That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On

$140.13, $138.03, $129.65, $138.03. Those are our Time Warner Cable bills over the past four months. And they have been relatively similar for the past four years, though Time Warner does like to throw in a random dollar-or-two-rate-hike every now and then, a move easily accomplished without much notice when I've got paperless billing and automatic withdrawal turned on. Seems expensive, but I imagine most people see similar monthly bills for cable internet, cable TV, the HDTV tier, an HDTV DVR, and HBO, to go with an on-demand movie or two.

Now...a typical day in our television-viewing lives goes something like this: Dinner made (by me, of course), Amber and I amble into the living room and I absentmindedly switch on the TV. I ask, always, "what do you want to watch?" Amber replies, "what have we got?" I hit "List" on the remote to see what we've got DVRed, and, if The Office or Lost do not appear, I say "nothing." Then I flip around and inevitably ask Amber to choose between Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, Real Housewives of [insert geographic area], Millionaire Matchmaker, or Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Usually she will ask for NCIS, CSI: Whatever, Law & Order SVU, Criminal Minds, etc. Dinner finished, Amber may then edit photos, blog, and Facebook, while I watch the NBA or play Call of Duty (or, now, obsess over my iPad). When we have extra time we will watch an HBO show -- Treme or the Pacific, currently -- or a movie. Weekends involve little, if any, television consumption.

Add paragraph 1 to paragraph 2, and the price we pay for what we use just doesn't make sense. I admit it, I do enjoy discussing with Amber how I can't believe that Kourtney chose ultra-douche Scott, or that Tamra's husband is a dick and Lynn's kids are demons and holy crap look how big Alexis's boobs are -- but really it's just a time filler (killer?), and something we pay a lot for when most of what we really want to watch we can get elsewhere – over-the-air network HDTV, hulu.com, MLB TV, Netflix, etc. – without having to pay for cable TV.

So...as Sam Cooke would say, "That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On." (Really, it's "we" quit, and "we're" moving on, as Amber and I are equally on board with this venture, but I think the quote becomes cumbersome when you insert editorial brackets, i.e. "[]" Though, this parenthetical is hardly any better. Oh, and rather than Sam Cooke, Amber has been singing Wilson Phillips today…somehow she finds the “break free from the chains” part of “Hold On” to be more apropos. If you know the song, I hope it is now stuck in your head too. Okay, moving on...) And today we are returning our Time Warner cable box.

I suppose it’s not just a plan to save money (though we should), nor is it an attempt to consume less content (if anything, just different)…but added together it seems like we can take in only what we want for considerably less than we are currently paying. Over the course of a year we should be able to save a LCD TV’s worth of money while not missing much.

So…the reason for the blog is three-fold – first, everyone I know has a blog (my wife has two!) so I feel like I should throw my hat in the ring; secondly, it’s something to do; and finally, I feel like this is something that people might be interested in and might consider, if not for the scary fact that you have to, you know, actually give up cable TV. So we will be the guinea pigs.

I have no idea how this will work, how long the blog will last, or how often there will be anything interesting to post, but for now I will plan to discuss what we used to watch, how we plan to make that up, what we think we will miss, what we actually end up missing, what we hope to gain, and what we actually end up gaining. I’ll discuss our alternative ways for consuming content, and the tekmology we are using to do so. And, I’ll keep a running dollars & cents tally.

Lastly, I want to point out that, contrary to the title of the blog, we are not actually “unplugged,” as we will rely heavily on, of all things, a coaxial cable being plugged in at all times to provide us with our sweet, sweet, dear, irreplaceable, not-going-anywhere internet connection. And, that makes us at least partially still Time Warner’s bitch. Oh well. Also a special shout out to Frank and Aubrey, our next door neighbors, for giving us the final kick in the pants to try out this venture-they are doing the same thing and appear to still be living.

Okay, one more thing, quick update: Goodbye cable box. This is right before I turned it in to Time Warner about an hour ago. This will probably be the first time in my life I don't have cable, at least that I am able to remember. Amber, on the other hand, has played this game before. It's now official.