the MARTINI SHAKER

My mind has been racing for the past 24 hours. It all started innocently enough with an email from Robin:

I was listening to a story on The Walt Bodine Show this morning about a woman in KC who has decided to cancel her cable subscription and only use online sources such as Hulu, YouTube and iTunes, along with Amazon.com and Netflix for her TV viewing. We don’t really watch a whole lot of TV these days, let’s face it. Would this be something that we could do?

That’s a question that gets asked a lot these days, it seems. In increasing numbers, people are contemplating ditching their cable provider and turning to online portals for the same programming that they’ve come to enjoy. I’ve thought about it before in passing when reading about people trying it as an experiment, etc. but have never thought seriously about it because I figured it was something Robin wouldn’t be comfortable with. But now, it’s time to think.

I feel like I should start with the elephant in the room, and that’s the notion of rethinking media consumption. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that I’ve spent the better part of my career producing advertising for the very media that I’m considering abandoning. Well, my best answer for that is that there was a reason that I decided 4 years ago to concentrate less on traditional media and more on interactive. I saw the writing on the wall then, and it’s just now gaining some traction. That is why I’m ready, now more than ever, to look at how our society consumes their entertainment.

The first feeling that ran through me was one of fear and trepidation. What’s going to happen when I can’t just flip on the TV and see my 10:30 Family Guy before heading to bed? What if I feel like watching HGTV for 2 hours on a Saturday? The limitless smorgasbord of programming isn’t readily available when you switch to an online-only consumption system. But, the more I thought about it, I realized that by giving up a little bit of convenience, I gain a whole new world of control beyond even that of a DVR. Let’s not forget to mention that we’d be saving almost $100.00 a month.

I also have read about ISPs beginning to institute bandwidth usage caps because of the amount of people abandoning cable and going for the online-only option. While I absolutely hate the idea, it pretty much is going to be the future as more people drop off the grid, much as we’ve done with POTS telephones. Even if AT&T were to begin instituting usage caps in my market, I still don’t think my monthly usage (even with the new bandwidth requirements of all this video) would be enough to start accruing overages.

So, with those concerns out of the way, it came time to figure out the logistics of it all. It’s true that we don’t watch that much TV anymore. We record what few favorite shows we have and pretty much let the whole season pile up before watching it anyway. So, I took inventory of what was important for us to watch:

Network shows – That’s an easy one. We can catch them over the air or can get most of them online if we miss one:

• 30 Rock – on Hulu.
• The Office – on Hulu, but really… I’m kind of over The Office. Same with My Name Is Earl (which is a big reason it got cancelled).
• Saturday Night Live – This one’s tougher. We can’t see whole episodes but at least we can see the sketches that everyone’s talking about on Hulu or nbc.com.
• The Big Bang Theory – Out of luck. cbs.com does not carry full episodes of this show.
• How I Met Your Mother – Looks like cbs.com only keeps a couple of full episodes online at any given time. Gotta stay on top of that one if you miss it.

Cable shows – This one I figured was going to be tough to do, but a little research showed that things weren’t so bad:

• Mad Men – We should be able to keep up with current episodes on iTunes if last season was any indication.
• [adult swim] – I’ve known for a long time that [as] is really good about putting full episodes of shows online. No problem there.
• HGTV - This was a big surprise… there’s lots of full episodes available on hgtv.com.
• Food Network – There are a few full episodes available on foodtv.com, but not a ton.
• DIY Network – Nope. Nothing to see here.
• Discovery Channel – While there are full episodes available, there are none for Mythbusters and Time Warp, which is what I really want. Clips for each show are also available on YouTube.
• Science Channel – All we really watch on here is How It’s Made, and there are abbreviated clips online but that’s it.
• Noggin – Nothing is available online for Nathan to watch, but full seasons of some of his favorite shows are available on iTunes. We already own Oswald and have watched each episode a million times.

OK, so really for the most part just about everything we watch and pay full attention to (HGTV, Food, etc. are usually kind of just background TV) is available online, or of course on DVD through Netflix. There also seems to be a fair amount of programming available on amazon.com, but nothing that we really watch.

So, finally, are we equipped to do this?

• Laptop – check. We’ll just hook it to the A/V receiver using the DVI to Component cable that I have.
• AppleTV – check. We already use it for renting movies and keeping a few TV shows easily accessible for Nathan. We’d just start using it more.
• Netflix – I’d want to re-subscribe in order to fill gaps in the iTunes Store’s offerings. We’d probably just get the 1 disc at a time plan.
• DVD player – check, but I’d use this as an excuse to finally upgrade to Blu-ray since I’d want to maintain as much of the HD experience as possible.
• Broadband – check, but I’d upgrade to at least the 10 Mbps DSL plan to accommodate the additional video bandwidth.
• ATSC antenna – I’d need to get a HD antenna to pull down local network programming over the air.

The last hurdle is getting programming to all the TVs in the house. The living room and basement are covered. The only one that causes a problem is the bedroom TV. I guess all we need in there is a laptop to TV connection because then we can use it as a DVD player or get online programming wirelessly.

After all this long-winded thinking out loud, I want to know what you think. Have you been thinking about doing this? Have you done it? I asked this question on Twitter yesterday and got a few responses on there (and Facebook) from friends who have pulled the plug with great success. I’d like to hear more of the details though. How smooth was your severance? Did you have withdrawals? Were there other difficulties that you encountered? Let’s talk in the comments.