I’ve finally talked myself into cancelling YouTube TV. I had signed up for it about a year ago, after (finally) cancelling my cable TV service. So I’m slowly finding my way into the 21st century, at least with regard to video entertainment.
It’s going to be weird giving up the system I grew up with, with all the “OTA” TV channels I’m used to. But I’ll figure it out. My post-work weekday routine used to include watching a combination of live and DVR’d stuff from YouTube TV, generally the previous night’s Colbert from DVR, and the NJ PBS news either live or from DVR. This past week, I’ve been watching Colbert from Paramount+, which is arguably better than watching it via YTTV, since I don’t have to fast-forward through commercials. (I have ad-free Paramount+.) Watching the NJ PBS news is a little more difficult. It airs live at 5:30 PM, so I can watch it streaming via the PBS app, but if I miss it, the on-demand version isn’t available until a bit later in the evening. So I’ve been missing the NJ PBS news most nights. I may need to figure out a better way to watch news, overall.
Of course, right after I cancelled YTTV, I saw an article about the TV broadcast arrangements for this year’s Roland-Garros, which starts soon. Last year, it was on NBC and Peacock. This year, it’s moved to Max, and other WB/Discovery networks. It looks like they’ll be carrying matches on TNT and TruTV, so I’d be able to watch those if I still had YTTV. But I don’t, and Max is the one major streaming platform that I don’t subscribe to. So maybe I need to subscribe to Max if I want to watch Roland-Garros this year.
Maybe I should cancel my Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle and replace it with the Disney+/Hulu/Max bundle. Why did we let this stuff get so convoluted and expensive? Maybe I should just read more books and watch less TV!