An Internet Minute

[OKNewshawk]

I noticed that as well. I’m wondering if there is a dramatic shift occurring away from cable / satellite TV.

I'm 65 and cut the cable over a year ago, relying exclusively on DirecTV Now, an internet streaming service. I get over 60 channels, including Tulsa broadcast channels 2, 6, 8, and 23. The cost? $40 a month. I'm feeding this with AT&T's very high bit rate DSL--I get 50 Mbs for $40 (for the first year.) I pay an extra $30 to eliminate the 1 TB cap. When I compared the charges for overages ($30 gets 150 GB) versus paying the same for no cap whatsoever, the choice became clear.

 

[SoonerP226]

That’s pretty interesting. It’s still a little bit weird to me; this whole internet thing I mean. I mean, I almost exclusively use the internet for many of my needs. I mostly shop online now, unless it’s an item I need to see in person in order to decide on something I want to buy, like a sofa, fresh fish, or a jacket I need to try on. For the first 2/3 of my life, I used brick and mortar stores, the yellow pages, photo printing at the local drug drugstore, travel agents, and the card catalog. Now I rely on Google, Amazon, and OSA. And all from the comfort of my home.

My first experience with the Internet was when I started at OU in '88, so I guess I'm almost the opposite; I've relied on the Internet for one thing or another for just about 30 years.

I feel like that Terrell guy on TV... "I've been doing this 30 years....I used to be 30..."

 

[n423]

We ordered Christmas gifts again this year from Amazon. Don't miss shopping at stores. We do frequent very few brick and mortar.

 

[OKCHunter]

I'm 65 and cut the cable over a year ago, relying exclusively on DirecTV Now, an internet streaming service. I get over 60 channels, including Tulsa broadcast channels 2, 6, 8, and 23. The cost? $40 a month. I'm feeding this with AT&T's very high bit rate DSL--I get 50 Mbs for $40 (for the first year.) I pay an extra $30 to eliminate the 1 TB cap. When I compared the charges for overages ($30 gets 150 GB) versus paying the same for no cap whatsoever, the choice became clear.

I’m considering the same thing. Your pricing is less than 1/2 what I pay now for DirecTV. And, I’m paying for dozens of channels I’ll never watch such as shopping channels, infomercial channels, and Spanish speaking channels.

 

[TerryMiller]

The wife and I have been hitting the mall every day for a while. (We walk between 3 1/2 to 4 miles there, depending on whose phone app we go by. Walking by all those store windows made me realize that I didn't see a dang thing there that I needed.

Wife's an Amazon Prime member, so we order a lot from there.

 

[SoonerP226]

I noticed that as well. I’m wondering if there is a dramatic shift occurring away from cable / satellite TV.

From what I'm hearing, dramatic, no, but shift, yes.

I'm not sure how much of that "dramatic, no" is because of the cabletown retention schemes. I listen to a podcast that covers this subject, and they used to have a "chicken challenge," where you'd call to cancel your cable/satellite subscription to see what kind of a deal you could get. For a long time, people were reporting that they were actually getting better Internet service rates if they'd take the basic cable TV package than if they just got the Internet service by itself...

As for myself, I quit DirecTV several years ago when I realized that it was May and I hadn't even turned on my receiver since March Madness. The gal I talked to when I canceled was completely nonplussed when I told her I was replacing the satellite with broadcast TV; she couldn't figure out what it was.

Saved me $170/month, and I don't miss it a bit.

 

[OKNewshawk]

I’m considering the same thing. Your pricing is less than 1/2 what I pay now for DirecTV. And, I’m paying for dozens of channels I’ll never watch such as shopping channels, infomercial channels, and Spanish speaking channels.

I have the "Live A Little" package. As I said, over 60 channels, but no shopping channels or public interest (PI) channels--those are mainly the religious channels There are two Spanish channels--Galavision and Univision-- but you can set up a favorite channels list to excluse those channels. My favorite feature of DirecTV now is that the user interface resembles the DirecTV satellite box interface. You can scroll through channels or scroll the guide. The only difference is there are no channel numbers. The channels are listed alphabetically. This only really impacts local channels, because they are listed by their network, not by their channel assignments. For example, in Tulsa, KTUL is listed as ABC, not as KTUL or Channel 8. As little as I watch broadcast TV any more, it doesn't bother me and I have an off-air antenna if I want to tune to broadcast channels by their numbers.

BTW, I just checked the DirecTV Now local channel lookup page for Edmond, OK. In the OKC market, DirecTV Now only carries KOCO, KWTV, and KOKH. I guess the NBC affiliate hasn't reached an agreement with DirecTV Now.

 

[SoonerP226]

I’m considering the same thing. Your pricing is less than 1/2 what I pay now for DirecTV. And, I’m paying for dozens of channels I’ll never watch such as shopping channels, infomercial channels, and Spanish speaking channels.

That was the main reason I quit: I only wanted RFDTV and the regional sports channels so I could watch OU athletics. The rest of them were broadcasting not just crap that I didn't want to watch, but crap with which I frequently disagreed and did not want to support with my hard-earned dollars. The only way to get the very few channels I wanted was to get the package with every damn thing in it, so I decided that the juice simply wasn't worth the squeeze, and I fired them. (This was right around the time that AT$T bought them, which made firing them that much easier.)

 

[Fredkrueger100]

Surprised it didn’t have a porn hub tab.

 

[Perplexed]

Surprised it didn’t have a porn hub tab.

Its slice of the pie would be so big, the others would be so scrunched together as to be rather hard to discern.