Anderson

I have finally decided that my family shall become cord cutters.

No longer shall we beholden ourselves to the DVRs and satellite dishes of our fathers before us. No longer shall we be wired (except for the Internet, of course) to a cable or dish for our television. Nay, we shall now simply take what the TV gods are offering from the signals a mere 30-70 miles from our house and we shall become "antenna folk."

Cutting the cord from cable and satellite TV providers is probably one of the biggest businesses in electronics right now. With so many streaming services being offered and better and better antennas on the market, it's little wonder that so many people are choosing to cast off the shackles of their high-definition oppressors and are opting for something a little more freeing.

For whatever reason, the cable and satellite companies aren't trying all that hard to change with the times. I mean, the whole reason most people are cutting the cord in the first place is because they want to choose what they watch and how much they pay for it. The days of getting 50 channels and being happy for all of them are gone.

We are in an a la carte age that requires television on our terms.

Take me, for instance. I like to watch sports, crime dramas, hilarious comedies and the occasional food show. I have pretty simple tastes and if it weren't for live sports, I think I would have cut this darn cord a long time ago. Now, if my current company would have made it a "directive" to offer me things like sports, food and broadcast channels without having to get a bunch of things like the Travel Channel, HGTV, Freeform and other nonsense, I would probably still be with them. But they don't offer that and, so, I have dumped them in favor of the Internet.

After all, the Internet has it all. I have a subscription to Netflix and Amazon Prime for around $10 each a month. I am adding a Roku Streaming Stick this Christmas that will give me access to that and much more when I need it. I am getting an antenna for around $110 and installing that where my dish used to be and I have been told I will get 27 channels for my money. That's just around $9 per month for a year to get NBC, CBS, Fox and more. The only channel I won't get is ABC (too far away in Asheville), but they don't have NFL games on them anyway and I can get my ABC shows on the ABC app the day after they air.

Shoot, I have even seen where there are now DVR services available for antennas if you want them. I mean, I can't see any reason I shouldn't have cut the cord months ago.

And the reason I didn't was that I still thought I needed these companies.

We are told all the time that we won't get the same picture quality and that we will be inconvenienced beyond measure for our decision to cut the cord, but that's simply not as bad as paying $60, $70 and sometimes $100 a month for television. Growing up, we had an antenna on my parents' farm and it got three channels. We had to manually move the antenna when we wanted to watch a different channel and I remember loving vacations when the house we stayed in had cable. But it made me appreciate television all the more, not just treat it like something that should be shoved into my eyes.

So, this is my plan: Step 1, get an antenna that will reach 27 broadcast channels. Step 2, get a Roku Streaming Stick that will let me get all my apps on it to watch TV and movies on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and more. Step 3, hope that the Steelers are on local television every week next year like they were this year. Step 4, decide what I am going to spend my savings as the year goes on.

Television is one of those strange things. We think that it's something we need when it's really something that we want.

TV is wonderful, but the cable and satellite companies got greedy and thought we wouldn't notice or care about higher prices for channels that were just built so that a parent company could make more money on advertising. No one cares about 75 percent of the channels they have on cable right now and they shouldn't. They are terrible.

But now there are options to cut the cord that will make television cheaper and easier. I say we go for it.