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As I reported on my home blog recently, we canceled our cable TV subscription a few weeks ago. For years the only thing I watched was Turner Classic Movies; pretty much everything else was, in my opinion, complete garbage. In addition, the kids were starting to just sit at the TV and watch shows indiscriminately, instead of doing something more constructive such as reading or playing games.

The economics of the entertainment industry are interesting. I find it offensive that cable TV companies try to charge us four times for the same pipe – for basic cable, digital cable, internet service and phone service. Not to mention Pay-Per-View movies and movie channels. Many of us have gradually become accustomed to paying for “services” that we didn’t have twenty years ago – mobile phone service, mobile data, cable, movie channels, etc. If you add up what you’re paying for these services you might be shocked.

I believe it’s ludicrous to pay for movie channels on cable when you can watch a vast array of old movies online and current releases on DVD for $15 a month on Netflix, or pay $1 to rent a DVD from RedBox. Why on earth do the cable TV companies think that consumers will willingly pay $5 for an inferior viewing of a movie on Pay-Per-View ? Even Apple is getting in on the game with their online movie rentals that are exorbitantly priced. Not content with gouging the consumer in that regard, their latest entrepreneurial venture is the peddling of online TV program rentals. Talk about the scraping the bottom of the barrel… Who in their right minds would want to pay to rent an episode of a typical American television program ? Perhaps there is an audience for it, but I am glad not be be among that great unwashed.

All of us enjoy having our family movie nights, where we watch movies on our big screen (120 inches), munching on popcorn, pie and ice-cream, and (for the grown-ups) sharing a bottle of wine, but for the last few years these films have been either on DVDs or, more recently, movies viewed over the internet. We haven’t watched a Pay-Per-View or Free-to-Air movie in years. The development of services such as Netflix’s on-demand streaming, Hulu, and Roku means that there are now viable alternatives to cable, through which the kids can continue to watch their favourite shows, but now as the result of a conscious decision rather than being interspersed among an avalanche of junk such as cheap cartoons and reality shows.

Jenn and I, meanwhile, plan to spend a lot more time reading and writing. I have a large library of unread books by now; it’s about time I started working through it. I plan on reading at least a book a week - and I hope to be able to read many more than that, depending on the pressures of work. I have decided to keep track of the books that I read, and to comment on them here. It will be an interesting journey. Stay tuned !