AdamGrossman.com

After two weeks of no cable I feel like I've broken any addiction I had to television. So far the results aren't quite what I was expecting. I didn't watch a lot of TV by American standards (over 8 hours per day per household according to Nielsen) but definitely enjoyed my hour or two in the evenings. Since ridding myself of cable here's the inventory of what I watched:

• 4 episodes of Startup Junkies: a Mojo channel series about one of our business partners Earth Class Mail watched at Hulu.com
• 2 episodes of Grey's Anatomy: my guilty pleasure show and one of my wife's favorites watched directly from ABC
• The Notebook on DVD
• Good Night and Good Luck on DVD
• The presidential inauguration on Hulu.com
• Partial episodes of The Office and 30 Rock through the XBOX/Netflix partnership

This is significantly less than I thought I would watch. The big question in my mind is why. Why am I choosing to watch less television? This would imply how long the change might last. 

My first response to question of why—watching TV on the Internet doesn't lend itself as well to watching while eating. There are too many steps to deal with while your food is getting cold so we have eaten more meals at the table. So lets put one mark in the minus column for inconvenience and one in the plus column for the benefit that inconvenience caused.  

Another thought is that I've just embraced the idea of reducing my TV consumption and am playing that one out. I fear that this reason could lead to a resurgence of watching once I get over the hump.

Regardless, here are some of my experiences that I found interesting:

• If you aren't watching full screen, ABC strictly enforces the size of the window with your content in it. Unfortunately, the size of the window isn't large enough to show all the information. For example, the video controls are off the screen so I'm forced to scroll down...silly.
• When watching online the shows are sponsored so you end up watching the same single commercial over and over except for a single commercial from the local affiliate.
• They still pump up the volume for commercials.
• When I was trying to watch the inauguration CNN refused my connection plainly saying that there were too many viewers.
• Streaming HD to my LCD monitor is much better quality than my old tube TV.

I also had my first pang of regret when I heard that the new season of Big Love premiered. I'll get my chance to enjoy it though in a few months when it hits DVD. I hope you enjoy your TV watching and I hope you choose not to watch anytime you aren't.

I've just returned home from a somewhat hectic Florida vacation to a home without cable boxes. I began an experiment as the last thing I did before leaving town by returning the boxes to Time Warner. I realize that in some circles eliminate television from your life is quite fashionable but that isn't what my experiment is about.

During these lean economic times my family and I have reviewed our spending habits and I noticed that my cable habit was costing over $100/month. Admittedly, I was a big spender subscribing to the premium channels and for good reason...those were the channels I watched. I abhor mindless television so my viewing habits tend towards movies and high production quality shows such as Entourage, Weeds, Californication, Big Love, etc. (although my guilty pleasure is Grey's Anatomy).

I time shift nearly everything that I watch, sometimes by half a season or more, so the timing around access to the content doesn't seem important to me. With today's access to media via direct online viewing, podcasts, and services like Netflix my $1500/year was really paying for the services of the programming directors who schedule the shows.

When I spoke about this idea to some friends they were arguing the value of this investment. That this service allows you to just plop down and zone out. At the end of a long day what could be better than doing some mindless channel surfing.

Not my style. I'd rather plop down and watch something I know I will like. Time shifting let's that happen too, just set record and watch only what you like whenever you want. Problem is that you lose access to the newest/best, hence programming director services.

I have a vision of scaling these types of services into a Pandora for video. You'll have a number of channels that play shows you like. Netflix isn't too far away from this. They can already suggest things that you like, they can already stream the media, they already have hardware that sits next to your TV. All they need is to set up the channels and viola!

Of course chasing the streams could amount to a royal pain. I'll let you know how it goes.