
I don't think I am alone in
admitting that my attachment to my cable box is increasingly irrational. If I do the raw math, I am spending so little time now with live TV that I should be looking for ways to fill in with Web-based
programming whatever I might lose if I cut the cord. I am pretty much down to news and Letterman. Otherwise it is DVDs, Netflix through one of the game or streaming media boxes and Apple TV rentals.
Alas the browsers on the game boxes are just awful, so I couldn't rely on them to access the CNN feed of news clips and feeds. Otherwise, I am not watching much of anything I couldn't wait to see on a
podcast or next-day stream on Hulu Plus or Apple TV.
According to research from Wedbush Securities, more people are approaching my tipping
point as well. In a piece this weekend at NY Post, Claire Atkinson interviewed Wedbush analyst James Dix, who says that in a survey of 2,500 consumers, 7% claimed to have canceled even basic cable
service. Another 12% say they had cut premium services. At the same time, only 2% had canceled their Internet service.
Dix found that the fault lines for cord cutting may cut across age
and conform more to income. Only 3% of households with $100,000 of annual income were canceling basic cable compared to 8% of households with income under $50,000. The big threat to cable is coming
up, if the survey is any indication. More than a fifth of respondents in the lower income brackets said they intended on canceling basic cable in the next year.
Well, maybe. I think it is an
emotional thing on top of everything else. I am among those old enough to recall pre-cable days: three networks, three local stations, public TV, and a batch of UHF oddities in the New York market.
For this mediaholic kid the cable box was magic time. Twenty stations? Are you kidding me? I could stay up all night watching the adorable Martha Quinn and her unctuous prattle between videos on MTV.
We were in a new world and we knew it. Watching Conan the Barbarian on HBO so many times (the rotations were pretty tight then) I memorized half of Arnold's grunts.
I know I should be ready.
My head tells me I am ready...to cut the cord. But there is a lot of history to that ridiculously overpriced, poorly serviced cable box. Just give me a minute.