We didn't have TV until we moved to Tucson. In SLO, I think we got a fuzzy NBC; and in one apartment, we got PBS, but that's it. Then, we graduated and Tyler got a real job and we ordered cable. A luxury such as that I had not known in a long time. At first, I spent hours watching What Not To Wear and Trauma, Life in the ER. I watched a few episodes of various baby and birthing shows, but the ones where the babies/mothers had negative outcomes made me upset, so Tyler banned them from our house. After a few months, we realized that cable TV is expensive. Very expensive. And our TV watching sort of petered out anyway. When we moved to Sahuarita, we got basic cable. I looked it up, and it was $21.95 a month for 20 channels.
Me: I'd like basic cable.
Cox guy: OK, that will be $50 a month for 80 channels.
Me: No, I'd like BASIC cable.
CG: (incredulous) Like... the one where you only get 20 channels....? (Like no one in their right mind would do something like that. Only 20 channels? A person will go crazy with so few options).
So, that's what we had. Then, that $21.95 a month started feeling like a lot. Especially after we added our car payment and extra insurance.
This is what Tyler is doing outside as I type. With the antenna, we get NBC, CBS, FOX, 5 different PBS stations (one of which is in Spanish and a kids PBS, which is brilliant), various Telemundo stations, and the Tucson channel. Which is almost as many as we were getting with basic cable.Antenna: $100
Mount, grounding wire, and various odds and ends: $20
New drill bit to drill into our bedroom closet: $10
Ladder rental: $20
Sticking it to the man: Priceless.
Also, I asked Tyler if he felt handy, completing his first major home improvement project on his first house. He was up on the ladder when I asked and he answered, "Not right now. I actually kind of feel like I'm going to die."
5 comments:
Awesome. We did the same in Tucson. I think we got more Spanish channels than English ones, and there was one of the networks that didn't come through - NBC, maybe? It looks like you got yours set up a bit better.
Haha, this is the exact same story as ours except we tried not one, not two, but THREE antennas before we found one that would let us have both NBC and Fox. I'm glad Tyler is still alive.
we just use regular old rabbit ears. sometimes things don't come in perfectly clear, but i'm okay with that. we mostly only watch PBS anyway. besides, most of what's on TV is not worth watching anyway... why pay for it?
This is what we do at our house and I love it. When we sat down and talked about TV we realized that we didn't really even watch all the channels we had. We cancelled and went to basic TV too. It has been fabulous ever since. Especially because Matt hooked our computer up to the TV and we can "Tivo" the basic channels on our computer. So we still don't have to watch commercials. It is classic and cheap!
I thought antennas didn't work anymore and you needed that box thingy.
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