www.BreakingOut.NET » Take Control of Your TV!

Written by kevin

The other day I did something radical.

I disconnected my TV from the wall socket. The cable TV wall socket that is.

I’ve been kind of “anti-TV” for some time. I never watch much of it. Mostly I just use my TV screen to watch stuff I’ve downloaded from the net.

I don’t have DVDs anymore either, I got rid of my DVD player and gave away or dumped all my DVDs at the end of last year.

But now I took the final step: I got rid of channel TV completely.

It was the experience of being at a friend’s place last week that finally sealed the decision for me. The TV set was switched on to some commercial channel via satellite and it was seeing the endless stream of rubbish that they send out that shocked me.

Brain-numbing TV commercials, police/detective dramas, “action films”, real estate shows, veterinary/pet programs (for the owners, not the pets), plus all the other “reality” drivel and endless “talk shows” with some prat or several prats all sitting at a table with an audience of egg-heads looking on behind them (Netherlands TV in particular seems to love this format).

I also hate all the “news” they broadcast. I have no need to watch some twit in a suit and tie sitting there telling me his version of what he thinks, or rather his TV corporation thinks is the “news” of the day.

News by the way that is mostly just a stream of negativity. It’s something that we can do without. All the analysis of financial, economic, political etc events all over the world is just overkill for most people, and not even relevant to their own real lives. It also creates a distorted vision of countries, regions and peoples.

The quality of TV is better in Europe with stronger public television than in North America, but even here, the standard leaves much to be desired. All this stuff is basically just brain-wash for the nine-to-five way of life. Living your life through your TV set. I don’t need it and I don’t want it.

Ideally I’d like to cancel my cable TV service altogether and just have the Internet broadband. But I can’t do this as it’s delivered as part of my Internet package. I’ve already switched over to the cheapest tariff on offer. I don’t have a telecom land line phone connection anymore, so the only way I can get Internet is via the cable TV company.

I also think channel TV is a thing of the past. It’s “push” media delivery rather than “pull”. But the world is changing. People, younger people at least, are no longer prepared to just tolerate and soak up whatever the old TV channel corporations see fit to pump into our homes. They prefer to go out and select what they want to watch, and not just accept what a “channel” sends them.

I know it’s possible to say to yourself: only watch TV when you really want to watch something. But in practice it’s not always so easy.

The TV remote is the gadget that makes it harder. It’s too simple to just veg out on the sofa and flick through the channels. You can easily get waylaid by programs that you come across and end up spending more time in front of the box that you originally intended. Only the most strong-willed amongst us can resist this. I have to admit I don’t always find it that easy.

But it occurred to me: I don’t actually need to keep the TV set connected to the cable TV outlet. I can disconnect the cable and remove it. TV comes via cable where I live (apart from if you have satellite, which I don’t) – there’s no antenna transmitted TV anymore. So disconnecting it couldn’t be easier.

So that’s what I did. No more channel TV anymore. From now on my TV screen is only used for watching specifically what I want to watch that I have downloaded – and when I want to watch it. As of now I’m an official “cable-cutter”!

I’ve now gone a full week without any channel TV. I’ll see how it goes. So far I’m confident that I’ll be fine with it. And I keep up with the news via the net in any case, so no problem there.

So the next thing to reconsider is the sofa. Now I’ve effectively got rid of TV channel surfing, there’s less need for the sofa. I’m thinking about getting rid of that next…

Have you tried cable-cutting and living without channel TV? If so, how do you find it?

If you haven’t, then not give it a try?

I think you might like it!