Cancelled Satellite TV Today
That’s right, we did it. Actually my wife did it. We decided that our family had become too addicted to our television, so we decided to cancel our service with Dish Network. With vacations, long summer evenings, and plenty of activities to keep us busy, watching re-runs of the same old shows just doesn’t make sense. I’d much rather spend time with my family in activities that engage our brains. We’re going to give this a test run for the summer and see how it goes. My two daughters aren’t quite sure what they are going to do without Dora the Explorer and Hannah Montana. We haven’ completely given up television. I installed an HDTV antenna this past weekend which gives us access to 4-5 channels of network programming. We get the local affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox, and the CW (whatever that is). This should satisfy our television needs without letting us succumb to watching some of the drivel that is put on some of the channels we received.
To tell you the truth, I’m going to miss several shows myself. In fact, here’s a list of the top 5 things I’ll miss about not having satellite TV.
- ESPN — Summer baseball. I love having a baseball game on in the background around the house. I’ll have turn on the radio to the St. Louis Cardinals broadcasts that we get locally.
- TLC/Discovery — I definitely like shows such as Deadliest Catch, The Alaska Experiment, Man vs. Wild, and Survivorman.
- HGTV — Ok, my wife watches HGTV more than I do, but I do enjoy the occasional home improvement show.
- A&E — Flip this House. I know it sounds goofy, but I love watching this show. Ever since we remodeled a home in 2004, I’ve been interested in home remodel shows.
- CNBC — I’ve starting getting interest in The Big Idea, a daily show hosted by Donny Deutsch. It’s all about entrepreneurs and how they started their businesses.
Technically, we didn’t cancel our service. We put it in “vacation” mode. This basically means we pay them $10 a month to not have service. At first that sounded crazy, but if we decide to re-establish our service, we can do so with a 5 minute phone call instead of jumping through the hoops of signing a new contract.
I’m actually looking forward to reading more, spending more time outside, and generally relaxing. I forget how hard it is to relax with too many distractions. I’m trying to learn that simple is better.
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