Cable and streaming services advertise "pay for only the channels you watch". I consider that as b.s. I've had cable, but now subscribed to streaming. I only want and watch about a dozen channels with regular consistency. Soooo, why do I still pay and receive the other 80 channels that I Don't watch or want?

Howdy new member!

You probably shouldn't pay for those unwatched cable channels anymore.
Well over a decade ago we canceled cable and went streaming only. We have an antenna to get local TV but never watch it.
The only broadcast content I consume anymore is radio when driving, and that's usually NPR.

Who advertises pay for only the channels you watch? Certainly not cable and satellite. Streaming as well, you're always going to pay for content you have no interest in, the alternative is... renting or buying just what you want.

On that note, I'm cancelling my 2 remaining streaming subs today (Max and Shudder). Be interesting to see if I survive.

Thanks for giving us a heads up at least. Now when you disappear from this place, we’ll know what happened.

I just did the deed and now I feel a little lost.

We're dropping our streaming services since I'm not a huge tv watcher and my husband is fine watching old movies he's already seen. So far we dropped Netflix a couple months ago and barely miss it. HBO is ending today (after 2 years) and I tried Apple for 3 free months but that's over (loved it, will subscribe for a month next year to catch up on the shows I liked if they get new seasons). We still have Prime. I heard they were going to add commercials to their Prime videos, but if that happens, we're out. We got Starz for 99 cents a month and will keep it until the price goes up.

With the savings to our monthly entertainment budget, I'm going to subscribe to the Made with Lau Cantonese cooking channel. I'm also subscribed to excercise videos at Bodylastics, so it's not that we're ending subscriptions, but we're moving them from streaming services to other activities that seem more worth the money. I loved streaming but it's turned into the new cable, with everything grouping together and prices going up as the services consolidate.

Canada (more specifically, the CRTC) decided we should have a la carte options for cable.

They still required a basic/minimum subscription that had to be no more than $25 a month, which consisted of most big network stations, among other things.

Of course, if you wanted to choose all your additional programming, a l carte, it ends up being more expensive than subscribing to a package, unless you really only chose a few channels.

Quitting entertainment because it's depriving you of valuable mundane "Other Talk" time? C'mon Kurt that's lame.

I don't know why this thread was posted in "Other Talk" It should probably go into TV or Streaming Talk.

I'll be spending all my free time in Book Talk!

As far as thread location, you make a good point! Only Floyd Mills knows why they posted here, and why their two other posts were just quotes of other posts with no reply ...

Oh I think most of us know why (or will once the thread count is big enough to post links and such)

Had him in one.

Last month I subscribed to Max, Disney+, Paramount +,Peacock and Netflix. After about a week I clicked on the button to not renew each of them. If I want to watch a movie I will just rent it on Vudu.

I finally cut the cord 9 or 10 months ago and don’t miss it at all (ok, I do miss some local sports). I picked up all the big streaming services and we still saved over $100 a month from cable.

I did end up cancelling Netflix a couple months ago because it was tired of the mediocre to shit movies they had on it. And all the game shows and cooking shows that creeped their way in just cheapen the brand even more.

The biggest problem I had with streaming is I would need to buy several streaming packages for getting every channel. that I wanted. I can get virtually every channel I want with 1 cable package. But as pointed out, I end up with other channels watch I rarely or never watch.

People don't really want ala carte. They want content dirt cheap. It's only when they balk at the price that they look at all the extra content they don't like and complain.

I cut the cord several years ago and am glad I did. It had gotten way too expensive, and I was only watching a few channels. Why should I pay for Fox News? And ESPN for that matter since I don't watch sports. Even with multiple streaming subscriptions, I'm still paying significantly less than I was with cable.

I like all carte. The problem comes when there’s something I want to watch on every service.

As far as cable channels, the vast, vast majority were completely useless to me. Out of roughly 200 channels, I’d watch 3 or 4 regularly.

We cut the cable cord in 2009, never bought into streaming. I used the money we spent for 65 channels of shit to expand our DVD/BD collection, I'll be damned if I'm going to start shelling out money monthly/weekly/daily for all of the streaming services I would have to subscribe to just to watch new content. We'll just happily watch and enjoy the 1450 DVDs/BDs we own until these content providers regain their senses (if ever).

I haven't had cable television since 2006, don't miss it at all.

I checked out The Green Knight from my library because I couldn't find it on our streaming services. I haven't watched a dvd in years--here's hoping my player still works.

Wouldn't ya know - the most hopping thread around here in months, and it was started by someone who'll probably never return to see it!

I'm still buying physical copies of movies. Streaming is ok but now that everyone is beginning to introduce ads into everything...even paid subscriptions, I'm getting my middle fingers polished for a good exit.

Amazon is going to ads in 2024, btw.

I suppose if advertisements were those that I remember from the 90's and earlier, but now I'm seeing ads that are more political and that I won't tolerate. I don't want politics in advertisements unless I can select WHICH ADS and from WHOM I want to see. Until they have that feature, they can all proudly fuck off to oblivion.

We like to watch live sports, so we do have a subscription to FuboTV which was 1/2 the price we were paying for cable. We have subs to the Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ package, but we're watching those basically every night (Disney and Marvel shows and live sports on ESPN+). For the folks who just buy physical media, you could gets tons of free streaming with a Roku or other streaming device and add the apps like PlutoTV, Tubi, Freevee and many others. You never have to pay for those at all.

And yeah, I think this should probably go into the TV forum.