I replaced it with Criterion, Netflix, and YouTube TV. The latter was mainly a way to get the ordinary broadcast TV, but today I got the news: "YouTube TV on track to lose all NBC channels tonight -- or cost $10 less/ YouTube TV's deal to carry NBCUniversal networks -- including USA, E!, CNBC, Bravo and NBC with NFL Sunday Night Football -- is expiring, but they haven't reached a new pact."
So I impulsively decided to bail on them and go with Hulu/Live TV for now. I have no idea if that will be better. Like YouTube TV, it doesn't have the Brewers games that play on broadcast TV. Whatever. I’m least interested in the remnants of TV-like TV.
ANYWAY: YouTube TV was perfectly easy to cancel. I googled asking how to do it and immediately got to a page with a clear button to push and I was out in less than a minute.
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I'm using a local provider for phone, TV, internet. Tachus stopped by and said that Tachus could provide all these same services if I bought MAGIC JACK from Walmart and FUBO.
I'm old fashioned and don't know what I'd be getting into.
You could always get an indoor digital antenna & plug into your TV's non-HDMI input jack. That'd give you local/network programming.
Remember all those snobs who used to say they didn't own a TV? Well, we still have a TV but we rarely watch it for anything. I watch the occassional Tennis/Golf/sportsball match, my wife watches cooking shows and her East Asian Soaps, and that's it. Both are over the air. We got tired of paying astromonical Cable TV bills, with 400 channels of junk we never watched.
After we got rid of it, I suddenly realized how much of it was just a time wasting habit.
This is a fairly common occurrence seen since the days we all had cable TV. The good news now is the streamers bill month to month.
Switch away Ann- stick it to the man…
I bailed from Netflix and Disney several months ago and I get e-mails asking if I regret my decision yet and offering to take me back without any penalties or shaming. I signed up because Netflix was going to get Seinfeld but hasn't yet. When? Bait and switch? And I liked the Mandelorian so I went with Disney but I kept wondering how he washed his hair - or was he bald - and this kept ruining the illusion. I'm better without these questions. On a 100 Days of Dante I'm wondering what the Gorgon represents. Could she really have turned Dante to stone forever or did Virgil just think so? Always questions. But when a question is 700 years old it's nice to get hold of it, to have a real thinking point. 700 years from now Netflix won't be asking if I want to renew my subscription but someone will be wondering about the Gorgon.
Look into getting an antenna for over the air TV. When it works the quality is impressive. Unfortunately I'm too far from the broadcast towers for it to work for me, though there is a wide variety of Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese stations I could watch.
If it's an annual fee, use a virtual credit card that expires quickly. Just don't give them a new card number after you tell them to cancel.
You could get an antenna and an Amazon Fire Recast for free broadcast TV.
Fubo has most sports, if that is what you are looking for. Not much else on NBC.
Althouse, get an indoor antenna like this one (Search on Amazon, "indoor TV antenna"). For less than $15, you can just hook this up like the old style rabbit ears but hang it on the wall behind the tv, out of sight. The quality of picture will astound you. It is BETTER than cable quality. We have been doing this for several years along with our grown kids and all agree about its quality.
It is the magic of digital broadcast TV which was mandated several years ago by the FCC. None of the shadows, flipping, poor resolution, etc., of analog TV.
This is quality. And it is free! You will get local channels in Madison which should include all the major networks.
There have to be 20 comments pending just like this one, but go to Walmart, spend $27 on a little powered "HD" antenna that is about the size of a hardcover book, except thinner and that weighs just a few ounces, and there in Madison, you will probably get 30 channels over the air. I get 22 and I live in a tiny town near the Canadian border. I tried to get NBC and CBS for sports (golf) by subscribing to streaming, but it wasn't that easy. Now I get all the PGA golf I want to watch, all the football I care to watch, and even Hockey Night in Canada, all for the one time cost of that little antenna.
One thing I noticed was that I was getting the same ads I was getting on line, so I read the agreements and saw that "Gracenote" injects ads based on Google's following you around, etc, so I disconnected my TV from the internet. Now I get regular mass market ads, which is somehow more comforting than getting Jimmy Walker trying to sell me health insurance for my last few years before I croak off. I stream Netflix, etc through my AppleTV box, which is not the same thing as AppleTV, though for some reason it has the same name.
Anyway, you have nothing to lose but a small amount of time to try it out. Put it next to a window. Scan for channels.
