Ok, ok finally thinking of cutting the cord (cable...it's gotten ridiculous)

[SheilaT]

53. Netflix.

If Hulu would get rid of the commercials on the paid side, I'd reconsider them. But pay, and still have to watch commercials? Really?

Netflix has Dr. Who.

There's an amazing amount of news available on line, and you're much better off not getting sucked into the wall-to-wall coverage that sucks up all the oxygen over genuinely trivial things. Example: I didn't learn until about a year after Michael Jackson (can you say over-the-hill music person/pedophile?) died that all the networks had gone to wall to all coverage about him. As if that were something that really deserved to push everything else aside.

You will be able to watch the conventions because the networks covering them will go to streaming coverage. Same with election night next year.

And when some breaking news happens that you actually care about, just google to find out the TV stations in that area, and the chances are good that at least one of them will go to streaming coverage. I wind up catching the local coverage of lots of things that way.

PBS shows are a bit hit or miss, but if you're a fan of "Downtown Abbey" you'll be able to watch the next season just one day after it's broadcast. Other shows you sometimes wait a very long time for. But you'll probably spend somewhat less time watching shows, which might be a good thing.

In 2008, when I moved to my current location, I didn't want to spend the money for a TV, nor did I want to pay for cable or a satellite hook up. I honestly didn't think I'd do without for this long, but now I can't ever imagine going back to regular TV in any form. Yeah, there are shows that I'd like to see that I don't ever get around to seeing, but my life isn't noticeably impoverished because of that.

This is the third time in my life I've gone for several years without TV. The second time, which was for seven years in the early 1970's, a co-worker thought that I must be terribly uninformed about what was happening in the world because of no TV. Every so often he'd quiz me, and he was quite amazed that I really did know what was happening. I got the local newspaper, I read the weekly news magazines, and I read books. Thanks to the books, I tended to know a whole lot more about all sorts of things than he did. So doing without TV will not leave you ill-informed about the world unless you make no effort at all to find out what is happening.

And DU all by itself tends to keep up with things.