Who Stepped on the Cord?

To co-ax or not to co-ax, that is the question. Whether it is nobler to bundle or add the DVR option...

Okay, at the risk of further perverting the timeless works of Shakespeare, one question begs to be asked. How can so much entertainment and so much BS come through the same piece of copper wire at the same time?

Back in the day, whenever my company's server locked up and everyone's screen would freeze, my coworker would stand up to overlook the ocean of cubicles and ask the drones, "All right, who stepped on the cord?". How dependent we had become on 1's and 0's scooting along that skinny piece of copper, even then. Not much has changed since, except that now it's at home, too.

Until recently, I'd had the same cable TV provider since 1987. And aside from their founder being thrown in jail in 2005, I was reasonably satisfied with the service. In 2001, I bought into the hype of their cable internet service named after a Looney Tunes character, and was pleased with the improvement compared to legendary dial-up. Who's old enough to remember Trumpet Winsock?

Anyway, fast forward to 2007. After getting a generous helping of ads touting fiber optic internet, phone and TV, I elected to make the switch to the provider who rhymes with horizon. There was only one problem. While I could get internet and phone over the fiber optic service, I couldn't get the TV service just yet, but it was coming soon. So they installed the interface for all three media in my basement, and as soon as the TV became available, they would call me and it could be turned on without a tech visit. Fair enough, although it meant I would have to retain the cable company for TV service for the time being.

A year passed and no call came. And another. Then I called. They expected to be able to deliver soon. Then another year passed, and so on. Finally, I had to rattle some chains in the fiber optic provider's sales pipeline to get to the bottom of why TV service was not yet available, despite it being available in most neighboring towns.

It turns out that a few town supervisors ago, my municipality made a back room deal with the legacy cable TV service to be the exclusive provider in the town. In return the cable company paid for new playgrounds at three different sites. Nothing like a good kickback in an election year. So the long and the short of it was, I was never going to get TV over fiber optic. Oh, the equipment was there, but the legal authority for me to use it wasn't. How nice. So I was stuck having to use two different providers at a monthly cost of over $250.

Finally in 2017, I decided that was too rich for my blood, and gave up the fiber optic phone and internet to re-bundle the three services with the legacy cable company. It saved me a decent amount of money to start with, and I got more channels, but within 18 months, the bill had risen by about 40% and was growing by three to four dollars per month. What's worse is that I honestly only watched a small fraction of the channels in the bundle.

Why is it that I can go to a fast food restaurant and order any combination of items I want, but the cable company forces me to subscribe to countless channels I don't need? Because most of those channels would never survive unless you were forced to pay for them, that's why. They don't have a big enough audience to exist on their own...and the cable company wants to offer you a "diverse" lineup. Burger King offers me a diverse lineup too, but I can still just order a cheeseburger and a shake if I want. Diversity, as it pertains to cable television, is overrated...like some college basketball teams I won't name.

Then to add insult to insult, my cable company merged with two others to form a bigger company named after an array of colors. They proceeded to change their feed such that you needed a set top box for every TV, instead of being able to split the signal to all my sets like I used to. How customer friendly of them. They did offer a free year on an additional box, but I still lost cable on my home office TV because I wasn't paying $11 a month for a $30 device that conveniently defaulted to the cable company's private channel every time your turned the set on.

I said ENOUGH. There had to be a more affordable alternative. There was, but it wouldn't come without sacrifices. If I truly wanted to cut the cord on traditional cable television, I would have to be open to having multiple sources, and it would have to be done in stages. Of course, I'd have to keep the bundled cable service until all the pieces were in place. So time was money and the meter was running.

I did some research into digital rooftop antennas for local broadcast channels, which are still important, especially during football season and March Madness. In October, I had a contractor install such an antenna and then plugged the feed into the signal booster I formerly used to split and amplify my cable TV (before that option was so rudely taken away). It worked pretty well, pulling in about 35 channels...many of them fringe channels that weren't on cable systems. Unfortunately, my CBS affiliate pixelated with annoying regularity, and that's my most watched station. However, I have since rectified that by climbing up on the roof and making a small positional adjustment to the stationary antenna. As it turns out, I did it the hard way, but I'm smarter for it now, and I actually got a few more channels for my efforts.