I have found Fubo better than Hulu, but I'm a guy, with a (dwindling) interest in sports. Same problem with local baseball coverage, though. Not an issue in the same ballpark with Rockies as for you and Brewers.
Seems like you could put up a UHF antenna and point it West South West and pretty easily get all your broadcast networks. I write a couple iOS apps for over the air users.
For anyone looking for something to watch: Andrew Huberman.
Very dense. Many episodes. I am first pass through podcast 8.
It is amazing how much we have learned about how the brain and nervous system work. It has already reset my sleep patterns in a positive way.
South Park on Cable TV
EweToob is all about the cancel.
I have Hulu live as it was a way to get broadcast tv at our Up North cabin. Not happy that Brewers are no longer available- feel like the monthly charge should have been reduced!
PBS is annoying too - can only watch the Ken Burns series if I buy a membership.Why is that when our taxes subsidize “public” tv?
That's great. Like you (I think), I resist signing up for this stuff because of the work required to sign up and, especially, the work required to exit. I've been considering subscribing to YouTube (not exactly the same thing, I know) and maybe your report will push me over the edge.
We signed up for and bought a Roku unit this summer because we thought we would be able to view our home Spectrum TV channels at our summer rental home. Only after we got it and spent an evening failing to get it to work did we discover that Spectrum and Roku were fighting and we were SOL. 50 miles of traveling to buy, and another 50 miles to return, the Roku hardware.
Considering YouTube is an active censor, you are better off without them.
So why was AT&T so hard to cancel?
you so lucky, i tried the you tube tv and cancelled the same day, used a capitol one credit card, you tube would never admit and capitol one would not pay me any attention after 8 months of hounding both they finally conceded i had legitimaly cancelled and capitol one finally refunded my money, i have no use for either one
Hulu's great!
Only problem is I can't get Bally Sports West, and thus no Los Angeles Angels games.
If you want Wisconsin football, I don't know...
Good luck, Althouse!
Last year I signed up for YouTubeTV free trial. Before the trial period ended, I tried to cancel. Spent hours trying to cancel. Link for cancellation did not work. I called them. No luck. Sent registered letter to CEO notifying them of cancellation. Was ignored. YouTubeTV began billing me. I refused to pay. Began getting daily calls from credit card co when I refused to pay. After about a year with several collection efforts, they gave up but my credit rating was ruined. Don’t care; never use credit anymore.
It was not as easy as Althouse’s experience.
In Soviet America, YouTube cancels you.
I wish I could wean my mother from the DirectTV- everything she watches on it is available from the 3 streaming services she also buys.
I recommend Plex. It's an all in one platform which can integrate live TV, plus all of your movies, music and TV recordings. It will catalog your movies with currently available metadata, and you can set up music playlists from your mp3 collections.
Also look into Hoopla Digital. It's free thru your local library. If your library system uses it, you can stream any DVD they have available. Use a chromecast device to any computer monitor or digital TV.
I like this!
I've often thought there should be a law (!) that something has to be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up for. One button on a web page to sign up? Then it should be one button to cancel. No chasing around for the tiny "contact us" button and the 7 pages of script to find the right phone number to call, only to be on hold for 20 minute.
I wasted $7 last week trying to get Monday Night Football via ESPN+ only to find that it doesn't carry any real live ESPN sports, only useless sports commentary. I could have gotten the game on a free 7 day trial from Fubo but I didn't want to be a deadbeat. Luckily ESPN+ was also easy to cancel.
If you want a hellish experience, try canceling Sirius XM.
"So why was AT&T so hard to cancel?"
Couldn't do it through the website. Had to call, wait on hold, get passed from one person to the next, then when I though I'd succeeded in cancelling (while keeping the internet service), the on-line account did not show the change, so I had to call back, against suffer through hold, getting passed from person to person, needing to explain my predicament laboriously, never trusting that they'd solve my problem. It took days and multiple phone calls. I'd like to know before I sign up with any sort of subscription how easy it is to get out of the renewals!
Althouse: ATT has a looooong history of continuing to autocharge subscribers for monthly payments after supposedly complete cancellations. I strongly urge you to call ATT again in a week and request confirmation in email or letter that your subscription is indeed fully, legally, totally, irreversibly, unequivocally, no-more-charges dead, staked through the heart, and buried in consecrated ground. Head chopped off and buried elsewhere, mouth full of communion wafers, of course. Or get a surprise when you see monthly charges continued.
