Wireless TV

I've decided to switch how I watch television: I'm going wireless. Now that I have a wireless phone, and I've done some consulting work for wireless networking, I've seen the light, and I'm switching my television to wireless technology.

Which is mostly just a futuristic spin to put on "I'm canceling my cable service".

I've spent most of my life without cable (or satellite) service. Of course there was the first decade and a half, before cable TV was invented (or at least before it reached my city). I had the necessary cable channels like MTV during my teen years, but not for my years in the dorm at college. I paid for cable for a few years after graduating, but when I moved into a 4th-floor-on-a-hill apartment where I got great broadcast reception, I didn't bother subscribing there. And although my current first-floor apartment doesn't get the channels quite as well, I was also a student again, with a part-time job, so I went without.

That changed last year, when - flush with a new well-paying job and frustrated at trying to pick up the low-power UPN affiliate when they moved their transmitter farther away - I finally subscribed to cable service and got wired. All I signed up for was "basic" service, which includes the must-carry channels (local broadcasters, public access), a few shopping channels, and a couple of the less glamorous "cable" channels: TBS and WGN. The filter to cut out the "standard service" channels doesn't work completely, so I could also pick up a few extra channels on the low end of the scale, including Cartoon Network, TNT, Oxygen, and ABC Family. All for only $13.64 per month.

The thing is... I've found that I don't watch much of anything on those extra channels (just the Justice League cartoon and the occasional commercial-interrupted movie), and the only show on UPN that I'd ever want to watch (Star Trek: Enterprise) is being cancelled. The other thing is... I quit that well-paying job for one I'd actually enjoy, so money's tight again. That $13.64/month would add up to over $160/year, and yeah, that would really make a difference. So I'm clipping the cable.

Instead I'm putting the rabbit ears back to work. These are somewhat better rabbit ears than we used back in the old pre-cable era; they're amplified, and do a pretty good job of picking up most of the local broadcast stations. Too bad I can't easily put a "real" antenna up on the roof; that'd be really nice.

I can't pick up the local CBS station (which actually transmits from two counties south of here) in my interior living room, however. So I've got another set of rabbit ears hooked up to my spare VCR in another room with a better southern exposure. There's only one show I watch on CBS anyway (Two and a Half Men), so I'll just set the timer and watch the tapes for that one.

I admit that I'm going to miss the clearer signal on a few of the channels. But broadcast TV still gives me at least an hour/day of decent shows to watch. (For the record, in addition to those already mentioned, that includes: Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, Arrested Development, Scrubs, House, Lost, The West Wing, Smallville, Jack & Bobby, ER, and Nova.) Granted, someday when I'm old and feeble and can't motivate myself to do anything else with my time except watch TV, I might again subscribe to cable (or its future replacement) so I can sit and vegetate in front of it for hours on end. But not yet.