When I cancelled broadcast television with my cable provider a year ago, I thought the only thing I’d miss was live sports. That was wrong. In retrospect, I don’t miss losing the hours spent watching football, baseball and basketball. I’ve learned to live without ballgames. And I’ve especially learned to love living without the imbecilic commercials that weigh games down to the point of viewer exhaustion.
Broadcast television, including the major networks, ESPN, Fox New/Newsmax, and crappy channels was costing me south of $1000 a year. Aside from live sports, the Fox and Newsmax primetimes, and the occasional weather check during local storms, I never watched. (Newsmax went streaming at some point after I cancelled.)
When I got my smart TV hooked up with access to YouTube, broadcast television became an immediate buggy-whip. My cable service includes the indispensable internet/WIFI only, and clocks in at around an affordable grand a year. Clicking to the “television” option on my smart TV now yields only a black screen.
Soon after going WIFI-only, I signed up for YouTube Premium, which is ad-free. That was one of the best viewership decisions I’ve ever made, and the most rewarding $140 (annually) I’ve ever spent. I watch vintage episodes of Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford with no commercials. 1960s Dean Martin roasts with the original ads excised. Fox News and Newsmax segments, with no Ozempic spots. Favorite films, like On Golden Pond, are streamed in their entirety. No buzz-killing insurance pitch mars Rammstein, performing “Engel” live at Madison Square Garden in 2015.
Talk from media observers is that broadcast television is dying. For a boomer who lived and breathed Three Stooges reruns as far back as 1958, it’s been a good run. But if an old guy like me will never look back, imagine the young, and the options they have. It’s easy to understand why the Sham-Wow guy is opting to seek elected office. It’s over. There’s no reason now to waste time waiting for three-minute blocks of loud advertisements to abate.
There are ads embedded in YouTube content, usually by way of a podcast interruption, usually delivered by the host himself, whether Bill O’ Reilly on his No Spin News or Bill Maher at Club Random. Hosts are wise to stay at the helm for these spots, because the second a talk between Maher and, for example, Lara Trump, is interrupted by a commercial for Dr. Scholl’s Wart Remover, I’m out.
Here's the final straw on the sporting front. YouTube carries NFL-produced highlights of every game, usually within an hour of the final gun. A 15-minute reel featuring my San Francisco 49ers provides all I need to know about what happened. All I need to know about any game.