Five Reasons to Dump Expanded Cable Television

About nine months ago our family decided to give up expanded cable television. What started out as a way to reduce our monthly expenses brought about several other positive side effects. Looking back over the last several months we have determined the following five reasons why we would do it again in a heartbeat.

1. We live by our schedule, not T.V. Guide. If you are like us, you’ve probably hurried home from the grocery store on more than one occasion to make it home in time for an 8:00pm program. We started noticing this happening frequently as we skipped other events to be home for football games, season premieres and other time-wasting programming. To get back control of our own schedules, we decided to drop expanded cable programming because Disney Channel and ESPN seemed to be the major culprits in undermining our schedule flexibility.

2. We are exposed to less advertising. Now that the cable channels are gone we are exposed to far less advertising. This is particularly true in certain niches, which market specifically to a certain sex, or a age group. For instance, the Disney Channel constantly markets their own products and my daughter was on a never-ending cycle of wanting one Disney movie on DVD after another. When I watched football games on ESPN I noticed far more commercials for cars and electronic gadgets as advertisers targeted a predominantly male audience. By removing that type of programming from our channel lineup we’ve greatly reduced exposure to those types of ads.

3. Reduced monthly utility costs. As an added bonus we’ve managed to shave our monthly utilities by about $30 a month, or $360 per year. Our previous expanded cable package ran about $46 per month, and now we pay just $12 per month. A couple years ago we were paying nearly $80 for the high-end digital cable package with rented DVRs, etc. I would have a hard time ever justifying that again!

4. Less undesirable programming in our home. While the majority of the expanded cable channels were pretty tame, there were a couple I found downright distasteful. Now I don’t consider myself a prude, but I don’t particularly enjoy overly-sexualized content aimed at young viewers, and I especially don’t want my kids watching that trash. I remember when music channels actually played music. Now their programming is one salacious reality show after another, 24 hours a day.

5. More time for reading and playing outside. Since dropping the expanded cable television service we have noticed our kids are reading more, and so are we. Time we used to spend parked in front of a television we now spend playing games together, or playing outside. Sure, we could have simply turned the television off and done these things, but with the temptation removed it makes it far easier.

Photo courtesy of Mykl Roventine