Life Without Cable And The Bachelor Without Cheesy Music | Anchors Aweigh

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February 11, 2015

Life Without Cable And The Bachelor Without Cheesy Music

Parker and I took the plunge and decided to get rid of cable back in 2013. We were paying $100 a month and just didn't feel like we watched enough TV to justify that. So we cut the cord. We told the cable company "It's not you, it's us"... but really it's you. We lived without it for about 9 months until it was football season. Then, all bets were off, and we needed our cable.

Parker and I are not avid sports watchers. We don't watch basketball, baseball, soccer, or even the NFL, but college football has our hearts... and our $50 a month for cable. That's right, we took the plunge again. We did manage to cut our bill in half the second time around (we started with DirectTV and ended with Cox for those that are curious), so that was a plus. The great thing about Cox is they didn't make us enter into a contract. We knew we were only going to pay for cable through the end of football season, and we would be back to our streaming, cableless lives in January.  

Thankfully, Rosie the Riveter was there to tell us that we could, in fact, do it. We could live without cable.
Honestly, living without cable is so easy for us. The biggest reason to have cable, in my opinion, is sports. Since we don't really watch sports, it was an easy thing to give up. I will say the one thing I miss is the DVR. Spoiled, first-world child alert: it's nice to be able to fast forward through those commercials. The DVR was nice, but the commercials are really minimized with Hulu anyway, so it's not so bad. While we are on the subject of Hulu, I totally did not understand the point of Hulu plus. Unless you want to binge-watch a show from the first season (Hulu Plus has multiple seasons of a lot of shows), you could watch the recent episodes of all of your favorite shows with regular free Hulu. At least, that's how it was in the good old days. I got on Hulu the day after the first episode of the Bachelor aired to watch it, and it said it wouldn't be available for another week. WHAT? I can't wait that long for the drama! I immediately texted Parker to let him know $8 per month would be coming out of our accounts for the foreseeable future because I had to watch the Bachelor. So, Hulu did something really smart. They took away the redeeming qualities of regular Hulu and reassigned those qualities to the not-so-free Hulu Plus. Well played, Hulu. Well played.

I do have to share a funny story with this. Parker and I have surround sound, but somehow the surround sound was put to a different setting or not working properly or something. I can barely turn the silly thing on, but Parker knows. Anyway, I'll omit the technical details. So we started watching the Bachelor one fine Monday evening (He would like for me to point out that he does not condone this show. I'd like to point out that I think he secretly loves it.). After a couple of minutes of trying to figure out why it seemed like unedited, raw footage, we realized we couldn't hear any background music. We could hear voices loud and clear, the wind blowing, etc, but the cheesy background music that really makes the show was gone. It. was. painful. Parker figured out how to fix the sound after the show was over. Talk about a great person to have around 5 minutes after a crisis. I don't recommend watching The Bachelor without the background music. I just don't. 

This isn't the best example, but check out a clip from the rose ceremony without the suspenseful background music. Not so suspenseful. 



To sum up, life without cable is still life, and I recommend it. However, The Bachelor without the background music is most definitely not The Bachelor we girls are all addicted to. 

Also, if you are thinking about getting rid of cable, apparently Dish just released a new deal where you can get most of your favorite channels (HGTV, ABCFamily, all the basics, etc) for $20 per month. You can then add on all the sports channels for another $5 a month. Dish did not put me up to saying this and has no idea who I am, but we will be taking advantage of this come college football season 2015, so I wanted to pass on the good deal. 

Do you have cable? If you do, do you think life would be the same without it?

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12 comments :

  1. Janelle CookFebruary 11, 2015 at 8:29 AM

    We don't have cable either, and we never miss it... except for sports. I usually find ways to watch football and baseball games online, though. :)

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  2. Jen McFebruary 11, 2015 at 9:10 AM

    I WISH we could dump cable but everyone here is way too attached....

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  3. Bailey KayFebruary 11, 2015 at 11:22 AM

    I am the person in my family who pays the cable bill, and I can't justify spending $100 a month for cable and Internet. If it were just me, there'd be no cable. All I watch live is The Bachelor. I watch NCIS on my computer since it airs when I'm at work, and in my spare time I'm either reading or watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix. But since this is my mom's house, she makes the rules... so cable it is.

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  4. Lisa CFebruary 11, 2015 at 11:51 AM

    Mac and I talk about cutting the cable cord, but we're also displaced sports fans. Honestly, we don't even watch cable that much.

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  5. Chelsea E.February 11, 2015 at 12:15 PM

    There's some new thing from Dish for like $20/month that's just sports channels. I went and googled it. It's called Sling TV. You get ESPN, but I don't know the specifics of it. It might work for next football season? We only have cable for college football as well, but it's cheaper for us to keep it year round than to get just an internet package for the rest of the year. It annoys me to no end and feels like a huge waste of money!

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  6. Lydia @ This Marine WifeFebruary 11, 2015 at 1:03 PM

    We had cable for maybe a year before ditching it. We felt like we were spending so much time watching commercials that it was such a waste of our time. We also were spending way too much money for so many commercials. Not to mention, with children, we didn't want them to turn on the tv and come across something trashy. So, we ditched the cable and got rabbit ears for local channels and Netflix. Those things alone seem to be enough to satisfy our tv "needs" without breaking the bank or feel like we're wasting a ton of time. The nice thing about it is that it caused us to cut back a lot on watching tv, which was a huge plus.

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  7. Kate at Green FashionistaFebruary 11, 2015 at 1:19 PM

    We have been seriously considering cancelling our cable too, but just like you guys we need the sports especially during football season so it hasn't happened yet. Between Netflix and Hulu I do see it being a big possibility in the future though.

    And LOL at The Bachelor without the background music, the music overdramatizes it big time :-P

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  8. SarahFebruary 11, 2015 at 3:45 PM

    We gave up cable for a little over a year, but it was even more expensive going places to watch ALL the basketball games...

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  9. Miranda PridgeonFebruary 11, 2015 at 5:27 PM

    We currently have cable through ATT Uverse. I will have to admit we do watch a lot of TV. Being home with the baby all day gets super boring and I need something to occupy my time. My husband also likes to come home from work and relax with the help of his favorite nerdy shows. I would like to get rid of it though. We have Netflix and not only would be save a ton of money but we would have an excuse to do more things together to fill that time. We are moving in ten days and will be cable free for about a month so maybe that will be the push we need to not renew it!

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  10. StephanieFebruary 12, 2015 at 3:54 PM

    A lot of networks you can't watch the show online now without a cable provider either. It's a real bummer. I can't quite convince Tom to cut the cable cord, but we may have to look into this basic package. Most of the stuff we watch is on those channels anyway.

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  11. SusannahFebruary 12, 2015 at 5:48 PM

    We've never had cable - just hulu plus and netflix and it's worked just fine for us. Since we don't watch sports we're totally happy saving all the money! :-)

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  12. NicoleFebruary 16, 2015 at 8:43 PM

    You are my cable guru. I learn so much from you. Like when I discovered our bill was going to jump up to $100 per month after the first year. Learned that right here on this blog ;) Now I'm going to ask about this $20 month deal. I hate paying all this money for cable. I wish I didn't have such an addicted husband!

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