The Cable/Satellite Trap

This New York Post story on how supposedly millions of Americans are giving up their cable and satellite services struck a chord with me. The article mentions that the average cable/satellite customer spends $70 a month on services, about the same as our DirecTV bill here at Chez Scrubbles. With every month that I must fork over that sum, I question why we’re paying so much when we can get the same programs on DVD or online. Do we really use it that much? I still love to watch Turner Classic Movies, but I only record about five or six movies a month on that. We also watch the occasional Modern Marvels or Project Runway, but it seems like everything on cable is about haunted houses, Nostradamus/Bible prophesies, macho men on the job, people with eighteen children, people with physical deformities, people who are grossly overweight, etc. etc. I’m paying for that?

By contrast, our monthly Netflix bill is less than a third of DirecTV’s — and we get so much more entertainment value out of that. Netflix probably hates the way we burn through dozens of movies every month. Now that we have our Wii and wi-fi set up with them, we can watch streamed content on the TV through them as well. I really want to try paring down the satellite to just the local network affiliates for a few months to see if we feel deprived in any way. What do you think?