When I left home, I packed a set of rabbit ears I found in storage at my mom’s house.  Six years and three apartments later, I’ve never had cable. Not even for a day.  No CNN.  No Fox News.  No Weather Channel.  But lots and lots of fantastic TV.

Gone are the days when loving the BBC and Discovery Channel meant footing a $100-a-month bill.  For less than $10 a month, you can have many of those once cable-only shows “on demand” and commercial free.  Such services have even started to be bundled with other online services.  My husband and I are huge fans of Amazon Prime, which in addition to free shipping on Amazon purchases, gives you access to many Showtime and HBO shows.

There was a time, not too long ago, that many feared streaming TV and cutting the cord would severely harm the broadcast ad industry. However, it seems to have quite the opposite effect.  Not too long ago, network TV was just a wasteland of reality TV.  Cheap. Low Budget.  No writers.  No story. The fear of a mass switch to streaming media seems to have scared the networks into investing in extremely high-quality shows.  Shows with fantastic production and special effects, such as “Once Upon A Time”, would once have only been produced by the HBOs and Showtimes of the world.  You can bet Sunday nights at 8 this fall, my rabbit ears will be pointed to Hwy 17 and my TV flipped to ABC.

And as we all know, good programming equals more ad dollars. Well played, network TV.  Well played.