Yesterday, Business Insider writer Antonio Villas-Boas explained how cord-cutting didn’t work for him. In the piece, he details his one month experience with Sling TV that he says ultimately drove him back to cable. However, Villas-Boas may have come to a different conclusion if he’d gone a bit further with his experiment.
The Business of Cord-Cutting
According to Villas-Boas, the reason he initially attempted to cut the cord was a familiar story for many other cord-cutters. “After looking at my monthly cable TV bill one day, I thought: I’m paying $100 a month for cable TV, not including internet,” he wrote. His solution was to dive into the ever-popular Sling TV service for a month.
Villas-Boas found Sling TV Orange had a lot of what he was looking for: low cost, loads of channels, little to no buffering, and a DVR option.
However, he apparently drew the line at two points: lack of live TV pausing and a few missing channels. As a result, Villas-Boas went crawling back to cable.
The only problem is that he really didn’t need to.
Flexibility is Key
Villas-Boas could have found what he needed by searching around a bit more. For example, he wasn’t happy that Sling did not have TLC, PBS, Discovery, or the Smithsonian Channel. Adding Philo to his lineup would give him TLC and Discovery. Meanwhile, PBS and the Smithsonian Channel both have all of their content easily available online and through individual apps.
As for live TV pausing and ad-skipping, Villas-Boas states that he relied on his TiVo to do that, but a $2/month subscription to PlayOn would have covered his needs.
Villas-Boas’ foray into cord-cutting was admirable but lacked the proper depth to effectively encompass how cord-cutting works. Still, his efforts do show the frustrations may new cord-cutters may have as far as giving up some of the conveniences of high-cost cable packages.
Sam Cook is a full-time content strategist by day, a part-time freelance content writer since 2015. In another life, he was a high school English teacher for nearly a decade. Based in sunny New Orleans, he writes long-form educational content on technology, including Insurtech, Fintech, HRtech, and content streaming. He loves whittling down complex ideas within these areas that make decisions easier for buyers. When he’s not reading books with his son Miles and playing video games with the family, you can find him immersed in his growing collection of Euro-style board games.
