I am among those who have dropped cable. When this choice was made, I knew that I was going to start seeing higher expenses in my life. This forced me to compare the value I get against what I was paying.
As cable prices have gone up, the quality of programming has declined. An overwhelming majority of television that I used to watch consisted of reruns of older shows, most of which I have purchased on DVD. What was left? I enjoyed Galavant, but that's been canceled since I started watching. While it was still on, I could always watch online after they aired. American Ninja Warrior is similar. It hasn't been canceled, but I can watch online. Unlike Galavant, American Ninja Warrior is really only worth watching episodes a single time thanks to NBC's horrible presentation. I can also throw Whose Line Is It Anyway? into the mix. Again, I don't need cable to watch.
How about shows that I can't watch online? I was still watching American Dad, Carbonaro Effect, and Impractical Jokers. I can get those for under $20 each season. That effectively means that the television shows that I have been watching each year come in at about $60. That's less than the price of one month of cable.
Sports are a little trickier. I have been known to watch the Olympics. That occurs every other year, alternating between the summer and winter games. If anyone outbids CBC for coverage in Canada, I have nothing. Our American coverage is absolutely unwatchable. I was reminded in 2010 when NBC totally screwed up the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. CTV outbid CBC for those games and then the summer games in London. I didn't watch any of the London games.
I can do without the Olympics. Even CBC is slipping. I also have problems with the insistence that we must automatically support our country regardless of what questionable athletes are representing us. Do you really think that I will root for someone as awful as Michael Phelps?
This leaves me with hockey. Like the Olympics, American coverage is absolutely unwatchable. Again, I am down to just CBC. Thanks to numerous misguided rule changes, I cut back to only watching the Canucks. That's another reason not to watch American, who refuse to acknowledge the Canucks existence whenever possible. CBC only shows games on Saturdays, and the Canucks don't always play on Saturdays. I should also mention that they are also biased, though not nearly as bad as the American media.
Even the Canucks were becoming difficult to watch thanks to the bad ideas that have been implemented throughout the league. Have you seen the sleep-inducing 3-on-3 overtimes? They are worse than shootouts. In case you didn't know, the league's standings reward teams if the gimmicks determine the outcome. This is because overtime and shootout games count for either one or two points in the standings while regulation games count for zero or two points.
What my decision ultimately came down to is whether CBC's Olympic coverage and occasional Canucks games that are seriously losing value are worth more than $600 per year to me. I find that single-channel price to be far too excessive.
Since I cut cable, I have been watching programming that I have purchased either on DVD or through digital distribution. It looks like I have enough for over two years without repeating, and I am still making purchases. I think I made the right choice.
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