Are You Ready to Turn Your Back on Cable TV?

Last night, the conventional TV screens in my house were all in use, and I really wanted to watch the episode of HBO’s The Newsroom that I had taped on Sunday night. Rather than wait any longer, I grabbed my Kindle Fire, called up HBO Go, and found that the episode already was available. I spent the next hour at the kitchen table, watching Jeff Daniels and crew negotiate their usual land mines of news, politics, love and life.

I’m really starting to debate with myself whether we have to stay wired into cable TV. The bill has crept up significantly over the past decade, and the truth is that we never spend time with most of the cable channels. I’d be satisfied, I think, if I could take the local channels through conventional broadcast and grab other programming through a combination of Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu or some similar service.

What’s stopping me? Inertia, at the moment. The combination of cable and a DVR makes it so easy to record programming and watch it later; I’d have to do some research and reconfiguration to enjoy the same ease of recording I have now.

Sooner or later, though, my household and, I think, millions of others will cut the cord. USA Today offers a comprehensive guide to do so here, if you’re interested. When it happens in large numbers, the economics of TV will be rattled just as radically as the economics of newspapering have been.

What about you? Are you ready to cut the cable cord? If so, how soon do you think you’ll do it?