“Last week I came to the realization that with Netflix and iTunes, I would be able to cut out the $50 portion of my cable TV bill and ditch the 80 or so channels I never watch, including 3 shopping channels, 3 sports channels, 6 family channels, numerous foreign language channels, and one Lifetime Channel for Women that my fiance tortures me with.”

The FCC has long tried to push cable and satellite companies to provide ala carte purchasing…allowing people to purchase only the channels they wish to, instead of being forced to pay for dozens of stations they don’t. While most seem to think that ala carte pricing being forced on the cable companies would increase costs for a large percentage of customers, we think that it would be a good idea to explore alternative packaging schemes. Our local cable company offers a value set of channels, a standard package, then a premium pack. They could offer more ways of saving money by forgoing programming.

But that brings us to the question that Alan Graham raised? What about places like Itunes? They offer per show purchasing. If you combine that with Netflix, which allows you access to any movie for a monthly rate…including DVD box sets when they come out…you can achieve almost the same effect. Channel surfing will be missed though…sometimes you find something unexpected.

We’ve been working on our own method. We built ourselves a Digital Video REcorder and have been recording old movies and runs of TV shows off of television in the wee hours. Before long, we’ll have so much in terms of old movies and other programming we won’t need beyond broadcast stations. Of course, if we get rid of cable…we will have to get a better antenna.

A good tip though…if you can’t check out the competition every so often(our cable company has no competitors)…check them out. They may change their offerings and you can benefit and save money. We check all our utility service bills every few months.