As of midnight on December 29th, the Hughes family will no longer have television (or in our case, Dish Network). Why?
Well, the plain and simple of it is that we don’t watch television. We don’t watch news (national or local), we don’t watch sitcoms or reality television (thank God), sports or most of the hundreds of channels available. Most of the stuff out there is brain drain.
We watch maybe 3 hours of television per week. That includes Good Eats, Mythbusters, PBS, and some animation. When NASCAR is in season, I’ll watch that but to be honest, I don’t pay attention to anything except the last laps so let’s count that as another hour.
That brings us up to 4 per week or 16 hours per month. Our bill comes to around $50 not including electricity (the television takes a surprising amount as shown here). We end up paying right around $3 per hour of television. I can’t say it’s that good of a bargain.
Hulu.com takes care of about half of those shows – The Simpsons and other animated shows that I enjoy. Good Eats and Mythbusters will probably be the two shows that we miss. Hulu only has small episode clips and not the entire thing. If Hulu got the full shows, I would sign up for a subscription in a heart beat. NASCAR is on the radio and highlights on the web within twenty minutes of the live event. In my opinion it’s better to listen to it anyway. I can do other stuff like write or housework.
What do we hope to get out of this? I’m not sure. It’s not a groundbreaking decision. Lots of people do it but for us, I really don’t see it changing our lifestyle too much. It’s not as if we don’t read enough books. Steph plows through War and Peace before breakfast and I’ve been on a kick of 3 – 5 books a month (that’s fast for me). We’ll still watch our Netflix movies. Maybe I’ll write a bit more or we’ll spend more time together.
In any case, it’s nice to have it done. I just hope I don’t end up like this guy.
Moose and Ink 