susandennis | A new TV era

My experiment with FuboTV was interesting. It sucks. I think, if you want sports all the time, it's probably ok but for general TV and baseball only, it's a mess.

BUT does that matter to me? Turns out, I don't think so. When I gave up cable, I got YouTube.TV which is ok. Kind of expensive unless you watch a lot of stuff I don't watch. Turns out I was using it for news* and jeopardy. And not much else. jeopardy is getting ready to start airing weeks of their non interesting tournaments which will likely change hosts and I won't be watching anyway.

Local TV news really just sucks. National TV news isn't that much better. I've been watching both for years and years but lately, I've been paying close attention and with one or two exceptions, I've not seen anything I hadn't heard or read elsewhere before on any news show. I'm over watching Rob Marciano Timing It All Out every single night. I have The New York Times and the Seattle Times on an old chromebook that sits on my dining table. I 'news' while I eat. And there's a pretty decent free channel called Haystack.TV which can fill in any gaps.

So yesterday, I put YouTube.TV on suspend. I'll likely just cancel but they offered the suspend options so ok. When Spring Training games start, I'll get Fubo. I have subscriptions to streaming services that cover network programming. So I'm not really missing anything just getting it differently.

Well, actually, I am going to miss House Hunters but I'll get it back with Fubo in Feb.

I remember when we got our first TV. A giant box with a tiny screen. I was 4, so 1953. Programming didn't start until 3 pm (in Kansas City, MO). If you turned it on before 3, you got this:

Pinky Lee and Howdy Doody came on first and I was glued. Today, I'm still glued but now it's to Timothy Oliphant and Justified. ha!

Before any TV today, however, will be Costco. It's pig day. I need bacon and ham. And gas.

Oh, and all the banking caught up correctly this morning. The new pension vendor did, in fact, drop the bucks into the correct account and social security gave me a raise. So whew. I should be set now for a long time. I hope.

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desdemonaspace

A test pattern! I remember those. And a flag waving across the screen, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Also that poem, High Flight. And only four stations.

tommx

I miss the Late Late show. I used to have endless fun staying up on a Friday night watching B horror films and eating junk food.

Yes! They had names like Chiller or Thriller. One of them, the one hosted by Boris Karloff, is on Tubi. Some episodes aren't bad.

I went off cable in 2019. My alternative was Hulu Live or whatever their paid service is called these days. I opted for the version that has ads since the alternative was ads and fewer ads. If I'm paying a premium, I'd rather there be no ads. The advantage of this is that we can add on streaming services and discontinue them more or less at will. We haven't actually done that, so I don't know if we're actually saving any money at this point, but it's worked out for us.

Part of the reason we chose Hulu over Youtube's premium service was that Lisa insisted that we have access to sports so we could watch hockey.

greghousesgf

I switched from cable to streaming and DVDs many years ago and I don't miss cable at all. I especially like not having to go by their schedule, I can just watch something when I want to watch it.

kulturschnepfe

My dad was a classical musician with the town's theater orchestra who also gave private violin lessons as his side job to kids with parents who were better off. We got our first TV around 1970, a used one in black and white, after the parents of one of his pupils decided to buy a colour TV and handed their old one down to us. There was one channel that started around 3 in the afternoon and a second was starting up, showing little test videos for colour TV. I (in my very early teens) watched those religiously, yes, on the black and white TV. I was addicted right from the start :D

These days, I only watch TV on the weekends when I'm working. Too many channels, too much stupid shit, too much chatter, and by now I can't abide the news except on the radio, once or twice a day. I'm in Germany, and we have a public radio station that's almost all talk radio, no silly nonsense, no fear-mongering, just facts, well researched, well prepared. I quite like that.