finally came to my senses (catalyzed by my plan to quit my job imminently) and killed off my cable. of course comcast fucked up everything in the process but ~ another post another day
never was a huge realtime tv-watcher and i've been subsisting magnificently with youtube subs/playlists, netflix, online streams of dubious provenance, chromecast / web-connected tv, TVmobili DLNA local media streaming (transitioning to Plex soon) / torrents & a 5' HDMI cable as last resort.
below are my most profitable subs / sources, but would love to get suggestions from the hubskiverse or whatever yall call this. [infrequent commenter , sporadic lurker here but no other community i'd rly bother asking]
Youtube subs:
PBS Newshour- absolute best / only respectable US-based televised newsource, but nods to Bloomberg & Al Jazeera English. Newshour has the added benefit of being public media, they upload individual segments promptly either after or simultaneous with actual broadcast. I usually build a TV Queue a la carte every few days. Fair Warning: some of the weirdest looking / worst dressed correspondents imaginable.
PBS general channel- gets u the NewsHour webcast extra and occaisionally some good full length-ish documentary pieces but also shitty promo pieces for Downton Abbey etc so , judgement call
the Economist- sleekly produced short-medium newsish segments + bonus super british station ID chirping 'THEE E-CAWNAHMIST' bookending each segment
Big Think- hit or miss (heavy on the 'miss') short pieces on ideas etc, kinda TEDish
TED- not nearly the best way to consume the very low ratio of worthwhile talks, recommend the TED app/site + chromecast but eh
MOTHERBOARD- short tech-related features from VICE, generally actually good
RBMA- Redbull Music Academy. if u can endure the whole corporate cultural cooption thing , the 'lectures' (while not remotely lectures at all) feature a lot of great convos with great interesting musicians, & some duds but: par.
Left/Progressive/Radical economic/policy/news channels:
sites/streams/etc:
Democracy Now- keep a tab of my TV's browser on this page. DN! is what it is, more interested and activist than objective or balanced, often barely competent journalists or conversationalists but it serves a purpose and updates regularly, for free consumption, and regularly features more in depth reporting on less covered issues.
AEON video- short-medium length documentary-ish pieces
r/nflstreams- self-explanatory. NHL also exists but i could never figure out y ;)
also do some playlisting on Vimeo
i have a few live streaming TV sites in pocket but theyre so inconsistent i usually just google "CNN USA live stream" every Sunday morning and have no problem tuning in in time for my ritualistic viewing of Fareed Zakaria GPS, imo the last surviving worthwhile cable news show -- possibly also the first.
lastly i use BeyondPod for android to manage podcast/vodcast subs + playlists, with chromecast compatability. Dont use this that much but the NOVA Vodcast, UNCEF television vodcast, and NYT World News (video) are decent subs.
ok, U GO
(edited for format)
Very happy to say my TV broke one day in 2010 and we never bothered to get a new one. Cut cable and went 50/50 on my neighbor's Wi-Fi costing us $25/mo. Never missed TV, at all, ever. Never missed FOX, never missed NBC, never missed any of that crap. If I need TV, I use Netflix and trade my subscription to that with my friend's Hulu+ subscription (which is useless anyway)--I get both for the price of one. If I need new movies, I use the glorious world of torrents and online streams. With so many incredible Netflix originals coming out as well.. cable's dead, man.
edit: To be fair, we did end up getting a very nice new TV very recently from a wealthy friend moving house.. Plugged in a one-time-purchase $35 Chromecast and might I say it is dopealicious. All my Netflix and YouTube on a huge TV and still no FOX. Without cable, you save time out of your day, out of your life, and exponentially increase the average quality of content shoved into your face because you're just a bit more deliberate about going to watch something.
Couldn't agree more. maintaining cable for so long was such a flagrant superfluous garish indulgence, almost solely self-justified for real-time HBO / Game of Thrones etc access. Otherwise, occasional sports, live news, On Demand & channel-flipping just rly weren't worth it. So when u youtube, do you do any channel subscription / playlisting or just hunt & peck each time?
Is it bad that I want to hear more about your imminent job quitting? I've never been a cable person but currently pay half of a whopping $150 direct TV bill due to a roommate who love sports AND hbo. It's nice to click thru channels again. Just not that nice. I should start sending him posts like this as not so subtle hints.
haha, maybe i'll delve into my year-in-planning jobicide mission in another post, its probably deeper still than even my cord-cutting strategy. but yea i should say, there is definitely NOT 0 costs to convenience & (picture) quality etc in making the leap to cableless tv. Trawling for a stable quality stream, tiptoeing thru phishing/malware minefields, contending with jittery chromecasts, buffering or even HDMI connections is a qualitatively much different experience than flipping on the game. Demands a bit more of a hackerish/open-source/diy spirit than most traditional tv consumption. Well worth the effort/savings to me, and i've had pretty relative ease satisfying what mild traditional tv appetite i had, but ymmv. there is definitely something to be said for the serendipity of stumbling on programming that you might not know you wanted in the traditional tv model -- that is largely lost in the on-demand nature of Netflix etc. Which is sort of what im trying to approximate thru youtube channel subscriptions etc which then collect into a feed i can browse thru similar to channel-surfing. edit: alternatively you can 'flip thru' your saved channels one by one if looking for specific types of content. I'll follow up with some of the more idiosyncratic channels i sub, such as Open Courseware / MOOCs and weird J-Vloggers etc., that i thought would have less general interest.