Giving Up The Satellite Television

My wife and I have decided to give up our satellite TV and not even pick up basic cable. We have done this for various reasons. There will be some things that I miss, but knowing that I can download The Daily Show makes this decision much easier. What interests me about this is how the quality, though certainly not the quantity of my television watching has decreased over the past 18 months or so that I've had cable and then satellite. I've missed watching PBS much for one. Now I know that the quality of PBS has declined greatly since it came under attack from the right. But still, isn't Globetrekker better than anything on the Travel Channel? Isn't Rick Bayless better than anything on The Food Network with the obvious exception of Iron Chef? Isn't any nature show on PBS far better than anything on Discovery or whatever channel that idiot Crocodile Hunter is on.

The other thing is that I miss local news. Well, in a way. Local news in New Mexico is deeply depressing. All the local channels have been rated as among the worst in the nation by those who rate such things because they focus strictly on the violence and weird crime that seems to happen with bizarre regularity in New Mexico. Sometimes this stuff will make national news such as the police helicopter shot down over Albuquerque the other day. In fact, I'm so immune to it that when I got to Oregon last week, I walked into the house and there was a news story on that was about some guy who raped a woman at the University of New Mexico. I barely even gave it a second thought until about 10 seconds later when I realized, wait a minute I'm in Oregon. Turned out the bastard had killed someone here. In any case, the sheer ubiquity of crime in New Mexico is sad. But on the other hand, I feel like I know less about the state where I live since I got advanced television systems.