downsizing is a pain… and who needs tv, anyhow?

A few days ago it struck us that paying nearly $60 a month for something we rarely even use is kind of not-thrifty. And wasteful. And nuts. When one of you thinks the remote is broken and the other of you doesn’t even realize it, and it’s two weeks before it occurs to the first one of you to try changing the batteries and meanwhile the other one of you still hasn’t realized it… well, maybe it’s time to rethink the whole television situation.

We used to watch TV. When we got the Dish, eight or nine years ago, we watched a lot of TV. Well, maybe not a lot, but enough to make paying for it worthwhile. BBC America alone was worth it – all those great BBC shows! Bravo showed cool stuff like Twin Peaks, SciFi showed Dark Shadows, Comedy Central had the British Whose Lines, PBS showed Red Dwarf and Blackadder and Mr. Bean and Ballykissangel… we always had something to watch. And we just had the basic Dish package- nothing fancy. I think back then it was maybe $35 a month. We’d had cable but switched because we got a zillion more channels and way better reception for the same price with Dish.

Over the course of eight or nine years, Dish has climbed up to nearly $60 a month. And there is NOTHING to watch. It’s ALL reality shows. Even BBC America is nothing but reality shows anymore. And if they do accidently throw out a good program, like Clatterford or Kingdom, then it’s gone as soon as I realize it’s on. And the real clincher – everything comes out on DVD now. And it usually comes out fast. At least it comes out fast enough for us – we’ve never been the kinds of people who show up on time for the party. Besides that, most of the stuff we really like is from premium channels like HBO and Showtime and we never got those to begin with- we’ve always had to wait for the DVD.

So. We decide we’re just getting rid of the TV!! Well, not the TV, because we do watch movies and all sorts of stuff from Netflix and we’re currently watching Black Books again, and we just got done watching the first two seasons of Father Ted because our first round with Black Books made us miss Father Ted, and we’ve got the third season of Father Ted on its way and we’ve also got the second season of Dexter at the top of the queue for when it gets released in a few weeks, and then today I made the TREMENDOUSLY exciting discovery that the seventh season of Trailer Park Boys is also coming out in a couple of weeks!!!! So that went to the VERY top of the queue… anyhow, my point is that it’s not like we’re sitting around doing something, oh, productive with all this time that we don’t spend watching actual live TV. We’re keeping Netflix in business is what we’re doing.

So we’d just CANCEL our Dish and give up TV!!! And we’ll rent the DVDs of whatever we want to see when they come out! And we’ll save nearly $60 a month!!! Which Baker B will doubtless immediately use buying up land in Second Life so he can build more stuff there, but that’s beside the point and a whole other story.

Then we realized – LOST!!! We can’t give up Lost!!!!

Yes, the only thing we actually watch is Lost. And it will air between February and May for the next couple of years, barring writer’s strikes and getting cancelled despite a contract to do two more seasons. Oh, and Baker B would like ESPN because he watches that for about fifteen minutes when he gets home from work as he’s eating dinner. (That’s how he’s the one who thought the remote was broken).

So. We can keep paying $60 a month so we can watch Lost the next two springs. If it doesn’t get cancelled and if there are no more writer’s strikes. Or we can cancel the Dish and we can watch Lost online or get it from iTunes, and then watch it again properly when it comes out on DVD. Of course Lost is the one show that takes like a year to get released on DVD.

Or… maybe we can just downsize. I’ve seen ads for cable that give you a bare-bones package for like $10 or $15. All we need is ABC, and maybe ESPN. And quite possibly Dish offers something like that too. So I go check out their websites.

Well, the cheapest thing on the cable company’s website is something like $40 a month. There is a link for basic cable, but no pricing for it. The Dish website’s cheapest listed package is $33 a month. It’s the 100 channel option, which is what we had when we signed up. Now we’re mysteriously on the 200 a month package despite never having switched, and not only that, we’re paying $15 more a month than what they have listed for that package online. So THAT’S annoying.

So I email Dish and ask why we’re paying $15 more than their online price. They email me back and tell me it’s because we’re paying $5 for the receiver and $5 for the local channels. Which are listed as included in the online package. The local channels are – the receiver is not. And the rest apparently is tax. So we’re still getting ripped off $5, not to mention having been bumped up at some point. I’m sure they added packaging and bumped existing customers up and I wasn’t paying attention.

So I call the cable company to see what kind of a deal they have. I call the number listed in our phone book under the local address. It’s not a local number. The salesperson doesn’t know where I am or what they have and has to do a bunch of looking things up. They do in fact have a basic package for $15, but when I give him my address, he says, "I’m showing that you can’t get cable at this address."

"Ummmm… I had cable before we got the Dish," I said. "At this address."

"I’m showing that you can’t get cable at this address," he says.

"But I had cable at this address," I tell him. "With YOUR cable company. At this address. The cable is still sticking out of the wall."

"I’m showing you can’t get cable at this address", he says.

"Oh, FORGET it," I say. "I’ll just go by the cable company’s office at lunch!!"

SO I try to go by at lunch and they are not at the same spot where they used to be. Eight or nine years ago. I’m trying again today, having found out where they are now.

Today I call Dish to see if by chance they have a bare-bones deal that’s not online. Despite being very annoyed at them. It would still be a lot easier to just keep the dish.

And they do in fact have a $20 package. Or one with just local programming for $15. Of course I forgot to ask about ESPN. Now I’m going to see what the cable company tells me, if they in fact have an actual real person at their local office who is capable of figuring out what we can in fact get. And can figure out that if we had cable eight or nine years ago, chances are that we can in fact get cable at that address.

I’m ready at this point to just cut us off and do without. Stay tuned for breaking news!