Goodbye HBO, So Long Showtime

Reason finally prevailed. It was a combination of things that tipped me over the edge and prompted me to dial 1-800-Comcast, but the deed is done. It was a gradual climb. Kind of like the story about how you can boil a frog to death by putting him in cool water and slowly increasing the temperature until… well, you know how that story ends. Comcast just kept having these seemingly insignificant price hikes. A few dollars here, a few dollars there until I was paying (you may want to set down for this) nearly $140 per month! I may not be a math whiz, but even I can figure out that that comes out to almost $1,700 per year! One thousand seven hundred dollars per year. ONE THOUSAND… OK, you get the picture.

To be fair, that is for my internet and cable bill combined. I’m not quite foolish enough to spend that kind of money on TV alone. Dialing back my cable to basic digital (which still includes about 100 channels) I’ve reduced my combined cable and internet bill to about $70.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t seeing the gargantuan bill month after month that caused me to finally wise up. It actually came about in conjunction with a book I was reading called The Automatic Millionaire. I agree; it’s a stupid name for a book. However, it is short and contains a handful of common-sense suggestions for getting one’s financial house in order. There is nothing earth shattering, and nothing that I haven’t heard before, in fact most of the things in the book I’m already doing. One of the more irritatingly dumbed-down concepts the author employs to uncover the hoards of cash we all piss away each month is referred to as “The Latte Factor.” Again, an irritating title, but the underlying concept is sound. It calls for simply paying attention to those everyday purchases or reoccurring expenses that we take for granted and are semi-blind to. As you might guess, the author uses a daily diet of Starbucks coffee and a muffin to illustrate how you might be throwing away money blindly and yet claiming that you just don’t have the extra cash to do any investing. Although I am already investing very aggressively, I just couldn’t stop thinking about the absurdity of spending well over $100 a month, basically on entertainment.

So, it’s goodbye to HBO Sunday nights and Showtime originals. I’ll miss you… although I’ll miss you much less now that Sex and the City has run its course. I seldom watched any movies on the premium channels. Mostly just the original programming like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Dead Like Me. While this original programming is brilliant and there is absolutely nothing on TV like it, the “seasons” for these shows is nothing like network programming. For one thing, each season consists of between 10 to 15 episodes. That’s about 1/2 of the episodes in a typical network season. But even more damning, the seasons for these wonderful shows are sometimes 12 to 18 months apart! As one season ends, you know it will be at least a year and probably longer before you’ll see another new one. I finally realized that I can buy the entire season of the handful of programs on DVD for a small fraction of the cost of subscribing to the service all year long. Sorry Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, I’ll miss you Huff! and Dead Like Me, but Comcast finally price gouged you right out of my budget.