Somehow I see there ending up being a little less available over the air,
and not the FCC's altruistic idea of station owners deciding to come to
agreements and share facilities to keep each others' content on a signal
somewhere. I still always wondered how the phone companies did at least
cooperate in the sense that we have things interconnected without random
people creating bridges to get across what could be islands. Since competing
commercial station owners have no such technical requirement, I'd see the
ones the FCC says must go silent either left in the cold or put on lower
power signals whose owner will take them for a price to help fund their own
stuff.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Granados" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: Getting rid of cable (was Netflix)
No, we do not have tax subsidized television other than PBS which has some
good programming but has degraded a lot over the years. We do have over the
air broadcasting but this is generally centered around major markets so near
capital cities or large pockets of population. The US is a huge country
with a massive amount of open space and rural area, the stations concentrate
where the population is so in New York City for example, tons of over the
air options, Boston, good amount, Still Water Oklahoma not much. Even
outliers of cities like south Jersey or western Massachusetts, south Eastern
Connecticut and so forth have very low signals from broadcasters.
Radio is far more distributed with just about every small town and hamlet
having at least one station. Unlike in the UK though, Governments do not
sponsor the operation of these stations although Government definitely does
hinder their operation. There’s a massive shift in broadcasting going on
anyway. Normal terrestrial radio might as well be dead. Over the air
stations are finding more of their listeners now over the Internet than the
air. Also, the quality of over the air broadcasting is taking a serious
dive much to do with over regulation of content and also their high cost of
operation in comparison to all digital and IP based services. Spectrum is
choked out on the broadcast channels so in a major market buying a frequency
like 106.1 on the FM dial may cost north of a billion dollars.
Big parts of the TV spectrum in the US are being repurposed for mobile
devices and there’s a lot more of that to come. The analog services of
yesteryear are being replaced with low power highly efficient digital
networks. Cell carriers eventually want to compete with the wired guys
delivering content to your home over digital signal instead of a coax or
fiber. As more and more things converge the old ways like TV and radio will
be supplanted.
On 6/28/16, 6:59 AM, "Saqib Hussain" <[email protected] on
behalf of [email protected]> wrote:
Hi. Do you not get Freeview TV in the US as I never had the need for cable
or Sky here in the UK. We get so many free to air channels addition to the
main 5 broadcasting channels, plus all the main radio stations who broadcast
nationwide. We have got the BBC iPlayer for catching up with all the
programs that are available on the BBC which is available on Apple TV on the
IOS devices. I’m hoping ITV release an version of their catchup app on the
Apple TV.
On 27 Jun 2016, at 13:12, Donna Goodin <[email protected]> wrote:
Hey Scott,
I felt exactly like you do. My husband had been wanting to cut the chord
for a long time, and I was the one dragging my feet. But now that we've
done it, I don't miss it much at all. There are some shows I miss like
Diners and Dives and Restaurant Impossible, but that's about it. And
we've discovered new shows that we like that we probably would never have
discovered if we'd just been able to put the Food Network on and let it
run all night. :)
It is different, though. If you want to watch TV, you can't just pick up
the remote and surf around. Now, we decide what we want to watch and then
access it. You can surf on Netflix, and probably other sources like Hulu
as well, but you surf through lists of shows, not channels. It's funny,
my husband will occasionally still ask, "What's on TV tonight?" and I have
to remind him, it's whatever we decide to put on. :) Neither my husband
nor I ever got our news from television, so that wasn't an issue for us.
Our cost savings is probably around $80 per month, and we had a basic
cable package. Our internet is still cable, and they offer the best
service in our area, so it's likely to stay that way for a while. I know
other people who save less, because they took the same money they were
spending on cable, and just put it into subscriptions, Hulu, etc.
Whichever way you go, I have to say that not only is it nice to be saving
that money, it's also just nice not to be paying for all that really bad
TV--in my opinion, most of what your cable gets you is a load of ****.
So, I'm glad we did it. My suggestion would be to keep track of what
shows you get from cable that you actually value. Then figure out whether
those same shows are available through another mechanism--don't rule out
purchasing them if you really like them. I'm a huge Big Bang Theory fan
for example. That isn't available on Netflix, so I just purchased my
favorite seasons on iTunes. My guess is that you won't have too much that
you get from your cable company that you couldn't get more cheaply
elsewhere.
Good luck, and let us know if you do decide to cut the chord.
Cheers,
Donna
On Jun 26, 2016, at 10:16 PM, Scott Granados <[email protected]> wrote:
Donna, I’ve been thinking of doing the same thing but can’t quite get my
head around not having channels to turn to. I’m still a product of the
old television way of doing things. How about news or other live
broadcasting? Do you miss it? Do you still get it in other ways?
How about the cost savings, are they as significant as people claim? Do
you miss the older style of TV access or are things going well. Maybe if
nobody objects you could talk a little more about your cord cutting
experience? Are you still receiving Internet over the cable or are you
all wireless or some other access method?
On 6/26/16, 8:11 PM, "Donna Goodin" <[email protected] on
behalf of [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Brandon,
My husband and I ditched our cable last fall. We now watch either
Netflix, or content that we own. Netflix works great, both with our
Apple TV and on my iPhone.
Cheers,
Donna
On Jun 26, 2016, at 5:20 PM, Brandon A. Olivares
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hey everyone,
I am thinking of canceling cable, because we just don’t use it much.
We just got Hulu, and that is working awesome.
What I want to know is, does Netflix work well, either on the computer
or on the iPhone?
Thanks,
Brandon
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