Next was the task of finding an ample TV over internet package that would provide the best value while meeting my needs (or wants, I guess). I did some research and discovered there are a lot of players in this game. Many are in their infancy and are still developing their lineups. I like sports channels, including the Golf Channel, NBCSN, CBSSN, the ESPN's and FS1.

After some comparison shopping, I ultimately chose Hulu Live TV because it gave me the best coverage of the channels I was looking for, at a competitive price. My Roku box supported it and I was able to register over the phone on a Saturday morning. There was a one-time sign up fee of $39, but they were very helpful when I had some trouble configuring the app on my Roku unit. In under an hour, I was in business. What I didn't realize was that the major local broadcast channels were part of the package (albeit running about two minutes behind). So my digital antenna may not have been 100% necessary, but it is a nice backup if the internet connection fails or if I want to see a local broadcast in truly real time. The subscription was $39.95 per month, but there was a scheduled $5 price increase coming the following month. The phone rep was up front about this and asked me to confirm that I still wanted the service. I appreciated that. The cable company would just jack up the price every month without any notice. So I felt it prudent that I should evaluate this service for at least a week while I still had the cable TV bundle to fall back on. It was a keeper.

The final piece of the puzzle was replacing my broadband internet, which had been bundled in with the cable TV. No way I was going to a dish, so the only real alternative was to return to the company who rhymes with "horizon" and their fiber optic internet that I had up until 2017. They had three tiers now, the best of which offered near gigabit speed and a three year price freeze. More bandwidth than I needed, but the price freeze was refreshing after enduring the cable company's monthly increases. Plus there were a few other perks if I elected direct debit payments, including a free year of Amazon Prime Video, which would nicely complement the Netflix account I've had for years. So I signed up for the three year plan. They came out the following Friday, since I was off that day, and installed the internet service, replacing all the equipment that was still in my basement from my previous go-round with fiber. They were finished before noon.

I took a deep breath, gathered up all the artifacts that were property of the cable company...the set top boxes, the router, the AC adapters, the DVR...put it all in a plastic tote and drove straight to the nearest customer service center before I got cold feet. They of course asked why I was leaving, and naturally they tried to entice me to stay, but I was firm in my resolve. Everything was accounted for and they gave me a receipt. The cord was cut.

Of course, this also meant that I no longer had a land phone line. But I rarely used it anyway and it was always ringing off the hook with telemarketers, so no great loss. I did make a minor upgrade to my cell phone service to remove the talk time minutes cap, but that was only $10 per month. Over time, I will have to notify my personal business partners (banks, insurance, doctors, etc.) to use my mobile number instead. Not a biggie.

When I added everything up, I still saved about $60 per month. But as I said, it came with some sacrifices:

• I lost the Madison Square Garden network, which means no more Buffalo Sabres games. But they're currently a working tire fire anyway, so I can live with that.
• I lost the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), including Hockey Night in Canada. Which means no more Don Cherry segments between periods. But my favorite play-by-play announcer (Bob Cole) just retired anyway, so I can live with that.
• I lost the NFL Network, but I don't need to over-analyze all 16 games every week, so can live with that.

I also gained something I never anticipated. Peace and tranquility. I find myself watching less TV, most notably the barrage of talking heads on cable news channels. That translates into less fake news and less stress. In fact, many nights after dinner, I don't even turn the TV on for background noise or waste any time channel surfing. The silence is incredibly comforting, and it helps me focus on whatever I'm doing. And I can live with that.

So it can be done. You can step on the cord and mash it into the ground with your foot. Slice it into 100 pieces of equal lengths if you wish. It just has to be done methodically and with a clear vision of what your expectations are. Don't take anything for granted, and never ASSUME, because you know what happens then. Make a list of what you want and check it twice, otherwise you'll end up like Mrs. McAllister at the airport and discover that Kevin's not there. And no button on your remote will bring him back.