The Game Is Over; Let's Call It a Day

Let's get this just as straight as we can, no bullshit: I'm tired of trying to outfox cable/internet companies.

It's been a silly game without a winner for too long already and I don't want to play anymore. This morning, after receiving an email from YouTube TV that it was eliminating a bunch of networks from its access (including all the ESPN networks), I simply logged on to YouTube TV, went to "cancel my subscription" and settled into something else.

It has been quite game of stud poker for a good while, so long that I don't recall its genesis. I do go easily back to two satellite disk companies, then to Cox, then to something else, then back to Cox, then to GloFibre (for three weeks), then to YouTube TV for 10 days, and now to Cox internet (but not TV, which is separate and too damn expensive).

All the while, I was negotiating when I got these rate increases. For a good bit of time, this was a fun challenge, seeing what I could get back from my leverage of going elsewhere. These companies spend a lot of money attracting customers. Losing them--which has been happening in flood-like circumstances the past couple of years--is a terrible business model. So, they'll capitulate if all it means is dropping the rate increase.

This all requires a change of mindset. We have to answer some basic questions, one of which is "How important is television to me?" and "How important are live sports events to me?" and "Can I get along without live cable news shows?" And that's the crux of it for me. I have basically lost interest in sports because I am almost never entertained by the games I have watched for so many years. I don't need cable news or TV news at all (including and maybe especially local news). I love to stream movies and TV series and I get to keep that with subscriptions to Amazon, Netflix, etc. There's plenty to see and a lot of those series are as good as a book.

So here I am, TV diminished and looking forward to finding out what I'd do without all that excess.