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Published On: Mar 17, 2007 02:40 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Mar 17, 2007 02:40 PM
Shutting Down Cable
OK. We've done it. We have lived almost an entire
year so far with no cable, satellite TV or even a regular TV with bunny ear
antennas. How did we do it you ask? Did we survive?
Our adventure into the world of no TV started
around January of last year. We were having trouble making ends meet. Brian had
no job and I was the only one working. And even worse from November to January
my income drops significantly. I teach computer classes for a living and for
some reason no one wants to take a computer classes during the
Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years Holiday Season! I understand of course, I have
had to severely curtail back everything I did last year. I actually suffered
heart chest pains in 2003 because of stress (real and imagined) and the
"holidays". This is a stressful time of the
year!
So here we were, very little income--a huge mortgage and utility bills that were going out the roof. (Dare I mention that our January 2006 utility bill was $600 and that was with the temperature set to 68 degrees and the downstairs heating turned off!) So we looked where we could cut costs. We noticed that we were getting a $45 cable bill every month and we had to ask ourselves when we actually watched cable. If the truth be told, we had actually only watched cable for a few reasons:
1) The Superbowl (once a year)
2) When my parents came over to watch the Sacramento Kings play (personally I could care less)
3) Star Trek
Well, we were big Star Trek fans. However, Star Trek Enterprise had been cancelled and was not going to be replaced by another Star Trek TV show. In fact, with the exception of the Superbowl and the Sacramento Kings games, we never even turned the darn TV on.
Now you may be wondering why the TV wasn't on at our home...don't all Americans watch TV 24 hours a day--7 days a week? In fact I have been to many homes where the TV will be on even if no one is actively listening to a show.
My journey into getting rid of my TV habit started when my daughter was born. Laurana had colic as a baby and turning on the TV seemed to make her scream the loudest. Somehow the noise from the TV disquieted her so much that she would go into wailing fits if it was on too loud. We quickly moved to keep the volume down (but once those commercials hit--well you know how the volume goes up) and then we had a screaming baby on our hands...
However, it wasn't just my daughter that was changing our viewing habits. I remember watching the evening news when my daughter was 3 months old (the volume was turned down low of course). This particular evening they focused on a babysitter that had choked and killed a 3 month-old baby by shoving a sock down the babies' throat. I was in tears and I couldn't even sleep that night. That was the last time that I turned on the evenings news. After that event I turned to online new viewing. Every day I log onto: Yahoo News and the Sacramento Bee to see my news. I find that by viewing news online I can pick and choose what sort of news I want to see. Since I cannot handle any news about children being brutalized or worse--then I choose not to read them. You can say that I am blinding myself to the truth--but I do also believe that the media has sensationalized bizarre cases to such an extreme that they are probably not the norm--and certainly not what I want to see every night before bed.
So I had found another outlet for viewing the news (online media) and we had stopped watching the TV on any regular basis after Star Trek was gone. So why were paying $45/month? We shut down our cable in January of 2006. The angry cable guy on the other end told us that we would be back. "They always come back!", he told us. He further added that we would be charged a substantial fee to re-engage our cable service. It hasn't happened yet and it's been almost a year now!
So have we missed TV? Not really. There were occasions when I wished we had TV, for example during the Winter Olympics when I wanted to see the ice skating events. I also have no idea what people are talking about when they talk about the latest "Lost" or "Survivor" episode. And there is the occasional disgruntled visitor who wants to watch our TV and is surprised to see that we have no access. I am starting to enjoy having no TV. No more commercials which of course also means no political ads! I have just heard a family friend talking about all of the non-stop negative political campaigning that has been going on. What political campaigning I asked? Except for the local Davis Enterprise newspaper (which I get) and some random radio show listening I have heard nothing at all. He had been so worn out by the negative campaigning that he said it was no wonder there are low voter turnouts. Everyone is overwhelmed with negativity.
