We Killed Cable

I’ve been considering killing off cable TV at our house for the last year or so.  Today I finally took the plunge and called Comcast.

I think what finally caused me to do it was receiving our last cable bill.  Our discounts had dropped off and the bill was back up to $110 for cable and Internet.  The same day I happened to read an article that said over 800,000 people had already ditched cable and are using the Internet exclusively for their entertainment.  Since we use Netflix on the Xbox, we realized that the amount of money that we have been paying for cable was just not worth it.  We were watching less than 10 shows a month on cable so the cost per show was outrageous.

I sat down with my wife and we talked over what changes we’d have to get used to.  In the end we realized there were a couple shows that we do enjoy but we can watch those over the Internet.  For us it comes down to TV simply being a “time filler”.  We normally only watch shows in the evening for an hour after we put our daughter to bed.  Each night we’d browse through the channels and see if there was anything worth watching.  Over the past few months we’ve found ourselves going to Netflix on the Xbox almost exclusively.

The good news is that if we find we are missing something and regret our decision it will just take a quick call to Comcast and we can undo our decision.  I doubt that’s going to happen though.  Times are changing.  The business model that says, “pay us X per month and we’ll give you a few quality channels and a bunch of junk” is dying.  Over time I think the cable companies are going to have to completely remake their revenue models.  Time will tell.