> Cable reminiscing is often tied to nostalgia for cable's always-on, varied, and unpredictable nature.
When I was young in the 80's, we had cable, and the above was true back then. Around 2010 I think that stopped. Infomercials everywhere late at night. Channels losing their identity by giving in to the then-prevalent reality craze and trying to hold eyeballs by acquiring shows not core to their identity.
When my bill became $200 I took a look at what I really watched on cable - and it wasn't much. A few shows on the Food Network and that was it. Most of my media time since I got broadband internet was YouTube. I never watched much sports or cable TV news, so that wasn't a reason for me to keep it. So I went to Internet only.
It sucks that things are fragmented across services, but it's much better from a cost perspective. It's easy to cancel services, and I don't need a $100 basic or premium package to get individual movie channels, which is how I remember it working. For example, if you wanted STARZ, that would be $10 a month, but you'd need to have the basic+premium services first. Now, if something I want to see is on STARZ, I can join, watch it, and cancel it a month later.
The article references this Reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/Zillennials/comments/1losonr/anyone... which talks about missing the experience of live TV. I do kinda miss that, but it's not worth a $200 cable bill.
chasing0entropy•4mo ago
Within a few years you will find your own collection has more of what you want than any single streaming service. Then Automate your music and video downloads, encode streams to disc, record HDTV. Self host it all. Eventually you will have no need for a streaming service and instead will opt for far more valuable 512gb micro SD cards.
Now, if I could bring back Napster era and make ripping disc media mainstream again.