• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, July 10, 2019

What’s the right way to cut the cord?

The issue is not whether you can easily cut the cord or not.  The challenge lies in what you’re replacing your cords with.

According to Nielsen, there are 16 million+ homes that have already cut the cord.  That’s an increase of 48% over the last eight years.  

The average cost of cable TV is over $100 per month — so cutting it seems on the surface like an immediate savings, but you then have to look at replacement value.  

In sports like baseball, they look at WAR, or “wins above replacement,” which defines the value of a specific player over his replacement in the lineup.  

In cord-cutting, think through the cost and time allocation required for managing the replacement services you put in place to watch TV.  A good sampling would revolve around either YouTube TV or Hulu Plus, with additional services like HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, DC Universe (for the nerds) and the impending Disney subscription service.  To access all of these, you also need to buy a device like Apple TV.  Amortized monthly for the device, plus the monthly charges for these premium services, your monthly total would be about $128 per month.  

Cutting the cord is a great idea, but it doesn’t necessarily total a cost savings.  It’s a lifestyle decision.  Rather than paying a single company for access to these services, you are willing to take on the burden of managing all of these subscriptions on your own.  

You may save money if you are flighting these services only to when you want to watch them.  You certainly don’t need them all each month, but most consumers will agree that once they sign up for a subscription, they rarely cancel for lack of use.  Subscription companies count on this.  

I am not trying to convince you to pay for cable TV.  I myself am considering cutting the cord, especially since I rarely get the chance to sit down and watch much TV.  I just think it’s good to go into these things with an open mind.  

If you only want one or two of these services, the decision makes financial sense.  I can see having Hulu Plus (for live sports) plus Amazon Prime and Netflix as the core of my entertainment experience.  I can see layering on HBO from time to time.  The impending Disney subscription service is likely a must since they have all the franchises I like the most and all of these are likely to disappear from the other services when they go live. With this package, my monthly cost could total closer to $85-90.  

I think the final decision comes down to looking at what you pay for when you pay for cable TV.   

I did a little channel surfing over the weekend and realized that cable TV is filled with junk.  At any given time, you can find only 10-12 stations of content worth watching, and each of these stations are filled with commercials that constantly interrupt the experience.  So is the convenience really worth it?

The on-demand nature of streaming is probably what puts it over the edge.  Cable has these options as well, but far too much of its on-demand content requires additional fees, where you have to pay extra for some episodes of shows you can already access on a different platform.  Even the TV manufacturers know this is an issue because they are now baking the apps for these streaming services directly into the TV.  If ever there was a sign of the end, this would be it.

I can pretty much guarantee we will be cutting the cord after this exercise.  It simply doesn’t feel necessary anymore.  What about you?