Get Rid of Cable – Adjust Your TV Viewing Habits


Television / Saturday, May 10th, 2014

Adjust TV viewing habitsNBC just cancelled their new series Believe and this brings to light one of my recent cable cutter thoughts. Every year you hear outrage from viewers when their new favorite show didn’t make the cut. You spend your time each week getting invested in these characters, these plots, and some executive decides your effort wasn’t worth anything. Firefly, Stargate Universe, Jericho, Arrested Development… all shows with die hard fans but were slashed. Luckily Jericho got a 1 season reprieve and AD was actually brought back to life years later but most shows aren’t so lucky. So this brings me to my point. I didn’t actually watch Believe; I did have 9 episodes stashed on my DVR for summer viewing. They were just deleted. Thanks for saving me 9 hours of my life NBC. I no longer need to waste my time. Instead, I’ll focus my attention on shows worth watching.

I think anyone who enjoys TV would be lying if they said it was easy cutting cable. I think the largest #cablecutter challenge may be learning how to completely adjust your TV viewing habits. Specifically learning how to simply watch the quality old shows you missed instead of worrying about the next big thing or the current hit shows. Instead of watching the Believes and the Almost Humans, focus on shows that you may have missed that you might have on your wish list. If you don’t, you’ll never watch them. There will always be something new on. For instance Breaking Bad is my #1 show on my wish list. That show was not on my radar until a few seasons in and I always wanted to catch up but never had the time because I watched too much other stuff. No cable? Now’s the time. Netflix has Breaking Bad (soon to be in 4K). Amazon Prime on the other hand has 24 and Always Sunny In Philadelphia (which I’ve already started watching). Between those 3 shows alone, that’s seasons upon seasons and hours and hours of cable subscription replacing TV.

I spent over a year watching everything the Stargate franchise could throw at me; most of it was long past the view date. I watched Battlestar Galactica years after airing. I didn’t realize it then but I was on to something. Why was I even paying for cable at that time while I was watching mostly Netflix shows? Foolish. If you’re anything like I was, stop throwing money out the window and start thinking about getting rid of your overpriced cable. There’s tons of content out there. Learn to focus on watching what you can and less on what you can’t watch. If you can’t watch it, put it on your wish list. It’ll be available somewhere soon enough. And if you feel left out when your friends are talking about the new hotness, just remind yourself chances are it’ll be cancelled soon anyway.