The Cable Situation

We live in a "no cable service" zone (yes, there are still such places in remote areas). And I just can't bring myself to do the whole satellite thing. For many reasons, which I may explain in more detail later...

So what that means is we do the whole antenna thing. And up until the digital conversion we were able to get 2 channels. Mostly. On good antenna days that was. NBC and PBS. PBS always came in really good. NBC would crash out and get really bad reception sometimes. Mainly on nights there was something good on. And especially on nights of season finales and such. And would totally crash at extremely pivotal moments during the good shows!

Prime example (though this was obviously after the digital conversion, and obviously not a really good show) during the final results show of America's Got Talent, just as they were announcing the winner: "And the winner of America's Got Talent..(drawn out drum roll and unnecessary long pause)..Is..(more silence and pausing for over-effect)..K----------" Luckily there was only one finalist who's name started with a K sound.

That kind of stuff is pretty typical with our reception. Both before and after the digital conversion. It was just worlds worse before the conversion.

So what happened after the conversion (aside from much improved reception)? We got more channels!!! We got 2 additional PBS channels, one of them the Create channel! Truly exciting! It is nice because when the main PBS channel breaks for bigger kid educational programming, one of the other PBS channels is showing cartoons. And we got a weather channel that is broadcast from our local (2 hours away) NBC news affiliates.

Sometimes I really feel like breaking down and getting satellite, like when all my facebook friends are talking about those other network and cable shows that sound really good (Glee, True Blood, Mad Men, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc...) ... I feel like I'm missing out on something. And when we are having bad reception of course... but then I've heard from people with satellite that the reception gets crappy at times, and that wouldn't really alleviate our frustration now would it? It would just make it all the worse because we would actually be paying for bad reception.

The price is another issue. Satellite has gotten quite a bit cheaper. We usually buy at least 2 DVDs a month, which would cover the cost of satellite...but who am I trying to kid? We would still want to buy movies. And there's the set-up and installation fees, equipment rental fees, etc... associated with satellite.

But I think one of the main reasons I resist the urge to take the satellite plunge is: we would spend even more time watching worthless shows. Because we all know, even when you have 100 channels, there's nothing on! We watch TV too much with the measly 5 channels we have. And I'm kind of glad my children don't have access to all those kiddie channels. Because of the commercials. They already want too much. If they were exposed to all those commercials for every toy under the sun, my living room would house more toys than Wal-Mart. I think it already does. But still, they would want want want more more more. Now they have no idea how many toys they are missing out on.