The term “cord cutting” or “cord cutter” refers to the act or a person who has cut ties with cable and satellite television providers. More emphasis is placed on the word cord as appose to cut because by cancelling your cable subscription you essentially have less cords to deal with.
Cord cutting isn’t a new thing because in general the term applies to anyone without cable or satellite tv, so if you’ve been getting tv for free using rabbit ears you’ve pretty much been doing what people are ranting and raving about now. The only difference and its a big one is that now you have way more options.
In fact, nowadays we have too many options. If you take the streaming route you have the daunting task of trying to find the right streaming service for you AND figuring out what internet service to get. Yes folks, all streaming devices HAVE to be connected to internet and the internet service has to be reliable. Another obstacle when taking the streaming route is to decide what streaming device to get. Personally I would recommend a Fire Stick or a Roku device. You can stream using a smart tv as well but they tend to have a slower interface and software updates are few and far between so over time you will experienced delayed remote responses while streaming.
Keep in mind that streaming devices do require you to be logged in, adding a credit card is not. Don’t get scammed!
There are tons of streaming services out there, some paid and some free. Of course if you want to watch the newest tv shows and latest movies you’ll go with a paid service but if dated shows and vintage movies aren’t a problem for you then any reputable free streaming service should do. The most popular are Tubi, Pluto, Distro and Crackle. These free services don’t require information such as an email address or even your name all they need is your attention because their revenue comes from the ads played.
Paid streaming services on the other hand come with their hand out. You must register and have a credit card on file and most offer both monthly and annual subscriptions. The perk though is that there are no contracts and you can cancel at any time.
Another part of cord cutting is watching over the air free television. This form of cord cutting only requires a tv and an antenna that gets good range/reception. Don’t shy away from this aspect of cord cutting because in 2023 we have a lot more channels than we had back in the 80s.
I currently get over 60 channels free using an antenna including locals like Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. There are also genre based channels for example westerns, classic tv shows, games show, spanish, lifestyle, horror you name it there’s a channel for it.
And the final cord cutting option is to not have tv at all.