AT&T is nasty. I had a hard time canceling their cell service. They did everything they could to throw obstacles in my way. I don't recall the details but apparently it's a common experience.
I finally subscribed to YouTube online to get rid of ads but it's not the same as YouTube TV.
There is not one thing on regular TV that I enjoy as much as the podcasts, lectures and random documentaries I find online.
Commercial TV is just too time constrained and dumbed down.
Sad!
Couldn't do it through the website. Had to call, wait on hold
Its not just at&t, Spectrum was the same way. My wife and I were speculating that companies that were formerly monopolies cannot understand that they need to start competing by providing good customer service.
>> It took days and multiple phone calls.
AT&T's cancellation system was working as designed.
TiVo with a small HD antenna, you could even maybe find a nice needlepoint cover for it, or hide it behind a canvas stretched on a frame, will let you watch Meet the Press on your own schedule without subscription to any streaming service. Propaganda should be free.
I had a similar experience ending DirecTV. My final call to cancel was a checklist of all the previous efforts to keep me as a customer. They simply did not have a channel lineup that didn't cause me to pay roughly $30 extra to pay for channels I did not want. I understand bundling, but I can get closer to what I want elsewhere, so I did.
Now I'm with YouTubeTV, which I can also share with family. The family part is important, because I preferred Hulu, but Hulu didn't seem to have Viacom channels (CBS, etc.) which was important to the family. YouTubeTV did, although I don't watch many Viacom Channels or NBC Universal. If they are cutting NBC; I would almost consider that a win. Occasionally I'll put on American Ninja Warrior as background noise, but otherwise nothing from NBC. I think I watched a total of 2 hours of Olympic coverage. I can cover 90% of my TV watching with just Discovery+ at 10% the cost of YouTubeTV, but my wife would still want a bit more.
I'm currently exploring using MythTV and Raspberry PIs to capture over the air (OTA) TV transmissions and schedule recordings so I can finally cut the cord. But, I'm pretty technically inclined.
I guess I should point out as a former TiVo owner and MythTV user, that a Tablo is probably the right level of ease of use and feature set for an antenna based DVR. Use mine with my AppleTV. Of course, I bought the lifetime schedule subscription so it hasn’t any ongoing costs other than electricity. People forget the cost of powering the streaming/cable box when comparing services.
Call me a TV snob, but we cut the cord in 1995 and see no reason to go back. Lost interest in sports, do a lot of web surfing, and get DVDs from the library of shows we want to see, like "Game of Thrones," "The Detectorists," and Agatha Christie movies.
Every time we visit the in-laws and see a few minutes of cable TV, we're grateful we never signed up. But YMMV.
As it turns out, this post is moot, since YouTubeTV and NBC have settled their differences. At least that appears so, as I just watched Jeopardy on YouTubeTV on an NBC channel. So my recommendation is to sign back up. I switched from DirecTV to YouTube several months ago and never looked back.
Ann the Brewers are not a real baseball team.
The Packers are a real football team.
The Wisconsin football team is not a real football team - it is just a bunch of kids who all know they are not really real athletes, although in the great scheme of things they get to pretend they are real athletes for a while - but at least they have a real fight song.
NOBODY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE CONSIDERS THE BREWERS TO BE A REAL BASEBALL TEAM.
>>Only after we got it and spent an evening failing to get it to work did we discover that Spectrum and Roku were fighting and we were SOL.
I got a Roku earlier this year and have no trouble using it to watch Spectrum when I'm in New Hampshire, though I mostly just watch TCM. About the only thing I watch on Spectrum is Jeopardy, though. I wish that tiresome robot would finally get kicked off. I don’t understand why people think it’s exciting or interesting to watch these guys (yeah, and it’s always a guy) on these extended winning streaks. I think it’s incredibly boring and annoying. Especially when they have irritating characteristics like this robot. May be a minority of one, but I thought it was a big mistake when they got rid of the five-day limit. OK, maybe make it ten days, but don’t get rid of it.
I believe that NBC and YouTube reached a carriage agreement today.
- Krumhorn
"As it turns out, this post is moot, since YouTubeTV and NBC have settled their differences. "
They must have read Althouse's post over at YouTube. Imagine the NBC executives printing it out, coming into the meeting and throwing it down on the table, and then saying "we'll wait."
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