Jim Lynch: Tech Analyst and Community Manager

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A few months ago I was reviewing some of my monthly bills and I came to the conclusion that it was time to dump cable TV. Why? Well it turns out that I was paying a significant amount of money for programming that I rarely watched.

Altogether I was paying about $140 per month for digital cable TV and broadband via Comcast. I also had HBO and the tier (or whatever it’s called) that gave me access to HD programming on HBO and on some other channels.

As part of that, I had to cough up $13 a month for Comcast’s HD-ready DVR. Their DVR was sort of like a lobotomized TiVo; it was awkward to use and I never could warm up to it. Primitive is about the kindest description I can use for that thing and for the awful remote control that came with it. Top it all off, the channel guide was also like a lame version of TiVo’s. It was ugly and too much of a headache to bother wading through most of the time.

Commercials: I’ve Had Enough!
One of the worst things about cable TV is that you are forced to pay for access to programming that is filled with commercials. You’d think that you could get programming without commercials since you are paying for cable. Instead you only get commercial-free programming if you pay yet another fee for channels like HBO or Showtime.
Yes, I know that through the magic of DVRs you can “fast forward” through commercials but that gets tiresome too and who wants to bother? I’m just flat out sick of commercials and I don’t want to bother with hearing or seeing them anymore. If I want to buy something, I’ll buy it. I don’t need to hear how wonderful a particular kind of car is or what kind of pants will make me a manly man or whatever.

I want peace and quiet…without ads blaring at me endlessly to buy more junk I don’t need in the first place. So commercials were a huge reason I ditched cable TV. Continued… In fact, most everything on cable TV sucked with the exception of a few HBO programs. Cable TV has become an endless sea of reality TV, ancient sitcoms, bad movies, shopping networks and an unbelievable amount of sheer garbage.

I found even wading through the guide to be a pain and I found very little programming of value that I’d want to watch over time anyway. As I noted earlier, the Comcast channel guide was like a poor man’s version of Tivo’s and if you’ve ever used a Tivo you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

Who needs all of this trash? Why should I waste my time even trying to filter any of it? I found most of it to be mind-numbingly dull and tedious. Eventually I found that I just could not stand the thought that I was paying for this crap every month even though hardly watched any of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no “highbrow” TV viewer. I enjoy action-adventure, cop shows here and there and that sort of thing. But I’m choosy on which ones I want to watch and it was hard to find even the ones I liked on cable TV and the ones that were there were contaminated with annoying advertisements.

The fundamental problem with the content selection on cable TV is that you are forced into paying more and more for junk programming, littered with commercials. If the cable companies cared at all about the viewer experience (which they don’t at all), we would all be able to buy the TV shows we wanted ala carte instead of having to pay subscriptions.

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