I'm also happy to have no TV for my daughter's sake. I hear other kids ask their parents for the latest sugary sweet cereal or snack (just because they heard about it on a commercial) or for the latest toy that is all the rage. My daughter is still affected by peer pressure, but at least I haven't added to growing hum of TV ads to the mix! She will watch videos on the TV, but it is by our choice--rather than what some executives at Madison Avenue have chosen for us to see.
So here we were, very little income--a huge mortgage and utility bills that were going out the roof. (Dare I mention that our January 2006 utility bill was $600 and that was with the temperature set to 68 degrees and the downstairs heating turned off!) So we looked where we could cut costs. We noticed that we were getting a $45 cable bill every month and we had to ask ourselves when we actually watched cable. If the truth be told, we had actually only watched cable for a few reasons:
1) The Superbowl (once a year)
2) When my parents came over to watch the Sacramento Kings play (personally I could care less)
3) Star Trek
Well, we were big Star Trek fans. However, Star Trek Enterprise had been cancelled and was not going to be replaced by another Star Trek TV show. In fact, with the exception of the Superbowl and the Sacramento Kings games, we never even turned the darn TV on.
Now you may be wondering why the TV wasn't on at our home...don't all Americans watch TV 24 hours a day--7 days a week? In fact I have been to many homes where the TV will be on even if no one is actively listening to a show.
My journey into getting rid of my TV habit started when my daughter was born. Laurana had colic as a baby and turning on the TV seemed to make her scream the loudest. Somehow the noise from the TV disquieted her so much that she would go into wailing fits if it was on too loud. We quickly moved to keep the volume down (but once those commercials hit--well you know how the volume goes up) and then we had a screaming baby on our hands...
However, it wasn't just my daughter that was changing our viewing habits. I remember watching the evening news when my daughter was 3 months old (the volume was turned down low of course). This particular evening they focused on a babysitter that had choked and killed a 3 month-old baby by shoving a sock down the babies' throat. I was in tears and I couldn't even sleep that night. That was the last time that I turned on the evenings news. After that event I turned to online new viewing. Every day I log onto: Yahoo News and the Sacramento Bee to see my news. I find that by viewing news online I can pick and choose what sort of news I want to see. Since I cannot handle any news about children being brutalized or worse--then I choose not to read them. You can say that I am blinding myself to the truth--but I do also believe that the media has sensationalized bizarre cases to such an extreme that they are probably not the norm--and certainly not what I want to see every night before bed.
So I had found another outlet for viewing the news (online media) and we had stopped watching the TV on any regular basis after Star Trek was gone. So why were paying $45/month? We shut down our cable in January of 2006. The angry cable guy on the other end told us that we would be back. "They always come back!", he told us. He further added that we would be charged a substantial fee to re-engage our cable service. It hasn't happened yet and it's been almost a year now!
So have we missed TV? Not really. There were occasions when I wished we had TV, for example during the Winter Olympics when I wanted to see the ice skating events. I also have no idea what people are talking about when they talk about the latest "Lost" or "Survivor" episode. And there is the occasional disgruntled visitor who wants to watch our TV and is surprised to see that we have no access. I am starting to enjoy having no TV. No more commercials which of course also means no political ads! I have just heard a family friend talking about all of the non-stop negative political campaigning that has been going on. What political campaigning I asked? Except for the local Davis Enterprise newspaper (which I get) and some random radio show listening I have heard nothing at all. He had been so worn out by the negative campaigning that he said it was no wonder there are low voter turnouts. Everyone is overwhelmed with negativity.
I'm also happy to have no TV for my daughter's sake. I hear other kids ask their parents for the latest sugary sweet cereal or snack (just because they heard about it on a commercial) or for the latest toy that is all the rage. My daughter is still affected by peer pressure, but at least I haven't added to growing hum of TV ads to the mix! She will watch videos on the TV, but it is by our choice--rather than what some executives at Madison Avenue have chosen for us to see.
Posted: Mon - November 6, 2006 at 11:05 AM