Chapter 4: Maybe Life Without Cable is Worth Living After All

There was a time about a month and a half ago when I wondered how on earth I, or anyone else for that matter, could get along without cable.

Now, I wonder how anyone can get by without Netflix.

I now understand more how people can survive without cable, considering that we live in a time in which television content is available across multiple platforms, not just through cable or the Web. However, when I talk to people who don’t have Netflix, I am baffled. It could be because I work in television so it’s the talk of the town, but I know for a fact I have read tweets from my friends in a variety of careers tweeting and discussing Netflix shows such as “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards.” Maybe it’s just a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on.

I had to take a quick break from this series the past two weeks to really think about my relationship with cable. I wasn’t about to write an article about which I didn’t feel strongly or couldn’t back up through research. I was stuck.

To refresh your memory, I recounted in my last piece - Chapter 3: Getting Creative – how I finally broke the mold and found a work-around to gain access to the content I truly wanted to watch. But when Discovery’s Shark Week came to an end two weeks ago, I sat in a dry spell—that in-between period before the fall TV launches and college football kick-off—and I asked myself if I really needed cable. Granted I still have the stripped down broadcast networks from plugging my TV into the wall, but my roommate and I haven’t utilized that feature for more than the morning or late night news.

Actually, I’m lying. I didn’t really ask myself this until this past weekend. I actually completely forgot about cable for about two weeks because I didn’t feel like I was missing much. I still listen to the radio religiously, and in my job as the social and digital media specialist at Promax I’m on Facebook pretty consistently. I follow tons of blogs and entertainment news hubs, but couldn’t honestly name three shows off the top of my head that are launching in the next month.

This past weekend, I spent the night with my cousin and her family in Manhattan Beach. Since her husband is an entertainment executive and both of them are USC alumnae like me, it was only natural to discuss where we’d each be watching USC’s season kickoff. After my cousin said they already had a babysitter and would probably get dinner and watch the game at a bar by the beach, I told them how I had no choice but to watch the game at a bar due to my lack of cable these days. I then told them about this series, and next thing I know, they are both telling me about how they were in serious talks about dun dun dun….. CUTTING THE CORD. Wait, what? How could my cousin and her husband, both in film entertainment, with a very stable and cushy life, and a young son and daughter with very opposite tastes in television, even be considering cutting the cord? WHY? I was baffled.

They both had different reasons to support his. His was that as a Verizon FiOS subscriber both at home and in his Los Angeles office, his subscriptions to Netflix, Showtime and HBO all could be carried over to the AppleTV in his home simply by using his unique work logins. If there was something specific he wanted to watch at home, he had his Slingbox.

My cousin, on the other hand, was having to referee a TV-induced war between her kids every day. She exhaustedly told me, “it’s always an argument between the two as to what they are going to watch, and because there are so many options, I’d rather just stick with movies and series on Netflix and the new Disney XD on our AppleTV. They don’t even really need to be watching television.”

After I returned home and thought to myself, if THEY, of all people, are cutting the cord, why on earth am I going to pay for it? Granted, I don’t have the luxury of using Showtime and HBO logins from work, but even if I were to pay a per-episode fee to watch HBO series once they are released on iTunes, with each season costing no more than $30, just streaming three seasons each month of HBO and Showtime shows would equal the cost of cable. As a result, it just doesn’t seem logical to me to get cable right now.

For the first time in my entire 18-year relationship with Apple, I finally felt like I was not being blindfolded and robbed. With AppleTV’s most recent update, the options for free streaming are endless. Not only did I recently discover Ted Talks on Netflix, which satisfies my FOMO by stimulating me with new information, but I now have the option to watch free news, the weather channel, SMITHSONIAN (Hello, awesome), Vevo, Disney and wait for it…. the iTunesFestival! Yes, 30 nights of free music! Free performances from Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar and Robin Thicke! Who needs those trashy VMAs anyway?

The only thing I am TRULY missing right now is a season-pass, just like I had from Shark Week, for Showtime’s “Homeland” and HBO’s “True Blood.” Imagine if I had that? Then I’d just be paying a whopping $7.99 each week for everything I could ever want.

A girl can dream.

Read last week’s article Chapter 3: Getting Creative

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