POLL: Have you gotten rid of cable TV?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Most dishes these days are no more than 2-3 feet wide.

That's still something that can get knocked off the house during a windstorm or some such thing. Plus there are a lot of trees in my neighborhood.

And those dishes don't include local channels, do they?

if this is a growing trend of people dumping their cable/satellite services because they don't watch enough TV anymore to justify paying for the services, it may explain why a good portion of the participants on this forum seem to be so uninformed on a general basis of what's going on in this world.

All the major news networks (even our local ones) have Websites which I frequent regularly.

We don't carry channels just because there's a particular show we watch on them...we carry them because someday there might be something new that we will want to watch.

And if you can afford all that, fine.

This tells me that the problem might just be with you, not with the plethora of programming. This tells me that you may not have broad enough interests to find something that you may like.

My interests are my own business, thank you very much. If they are narrow, then let them be. Why should I watch a shitload of shows that I know I won't like?

And who here is it that spends every waking minute of their life watching baseball? Talk about being a fanatic.

Welcome to my world.

 

[Brent]

I could never live without my cable TV

Firstly, I live in an apartment, and they kinda frown on satalite installations, that really isn't an option for me, so I have to use Charter for TV. I still need TV channels, I can't live totally from the web, there are lots of things I watch on TV, set em up on DVR and watch em later.

The biggest reason I still need cable is for Internet, nothing beats the speeds of Cable internet, save for Fiber, but that isn't an option where I live. Right now, I have an absolutely awesome Cable internet speed, 30mbps down and 3mbps up, it is spectacular, and I could not give it up, as I need it for business too, since I work from the home. No way I could downgrade to DSL, which is much much slower, plus I don't want to pay for a telephone line, I only have a cellphone and that's all I need.

So in short, I have Cable for the Internet which = awesome, and for TV because its all I can do and I can get one of those package deals. Ultimately I think I would prefer DirectTV, but just can't do it here.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ You don't have to have cable TV to get cable Internet. At least not with my provider.

 

[eastman23]

Most dishes these days are no more than 2-3 feet wide.

That's still something that can get knocked off the house during a windstorm or some such thing.

I live on the 24th floor of my apartment building facing west in one of the windiest cities in the country and my dish is still here.

And those dishes don't include local channels, do they?

Mine does. I get CBC, Global, and CTV Winnipeg. And those same three networks from at least 15+ other cities across Canada. Hell, I even get CTV Kenora.

I don't think I'll be getting rid of satellite (or cable) in the near future even though many of the shows I watch are (probably) available online. I don't typically watch news on the TV, but it's nice for killing time when I can just plop down on the couch and see what's on or if there's a movie or some other special thing coming on.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I had done some comparison shopping and it just seemed like a satellite system would be just as expensive to me as cable is. I'm not looking to replace cable with something else, I'm looking to get rid of ALL of it. But these stupid blackout rules on baseball games are really hurting my ability to do that.

 

[Brent]

^ You don't have to have cable TV to get cable Internet. At least not with my provider.

Correct, but I don't have another choice for TV, so it makes sense to benefit from one of the package deals Charter offers, TV+Internet bundle.

 

[John Picard]

But really in all seriousness, I find the premise of your original corrected question to be very strange, and somewhat naive even. Why? Well, this may be leading to one of the reasons why I don't frequent this forum anymore. And that's because if this is a growing trend of people dumping their cable/satellite services because they don't watch enough TV anymore to justify paying for the services, it may explain why a good portion of the participants on this forum seem to be so uninformed on a general basis of what's going on in this world. For example, I would post some news story in TNZ and people wouldn't believe it and basically call me a liar or making it up, all the while the story had been in the news for days or even weeks. And my response would be, "Don't you people ever watch the news?" I mean, don't call me stupid if you're not following current events in this fast moving world, while I am.

First of all, most of the people in TNZ are idiots blinded by partisan beliefs and get most of their information second-hand. Few, if any, have much of a formal education where they learned *how* to think and have very little reasoning skills. It is apparent in their reactionary and inflammatory posts.

I live too far out to get cable and refuse to pay for satellite. I have an analog TV with no digital converter box because everything I read led me to conclude that buying a new TV would be cheaper in the long run; however, I am so busy with work, school, and other projects that it isn't a priority. Broadcast news died years ago, having been replaced by Infotainment. I only watch DVDs sent via Netflix, which equates to an average of 4 per week.

For information on current events, I scan a multitude of news sites across the Internet. I also catch bits and pieces from radio broadcasts.

Most dishes these days are no more than 2-3 feet wide.

That's still something that can get knocked off the house during a windstorm or some such thing.

I live on the 24th floor of my apartment building facing west in one of the windiest cities in the country and my dish is still here.

Here, in Oklahoma, satellite dishes tend to fly like kites during spring/fall tornadic winds.

 

[Arrqh]

For example, I would post some news story in TNZ and people wouldn't believe it and basically call me a liar or making it up, all the while the story had been in the news for days or even weeks. And my response would be, "Don't you people ever watch the news?" I mean, don't call me stupid if you're not following current events in this fast moving world, while I am.

I hear they have this thing called the "internet" now.

Joking aside, if anything the internet has increased the potential for people to understand what's going on in the world around them in a more unbiased way. Because if you're watching TV, most people don't necessarily flip between the various news outlets to see all the various opinions and slants on the same story. They get it from one primary channel and every news source has some sort of bias. Some news sources even post half truths or blatant lies and act as if they are facts, and they also use heavily biased talking heads as if they are an objective opinion.

On the internet, of course you still have the same biased sources and the same issues but it becomes infinitely easier to quickly cross reference with other news outlets and sources. Heck, as of a few weeks ago, I don't even go to specific news sites most of the time as I started using an RSS aggregator that draws all of my preferred news sources into a single source and presents it all as a dynamic magazine-like webpage. One of the results of this is that I have access to several different articles from different sources each with their own slant, all of them a click away.

So your premise seems pretty faulty to me. Television is not, nor has it ever been, the single most valid news source. Before television was the written word and that has always formed the basis for information flow in societies since the printing press was invented. Not having television absolutely does not imply that a person is less informed as to the world around them because there are so many other sources for information in our world. Having television as ones primary news source certainly doesn't imply anything either... but it seems to me that it's a lot easier to develop tunnel vision on personal biases as reality with television because of the way the US news networks function.

 

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

I have cable only because it is included in my monthly condo association fee. I don't have a smartphone or anything similar, but I don't watch much TV.

 

[RoJoHen]

For example, I would post some news story in TNZ and people wouldn't believe it and basically call me a liar or making it up, all the while the story had been in the news for days or even weeks. And my response would be, "Don't you people ever watch the news?" I mean, don't call me stupid if you're not following current events in this fast moving world, while I am.

I hear they have this thing called the "internet" now.

Quite true. Honestly, I think I get more of my news from this place than anywhere else. Even having TV, I can't remember the last time I legitimately watched a news broadcast.