After reading an article on Yahoo! about someone who was unsuccessful living without cable television, I looked back at being an OTA (over-the-air) TV household since January 2007.
When I was growing up, my family never had cable television. In high school, there were channels that tried to simulate having cable. TV 38's (now UPN) Movie Loft would air movies in their full theatrical running time. The magic phrase of "viewer discretion is advised" made sure that I would be home for their unedited broadcasts of the Michael Cimino's Deer Hunter and and Brian DePalma's Dressed to Kill. Boston also had a station that capitalized on the advent of music videos with V66. And even with those serviceable substitutes for cable channels, I still missed out on original cable series programming such as "Dream On" and early days of ESPN.
My parents took in a college student while I was away as an undergrad and he paid to install cable television in our house of which I took advantage of after moving home. And for the next 12 years, where ever I lived, I had cable television. During that span cable television added sister channels to their more popular stations, high definition, on-demand programming and Music Choice stations. They were even instructional videos on-demand where I improved my softball swing.
When we left our Cambridge condo and settled into our one month sublet in Brookline, we lived without cable television with limited over-the-air television because the thickly settled area. After we moved to Newton, we never made that phone call for the 9AM - 3PM window to be home for installation.
And months before the analog conversion to all digital, I purchased a High Definition tuner. At that time, OTA provided nine high definition stations, more than half of what cable provided. Over the next year or so, cable television technology grew with more high definition stations, DVRs, and multi-room networking.
There was a point where the allure of cable television lured me back in but I weighed my options below.
Television Programming
Series, miniseries, reality shows and documentaries can be now viewed on sites such as hulu.com or borrowed from your local libraries for free. Even when "Lost" aired for its seven seasons, it was not enough for me to watch even when it was not on a cable station.
Gone are the days when everyone talked about Melrose Place or Seinfeld the next day. And even though the shows are more intricate than others in the past, the variety has given to a diluted following. You can always find someone who didn't watch last night's "True Blood", either because they don't follow it or they are waiting to watch it on their DVR. And because of that television shows are not a needed for a conversation piece during a night out.
Live Programming
Between news and sports, the latter was the most difficult to adjust without cable television. News can be read on the internet through many outlets. Red Sox schedules used to come out with key maps with of broadcasts denoted by: = WSBK, = NESN and = FOX. Shortly after TV38's branded Friday night broadcasts of "Sox in the City," it disappeared and OTA television was limited to the handful of Saturday mid-afternoon broadcasts on Fox. So I broke it down to what I would be missing. (Please keep in mind that Boston sports has hit a bit of a crest and the phrase "subject to blackout" is rarely heard.)
Here is a list of what is available OTA this past year.
New England Patriots - All games are broadcast in High Definition with local area coverage applied through the National television outlets. (http://www.patriots.com/schedule/index.cfm?ac=schedule&season=2009)
Boston Red Sox - Games are only available in High Definition on Fox with local area coverage applied through the National television outlets. The number of 2010 games the Red Sox on Fox (http://static.foxsports.com/content/fscom//binary/2010/02/03/MLB1265228749414.pdf) have is 7
Boston Celtics - Before the 2007 playoffs, it was zero games. The 2009-2010 season garnered six (6) High Definition games on ABC (http://www.nba.com/schedules/national_tv_schedule/ABC/).
Boston Bruins - Six (6) games were televised on NBC (http://www.hdsportsguide.com/news/2009/nhl-on-nbc-for-2009-10-season/) beginning with the Winter Classic on New Year's Day 2010.
