The Break-Up

Last week, I ended a 20-plus year relationship. We had some great times together that I will always cherish and remember fondly, but the time had come to move on.

Last week----I broke up with cable.

Cable had just become too high maintenance, demanding, and expensive. I was spending a lot of money and not getting much back. Hundreds of channels I don't need, don't want, and don't care about. Big jumps in price every year in return for worse programming, and no better service.
(Admittedly,  as the service provider, the cable company can't do very much about the programming, but one can only get what the provider provides! As for the programming itself....well, that's a whole other discussion.)

So, after a fling with on-line services like Hulu, Netflix, and others, I dropped cable and went internet only. In fact, I changed to a completely different company-I was able to get a better deal as a new customer with Verizon than as an existing one with Comcast. One has to have internet access anyway, so might as well use the net as the tool it's meant to be and watch TV this way. Also, most game consoles have capability to stream wireless so you can still watch TV on your TV.

I haven't tried them yet, but there other technologies out there too. There are internet enabled set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Roku . You could also still find those "old fashioned" antennas to get local channels. And, of course, there's the smartphone and computer.

In the meantime, if cable wants me back, it needs to make big changes. For instance, let me buy channels a la carte, or personalize bundles of channels, like all local, or all news, or all whatever. I don't really follow sports, so why make me pay for 83 versions of ESPN? Not much of a shopper either, so the shopping channels can go, too.

Until then, like all new relationships, internet-only and I will have growing pains and issues to work out. But in the end, I think I will be much happier.