too much of an addict.
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