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Optimal Cable TV Plan: Cut the Cord ; I'M Here to Report There is Life Beyond Television.

Posted on: Wednesday, 11 January 2006, 15:00 CST

By JEFFREY PAGE

THE SHELVING - at least for now - of a measure in Trenton that would make it easier for telephone companies to get into the cable TV business brought back a happy memory.

It was of the day in 2004 when I did the unthinkable. I told the cable company what it could do with its so-called service. I've been without television since because where I live, there's no reception without cable or satellite. Actually, there's one other choice, but not many New Jerseyans have access to it. More on this later.

My patience with cable television was gone. On half the channels at any given moment people were selling kitchen knives, pots and pans, exercise equipment, devices to help me remove hair from my ears and nose, commemorative medals, lessons in how to score in real estate, and a thousand other items I would never order. And those weren't even the all-shopping channels.

On a dozen more stations were ministers in expensive suits telling me that I should smile more, be optimistic, read my Bible and accept Jesus as my personal savior.

On other channels were programs in Japanese, Hungarian, Romanian, French and some other languages that bounced off my ears with a thud. There were some shows in Spanish, which I had studied, but I couldn't keep up. I skipped the Food Channel because the cooks never had to clean up. I passed on the Golf Channel because I don't play golf. I avoided the talk shows because most of the talk seemed to be about celebs and their new movies.

I steered clear of the agony shows; how many times could you watch two women brawl over some snickering semiliterate man? Or DNA testing to find the baby's real dad?

I was paying for this junk.

I liked the broadcast networks, CNN, Fox and MSNBC for the news. I made plenty of use of the History Channel. I watched some ball games. I watched any re-run of Seinfeld because it made me laugh out loud. And I looked for movies.

One night I switched to American Movie Classics. I forget what was scheduled. I got just a big blue screen. Cable's down, I thought. But it was the same the next day. So I called and was told I wasn't supposed to receive AMC. But it had been part of the cheap- o package I'd been paying for over several years. Wrong, they said. I was left sputtering. I asked for the boss, but the guy on the phone said he was the boss.

I canceled. It was easy.

"What?" he said with nice incredulity. I told him to get his cable out of my house. It took two days to terminate service and they never came to collect their wires. I even got a small rebate.

I miss the news. I miss the Sunday morning talk shows. I miss baseball and basketball. For a while I missed the movies, though I later joined Netflix, a movie-by-mail plan that claims to have 50,000 titles on DVDs. I love it.

I keep thinking about going back to cable TV - but not with the old company. I live in a town in southern Orange County served by a small independent telephone company, which is based right downtown and which provides cable television. Their cheap-o package is more expensive than the old company's, but includes Turner Classic Movies.

I've made no decision, but I'm here to report there is life beyond television. You read more. You get news on the radio. You talk more. Sometimes you think you'd give anything to see a Mets game, but you survive. Or maybe you go to Shea once in a while.

Among real reform of cable television will be the ability of customers to select their own packages of channels with as many or as few as they wish. Do you want everything - including every premium channel? Your cost is X. Do you want just the History Channel, HBO and Channel 2? You pay Y.

Forcing customers to pay for channels they will never watch is like Campbell's saying that if you want to buy a can of its tomato soup, you'll have to buy a can of clam chowder as well. Campbell's couldn't get away with that because there's competition and consumers can just walk farther down the soup aisle to the Progresso display.

Pay for the Food Channel when I don't watch it?

I don't think so.

* *

Record columnist Jeffrey Page also writes the North Jersey column. Send comments about this column, along with your name and phone number, to opedpage@gmail.com.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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