Bye Bye Bill
Posted by terrepruitt on April 28, 2015
We ditched cable. Yup. My husband has been asking me forever if he can cancel cable. I have not been receptive to the idea because there are a few shows I like to watch on Network TV. He got a ROKU and he signed up for Netflix. This was a long time ago. We watch a lot of our favorite shows on Netflix. Not new stuff. We tend to watch things over again. I am in the middle of watching Fraiser for the third time. We also watch the Star Treks over again. We have a few other series that we watch on Netflix, but sometimes we have to wait for Netflix to get the seasons. You may be familiar with the phenomenon of binge watching a show and then having to wait for the next season to be acquired by Netflix. Recently my husband signed up for Hulu. This was because some of his shows could be watched on Hulu. Hulu gets shows sooner than Netflix. It works out because we can watch them when we want to watch them. We don’t have a DVR, so Hulu and Netflix work good. That left just us needing cable even less. But doesn’t it figure that the only channel that is not on Netflix or Hulu is the channel and the shows that I want to watch. Well, he must have been doing a lot of research in order to get rid of cable. He found CBS has their own streaming channel. Ahhh . . . . my shows. Anytime I want. So we got rid of cable.
We didn’t have any fancy cable package because we don’t really watch that much “new” TV. As I said, we tend to watch shows over and over and over again. I think I mentioned that before in a post. We have a lot of DVDs and Netflix works good for us. Not only did we not have a lot of cable channels we didn’t have the channels in HD. That is one of the reasons why my husband likes to watch the shows he watches on Hulu instead of when they are broadcast on TV because it is in HD. Once he got Hulu for his shows the number of shows we watched on broadcast TV was down to three. So he wanted to cancel cable, but as I said, CBS didn’t put their shows on Hulu or Netflix.
While he and I were in discussions about cancelling cable, a few of the CBS shows showed up on Netflix. But not Hulu. The shows on Netflix were past seasons. Hmmmmm . . . interesting. And then, as I said, he discovered CBS Access or whatever it is. And his major sell was he held up the remote that controls the TV channels and he said, “When was the last time you used this?” I looked at him and couldn’t say. I laughed. I really thought it was funny that I only watched three shows on one channel. So yay! Now we don’t have any TV channels and we can watch TV when we want. I know we are kind of late to the party because we have a lot of friends that are the same way. We will see how it goes.
We had our first giggle this past weekend while we were trying to decide if we were going to watch a re-run of Saturday Night Live. We were discussing that it really wasn’t that good, when my husband said, “Oh, we can’t watch it even if we wanted to.” Again, I laughed because we don’t have the TV channels any longer. Ha!
I am already really enjoying the CBS channel on Thursday nights because I have to teach and usually I rush home to get dinner on the table by 8:00 so I can see Big Bang Theory. I find that when I watch reruns I think I haven’t see the episode, but 10 minutes in I realize I have. But what happens is I am busy with putting dinner on the table so I miss the first few minute. Now . . . I can watch it when I want. I think with both Hulu and CBS there is a time limit. But so far I haven’t been affected by it on Hulu and we just got the CBS channel thing so I will have to see about that.
Another great thing is we have one less remote. At one point when cable did something (I don’t even know what) they gave us a remote that we had to use INSTEAD of our TV remote. We had five (eyes rolling). Now we only have four.
Do you have cable? How many channels do you have? What are your favorite shows? Do you have Netflix? Do you have Hulu?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 
Carol said
No cable for us either! Neither in San Jose, or Eagle.
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terrepruitt said
Awesome. But do you have anything? Like Netflix or Hulu? You aren’t a “TV-watching” family.
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Sonja said
We ditched our cable TV bill a few years ago and only on small occasions it presents a problem. We have Netflix, Hulu Plus, PlayStation, Roku, and an HD antenna from Costco for those New Years Day parade, and football game TV days. It is nice to save about $75/mo. Hulu Plus is $8/mo and it works with Roku and it gets all the new TV shows, the interface is annoying though because of the order it puts the episodes in. Congrats Terre.
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terrepruitt said
We had such basic cable we are only saving about $22.00 a month, but why spend that if we aren’t even watching the TV.
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John Pruitt said
I misspoke when I said we could not watch SNL. Since it was a rerun we could not only have watched it whenever we wanted to on Hulu but since it was a rerun, there was a high chance that some of it would have been cut for more commercials. No loss since it really wasn’t a great episode but I do like that we would have had the uncut HD version of it on Hulu. otherwise I can wait a day. I always fall asleep half way through it anyway 🙂
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terrepruitt said
We talked about being able to watch it on Hulu, but it was the “live” TV that we couldn’t watch it on. Just funny.
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Elaine said
I’m a cord cutter too! I use my oldfangled rooftop antenna to pull in network TV, and I have netflix and amazon prime. I used to have a roku but I don’t need it anymore. I do like to record things to watch later so I have a Tivo with lifetime service. If you wanted network stations, I bet a Mohu Leaf would pull them in just fine from your location – I’m a little far from the antennas to be able to use their non amplified version.
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terrepruitt said
Mohu Leaf? Hmmm? Is that some type of antenna? As I said, we really don’t watch much Network TV or at least the shows we do watch we are set up for now. I think we watch a lot of TV/movies so I honestly don’t need more ways to watch more. I don’t know when you would have time for TV!
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Elaine said
It is. It’s a small flat antenna about the size of a piece of paper. Something to consider if you ever decide you want to get network signal again.
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terrepruitt said
Hmmm. Interesting. I am not sure we would bother with network TV because we can get the shows on Nteflix and Hulu. And if we can’t, then I really don’t need to watch it! Ha, ha, ha!
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