I am not going to escape this time suck anytime soon, but I
am making a little bit of progress. Last
year in January & February I watched 122 hours of television. This year that number is 83 hours. That represents 40 hours of my life that I
have to repurpose. That repurposing has
been in the form of community involvement.
I have been attending PTO meetings at my daughter’s school, am on the
HOA board in our community and have been more active in the Triathlon Club.
Given that pull back, my family has finally made the
decision to stop getting premium Comcast cable with HBO and instead get HD
television signal from an external whole house antenna. My weekly scoop of programming is now:
CSI: (CBS)
Criminal Minds (CBS)
The Blacklist (NBC)
Intelligence (CBS)
60 Minutes (CBS)
The Following (Fox)
The Americans (FX)
Person of Interest (CBS)
Modern Family (ABC)
Sons of Anarchy (FX)
The League (FX/FXX)
Frontline (PBS)
That is a pretty extensive list, however being seasonal, not
all of them are active at any given time.
I also do a lot of time shifting courtesy of Tivo. In any given week, I will probably still pull
10 hours of screen time with the shows I regularly check in on and Netflix
movies. We have had “Enders Game” in the
house for a week and I have not made time to watch it.
Our plan for the antenna is a professional (albeit part time)
installer we found on CraigsList. I have
had mixed experiences with CraigsList so it is too early to put this in the
win/loss column. However the guy seems knowledgeable,
the price is in the ballpark I expected, and we should be able to wire into our
existing cable networking throughout the house.
I am not sure how many channels we will get, but I expect to
get ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. Fox would be
a bonus and my FX programming will have to be courtesy of Amazon Prime.
We are not cutting the cord and will still have high speed
internet and home security. However the
upfront cost should have us breakeven in 2 months and have us saving $1500
annually in the future. While the
savings will be mixed into the coffers, it could represent a nice vacation,
maid service, a season of skiing, or a new car every 15 years.
Stay tuned for a follow-up post.
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