“Mr. Sefer, would you be interested in keeping your Comcast cable service if we lowered the monthly bill?” The woman on the phone was being very nice to me.¹ I had just told her I wanted to cancel my cable subscription (while keeping the Internet service) but she didn’t want to let me go. Comcast never wants to let you go.

What prompted this call was a long, slow process started eighteen months ago. For a good portion of my adolescent life, I was a TV junkie. I watched anything and everything, regardless of the quality. MTV’s Room Raiders? Watched it. ESPN’s Around the Horn? Watched it. CBS’s CSI: Las Vegas? Watched it. I look back and realize how truly awful these sort of shows were (or still are), but at the time I didn’t care. My mind was a gutter for the useless and inane. I was only doing what most other people do, though. I had become a slave to my TV, watching without any real purpose. I just wanted to be entertained.

Sadly, the television industry knows this. At some point, people became content with watching horrible shows with no value and the TV industry started pumping out shows that fit the bill. I don’t know which of the two caused the other one, but I do know that “TV” is the worst it’s ever been. Which is why, eighteen months ago, when I found out I would be living for four months without a television set, I was strangely happy. I knew it would break me from the horrible habit of just having it on, for no real reason.

Please don’t confuse “TV” with television, though. Television is only a means of broadcast. “TV” is the sess pool of garbage that is transmitted through your cable box. ALASKAN WOODSMEN WITH BEARDS! 8PM! I’M HAVING AN ABORTION, PLEASE FILM ME!² 9PM! Awful. And the worst part of all of it is the fact that most viewers know that what they are watching is awful, but they do it anyway. People like to say things like “it’s my guilty pleasure!” or “when I get home from work I just want to shut my brain off for a few hours.” No. I was the world’s biggest Jersey Shore fan for a brief period of time. I thought the cast were complete buffoons and that it was quite funny to watch. Then I realized the cast were just complete buffoons.³

I asked myself “would I be watching this show if I had to pay $1, right now, to do so?” The answer was almost always no. Then why should I be watching at all? If you asked most people that question, their answers would be the same. And yet, here we are. Stuck in TV wasteland.

“Alright, sir, just to confirm, you would like to continue our service at the lower rate, is that correct?” She had gotten me. I caved. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to keep the cable subscription at a slightly lower rate, saving me what in the grand scheme of things is a small amount of money.⁴ I had to have over a thousand channels at my disposal. You know, just in case.

1. I wanted to believe this was because I played the “poor college student” routine but I suspect it was only because they didn’t want to see my money go. ↵
2. I don’t think this is an actual show, but I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that it is. MTV does air “Teen Mom”, after all. ↵
3. After spending a significant amount of time in Italy and learning the Jersey Shore cast would be filming a season there, I died a little inside. The cast of Jersey Shore is representing the United States of America in a foreign country. Let that statement sink in for a second. ↵
4. Never mind the fact that I would spend less buying each episode of the shows I actually watch on iTunes and Netflix. There are a few issues with this, of course, live sporting events being one of them. A la carte sporting broadcasts are 90% of the way there. In a few years, I suspect it won’t be necessary to have cable service to watch most sporting events. ↵