Back in the 1970s when I went to Rutgers, the deep-thinkers of the Communications Department were talking up this newfangled thing called "cable TV."

I had my doubts. I mean who would be enough of a sucker to pay good money to watch the same commercials he could see for free?

Me, as it turned out. When my wife and I bought our first house back in 1986 we hooked up to cable. It was cheap, as I recall. Perhaps $15 a month.

But over the years the monthly cable bill came to equal the monthly bill my daughter pays to lease a car.

A car can take you places. The only place cable TV takes you is the couch - where we all spend enough time already.

I got the idea of cutting the cable when my wife started watching her favorite series on Netflix, which comes via wi-fi, not cable. She also subscribes to the wi-fi version of HBO and a couple of other wi-fi services.

A couple of weeks ago I finally followed through on my insight from 40 years ago.

I dialed the number on my cable bill. The robot that answered tried to wear me down with a series of increasingly stupid questions. I persevered and got an actual human on the phone.

To my surprise, the nice lady didn't counter with one of those last-ditch deals the cable companies offer the same way pushers offer drugs to addicts. She simply took down my information and told me the TV would be cut off at 5 p.m. All I would have is wi-fi.

This posed a problem. My wife was away for the weekend and she was the one who knew how to access all those cable alternatives. I contented myself with watching an old movie and then retired to bed with a book.

My wife got home a day later. At first she was upset that I had cut the cable, but she soon showed me how to use her Apple TV, which is a sort of alternative cable remote that picks up programs on wi-fi.

This made it possible for her to do what she was doing anyway, binge-watch those series.

As for me, I feared that, as someone who covers news for a living, I would miss the line-up of news shows - from Fox on the right to MSNBC on the left. Or in other words, I would miss some retired general telling me Donald Trump isn't bombing quite enough countries. I'd also miss Rachel Maddow telling me Trump is just a mustache short of naming himself Fuehrer.

I didn't miss either. I also didn't miss TV sports, which is the male equivalent of binge-watching Netflix.

I found that even without cable, I could easily find something interesting to watch.

The one thing I couldn't do is get the major networks. That's because the knuckleheads who represent our state in Congress somehow permitted the New York and Philadelphia stations to colonize the broadcast spectrum in New Jersey.

If you are among the millions of Jerseyans who live more than 30 miles or so from the transmitters, then you can't get the networks with an antenna. Your only choice is to pay the cable companies - who then kick back a share of the loot to the broadcasters.

Till now, they've had us as a captive audience. But that may be changing. The cable companies are feeling the pressure, said Scott Fybush, who monitors the broadcast media from his office in upstate New York.

"The economic model which looked fantastic 15 years ago is obsolete," he said. "It's going to be real interesting over the next few years to see how this all works out."

And in the post-cable era, it will be much easier to measure audience size, he said.

"They won't have to guess who's watching," Fybush said. "They'll be counting hits."

As more people realize how easy it is to survive without network TV, broadcasters will see their market share drop. Advertising rates will drop as well.

At that point the networks will have little choice but to stream their services for free. They might even take advantage of new technology that will send programming to TV's, laptops and phones the same way we receive cell service, he said.

Soon everyone will realize that the idea of watching on one device hard-wired to the wall will be obsolete.

It already is, as far as I'm concerned.

Try it yourself and see what you think.

I can't help borrowing an old saying:

Viewers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Make that your cables.

ADD: When I talked with Fybush, he mentioned the troubles besetting ESPN, which is perhaps the pre-eminent company that gets us to pay twice - through commercials and also through fees of more than $5 a month added to our cable bills.

Then on Saturday I came across this article about how ESPN is cutting staff due to a downturn in business:

"ESPN, which laid off 100 people this week, has a multitude of problems, but the basic one is this: It pays too much for content and costs too much for consumers.

"That didn't used to matter because, thanks to the way the cable industry 'bundled' channels, cable customers were forced to pay for it even if they never watched it. Now, however, as the cable bundle slowly disintegrates, it matters a lot."

It doesn't matter to me anymore. I like watching sports, but I can't see the point of paying for it. When I was a kid, the Yankees games were on TV for free. You only had to pay if you went to the stadium.

I recall that when the YES channel came on cable, there was a big fight about whether the cable companies would pay the added price to deliver it to viewers.

I recall expecting that it would be commercial-free, since I was paying for it in my monthly bill - the same as with HBO.

Nope. They had just as many ads as when it was on broadcast TV.

I guess fanatical sports addicts don't mind paying twice for a service. But I'm just the normal sort of guy who enjoys games when they're on but can live without them.

Even without cable, I can find hundreds of channels full of stuff to watch. If I can't watch basketball, I'll watch surf contests.

I suspect there are enough people like me out there to destroy the business model for ESPN and the networks as well. When viewership drops to a certain point, these guys are going to have to think hard about putting their programming on for free.

I don't think that will take long. The advantages of watching by wi-fi are just too great.

An example: Suppose you have a vacation home in the mountains or at the Shore and you like HBO. You can either pay $15 a month at each house. Or you can get the HBO Now wi-fi package my wife has, and watch it wherever you are.

And of course you can also watch it on a laptop or smart phone.

There's no competition - and the sports guys at ESPN ought to realize that.