Dan Mackie: We Cut Our Cable, and Survived

About two years ago, we cut the cord. I don’t remember what made me it do — I have canceled cable TV in moments of cheapness or distress about lousy shows before — but this time it stuck. It may simply be that as you grow older, you see that life’s too short to spend any of it watching American Ninja Warrior.



We are not the only cord cutters. An April 2013 story in The New York Times said that 4.7 million Americans were expected to be cable-free by the end of that year, up from 3.74 million one year earlier.



Apparently, customers complain about ever-higher prices, and bundles that give them channels they don’t want — or, in my case, actively hate. And I think the digital age has changed people’s expectations. They insist on music on demand, news for free (gulp), and the movies they want when they want them. So when a cable giant company tells them they must buy 150 channels to get the one they really want, pay a start-up fee, rent a converter, and pay extra for high-definition — then the answer often becomes: I don’t think so.



Several technological advances have set me, more or less, free. We have a fairly big-screen, high-definition TV that we bought when prices became reasonable. We also have Internet service, and a wireless router. We bought a little Roku box for under $100 that allows us to stream Netflix and Hulu Plus, which offer many TV shows and movies, from classics such as The Bicycle Thief to the lowly camp comedy Meatballs.



Because I don’t mind tinkering with gadgets that I don’t really understand, we have other options. A $35 Chromecast dongle, or less technically, a doohickey, allows me to beam TV shows from a laptop to the TV set. I also sometimes connect a HDMI cable directly from the the laptop to the television, but that requires a comedic series of turning things on and off and clicking buttons until a picture appears on the screen.



Netflix and Hulu cost just $8 each. Many of the network shows not available there can be streamed free from network websites one day after broadcast. Here is my guilty confession: When Downton Abbey premiered with a two-hour special on a Sunday night at 9, we streamed it from the PBS site Monday night at 7, allowing us to avoid staying up past 10, which is the new midnight.



I have an advantage over many in the Upper Valley. With a small antenna we can grab over-the-air signals from channels 31, NBC, and 41, PBS. They are clear, bright and digital, so we can see the nerds on Jeopardy make awkward banter with Alex Trebek in visual clarity like never before. Even better, Channel 41 takes advantage of digital broadcasting by sending four signals, so you might watch shows you never considered. I recently saw a Bill Moyers program in which he had a long conversation with a conservative fellow from the Heritage Foundation. They were talking, not debating or showboating, looking for common ground about how to raise up the poor. It was how TV once was — how America once was.



What do we miss? Not much, with a couple of exceptions. We don’t get to see the excellent TV shows on HBO and other premium channels, except for those that are later sold to Netflix. Sometimes we pony up and rent a series from the last video store standing in West Lebanon, and the library has some good series. (And analog books, too.)



Where’s the rub? It’s the lack of sports — not much is available by streaming, although I did manage to watch the World Cup finals in Spanish. NBC doesn’t show a lot of sports except, disappointingly, golf, which to me is like watching lawn mowing. NBC also has the Olympics, but four years is a long time to wait for rhythmic gymnastics. I do miss watching sports, although the risk of indulging is that someday you could be drowsily watching Northeast Boise State Tech vs. Southwest Idaho State A&M, and a little bit of your soul will die, right then and there as you sink into your La-Z-Boy.



Having to actively choose shows has made me pickier. Passive junk TV is out, becuase it’s not as effortless to change channels. I also try movies that I’d never had considered before, some of them French, with subtitles. Ooh la la.



After two years, I am not longer tempted to bring back cable TV. There is so much I dislike in the tacky, tawdry cable universe — Kardashians, Fox News, Storage Wars, Bridezillas — that reconnecting would be like moving somewhere I would not be comfortable, such as Dallas, Texas, or one of those counties in Utah where 90 percent of the people voted for Mitt Romney. You almost have to step away to see how bad much of the programming is.



All is not perfect in the cord-cutting household. We get our Internet over phone lines from Fairpoint DSL, which, while less expensive, is slower than Comcast cable, and inexplicably sputters sometimes, or goes off for an hour or two. It seems like the Internet you’d get in the former Yugoslavia, but I imagine the service in Belgrade is better.



The cable companies say they are not monopolies, but only a monopoly would be able to get away with the constant price increases of recent years, and teaser offerings that take a forensic accountant to assess. The FCC issued a report that said basic cable prices rose 6.1 percent in 2012, roughly four times the rate of the Consumer Price Index.



As for a cable monopoly, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, you’re going to get Duck Dynasty, whether you want it or not. According to the Ars Technica website, the average U.S. household has 189 channels, and watches about 17.



Sens. Bernie Sanders and John McCain — you could call them the Socialist and the Grumpy Old Man — would like to force a la carte pricing, but I don’t expect them to win the day anytime soon unless customers rise up and the lobbyists crumble. Or Bernie gets a reality TV show, which is one I might actually watch.







Dan Mackie is the Valley News’ editorial page editor.















It may simply be that as you grow older, you see that life’s too short to spend any of it watching “American Ninja Warrior.”





