Cutting The Cord | This Nuclear Family

Watching some DVDs, such as this one, since we cut the cord.

As mentioned in previous posts (here and here), we removed all pay tv service from our house, with the exception of Amazon Prime video streaming (which we get for free with our Amazon Prime membership which I need for work anyway). The short and sweet version is that the girls don’t even miss it.

In the mornings when they typically would watch Sprout, PBS, or one of the five different Disney channels they now watch videos on PBSKids.org and stream them through the Apple TV. Now, this would be (and really is) fine, but I find the content on that website to be lacking. They only have short (10-12 min) segments for many of the programs, including the girls’ favorite Peg+Cat. That is ok because that show does come in smaller segments on the ol’ broadcast. Some shows, however, have only 2-3 minute vignettes that I’ve seen over and over. The one about Clifford teaching his friends to spin on the ice is particularly burned into my brain—we get it purple-colored poodle dog, you don’t want to look silly in front of your friends, but they’re not your friends because of your ice-spinning abilities.

When they watch any other tv they now usually turn to the DVD collection. In a move that warms the cockles of my heart, they have re-discovered their love of DuckTales. They have watched a couple of episodes over the past two days, and given that they are a bit older, seem to have a better understanding of the plot lines than 1.5 years ago when they were on a previous Ducktales kick. By the way, for a good review of Ducktales see this article.

For the missus and I, we haven’t missed TV that much either. I’ve started to watch some old TV on the Amazon Prime streaming, and I might finally finish watching Twin Peaks. Katie did mention that the other day when everyone was napping she felt like watching a show (not a particular show just some show), a feeling we can all understand, but other than that she didn’t miss the TV.

At this juncture, it’s looking like a great move.

Not to our house anymore

Well, tonight at midnight Directv will be shut off. It’s not because of bad service (we have no complaints there), or because of a lack of entertainment options (in fact we had too many). It all started about 6 months ago when Katie was reading The Hurried Child. The book discusses the implications of exposing young children to too much media, ideas that really hit home for her. I on the other hand took some convincing.

My first reaction was to suggest waiting for the football season to end, which it did for my teams before the start of the new year. I must also say that this was not the first time I had heard that getting rid of pay tv might be a good idea. One particular place I can think of is Mr. Money Moustache, a blog that I accidentally stumbled upon that preaches a spartan lifestyle so that one doesn’t have to work like a dog for things that aren’t fulfilling.

Despite all that I wasn’t convinced. I think the tipping point was when I realized that after taxes, my 3.5% raise barely covered the monthly subscription. Ouch, I used to think such a raise would be something to celebrate; that news just made me sad. Another important realization is that we didn’t watch TV as much as I thought. In October we donated the TV in our bedroom to a charity sale, and in process found out that we didn’t miss it. Let’s take a moment to remember that TV.

Yes, no more of this

Yes, I bought that Sony Trinitron with the tip money from my first year working for the Detroit Tigers.

Does this mean you are anti-TV?

Now let’s get this straight, I am not the second coming of Ned Ludd: we do have many other entertainment options in our house. Through the Apple TV we can watch PBS (though apparently the kids shows aren’t available there) as well as stream content from our iPads to the Apple TV. For instance I can play a show on the PBS Kids online site on the TV so that the childrens [sic] are none the wiser that their episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood where Daniel is whiny (trust me its all of them) is not on broadcast TV. Also, through our Amazon Prime membership we get free streaming that we can send from the iPad to the AppleTV. That way the kids can watch old episodes of Garfield and Friends (now that’s television).

When we told the girls about the change, they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. This is probably due to (at least) two circumstances:

They are young enough not to be worried about it.
We assured them that at least 80% of what they watch now will still be available.

I think if we had waited two years this could be much more difficult.

You may be asking, what’s the benefit to the girls if they still watch 80% of the TV they used to. Good question. Look at the way I phrased it. Of the programs they currently watch, 80% will be available. That doesn’t mean that it will be as easy from them (or for me) to access the content. For now they will still need a parent to drive the iPad/Apple TV combo. It is also much less likely that we can just leave the TV on and have them graze on TV during a weekend morning. This almost never happens 🙂

We will be updating the progress of this experiment in the coming days.