We've had enough of television programming.

[17 Oaks]

Direct TV NOW, $35 per mo gets you 35 stations and my antenna (free) pulls in about 33 stations, so I have 70 stations on tap, Fox News, TCM Classic movies (B&W mostly) and a ton of reruns from the 50's, 60's and 70's, love it!

 

[Thomas]

Programs are one thing but ads run time another....about 7 mins of program 5+ mins ads. :thumbdown:

 

[jack707]

I have NOT had dish for over a year and will not go back.

 

[dmccarty]

We've about had it with broadcast television. $125 a month for satellite TV and 95% is cr@p but we watch it anyway out of inertia. Worse, I'm forced to pay for programming that I detest funding and yet it's part of a forced package that insults anyone's intelligence. Our Internet speed is fast enough that we can go with a few programs on a HULU or something like that and pick up the local news networks on our TV if we want.

The possibilities of available time are endless. More seat time. More barn time. Wax the truck. More exercise and doing things for us that have a net benefit on the outcome of our lives. What's wrong with that?

We cut the cord years ago. We talked about it for years but that big ol' inertia kept me from cutting sooner which cost us a bunch of money.

Our Internet speed and reliability stinks at 1.5 mbps but we can stream over the Internet. We mostly watch PBS on the weekends which we get sorta kinda ok with an antennae. We stream NetFlix, YouTube, and Prime though I think we likely spend more time watching DVDs. I stopped watching local news decades ago. The bubble headed bleach blondes that come on at five are even more dumber and ignorant than the ***** on the national TV news. I do read the local TV new's website but it can be really sad. They just had a report of a guy being dragged out of his tent by a bear, and the writing was so bad you could not tell if the guy was hitting the bear or his fellow campers. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: It was so obvious that the writer did not even try to reread what they had written much less there being an editor. I don't care about having every i dotted and T crossed correctly but sometimes their errors are just pathetic.

One of my favorites was when we had a hurricane brush along side the coast. Not much damage thankfully, but roads were flooded, including I40. They had a story about this including a State Trooper getting on the air and telling people to stay off the roads, that the roads were flooded and it was unsafe to be out and about. They cut from the Trooper into the next story were one of the News Readers was saying there was no damage Down East, the towns were open, and to come on down before summer ended. :shocked::shocked::shocked: Even the News Reader knew what they were saying was a f.... up. The look on their faces was priceless. Obviously the TV station owner has summer related businesses on the beach... Sad.

Later,
Dan

 

[sixdogs]

An installer I know said lots of people are bailing on the satellites and cancelling. A common complaint was that they want ala-carte but that the programmers won't hear of it.

 

[wagne223]

I cut the cord 2 years ago. I have good internet service. I signed up with Amazon prime, Netflix and I pay $15 per month for the HBO app. Plus I have a rooftop antenna.

Costs me $300 per year. Took a little time to adjust but now I could never go back to paying over $100 per month for crappy satellite.

Works for me but I am not an avid sports fan.

If I do want to see a game I just go to the local wing joint sports bar.

 

[Oaktree]

So buy a 2-bay or 4-bay UHF antenna for local news and enjoy the savings.

All well and good IF you live where there's reception, not all of us do. Downside of living in the country. Used to get half a dozen or so snowy, but watchable analog signals, but with digital just a neighboring state's public tv. 40 bucks wasted on antenna for nothing.

An installer I know said lots of people are bailing on the satellites and cancelling. A common complaint was that they want ala-carte but that the programmers won't hear of it.

Yeah, that would be nice. Trouble is it's the same deal with any of the streaming providers. None of them seem to have everything, and all seem to have a lot of crap so you still end up with multiple subscriptions. Even the services that have the major networks don't have CBS, since they have their own subscription service.

One option no one's mentioned in this thread yet is taking advantage of the so-called "lifeline" packages...OTA channels for your area and a few others too, maybe 20 in all. By law the cable companies have to offer them (though they don't go out of their way to promote their existence), Dish has something similar (dunno about Direct TV). $20/mo. or so. That's what we're doing. Nice thing with that (at least with TWC) is that you don't need a cable box for that tier, saving another $10/mo or so.
Mrs. Oaktree is grumbling about all these supposedly "great" shows we don't get (though she can't name any specific ones), so maybe we'll try Netflix next winter. I do wish there was some sort of guide to what the different streaming providers offer...their websites are generally pretty uninformative.

Burger King advertising executive [when was the last time they had a good commercial], and car company executive [bad decisions are a way of life there].

??? Where do you live? Don't think I've seen a Burger King ad in years. Oddly, we do see some ads (national ads in syndicated shows) for restaurants we don't have around here. One that comes to mind is something called Golden Corral, never even heard of 'em before let alone seen one.
Agree on the car ads. Japanese automakers seem to be the worst offenders for really obnoxious ads.

 

[TractorGuy]

I ended up with Direct TV Now for the $35/mo special price (normal $70) (plus free HBO for a year and $5 Cinemax) for TV, and ATT's Mobley for internet. $60 plus ~$5 tax total for faster, better internet and a pretty good TV package vs the $200 or so I was paying for crappy versions before w/o HBO/Cinemax.

The TV isnt any better, obviously, but I usually just leave it on Star Trek reruns or a News channel while working around the house anyways, so no different than before - just cheaper

FYI, Netflix has all the seasons of all the Star Trek series commercial free.

I can't remember how many years ago I discontinued DTV. It's been 5 or more. I got more disgusted with some of the paid program commercials as anything else.

 

[jack707]

Since I got rid of dish and the internet I am saving money. Now for the net I use a smart/dumb Phone and pay 55 A month for straight talk.

 

[Welshman]

I've never had cable or dish. I'm about 39 miles from the Cleveland TV array in Parma, OH. and 30 miles from Youngstown, OH. I get 38 channels from both locations, although some are duplicate networks.
Plenty of TV for me, and it's all free, and my rates are never raised.