I am in a hotel room with the television off. There are three channels that don't get sports. One is showing Space Chimps, a movie I have no interest in. One is a car show I have no interest in. The third is doing an in depth story on Courtney Cox, someone I have no interest in.

It's so bad that in a few minutes I will go downstairs, where there is internet access, and catch up on the news.

That's one of the reasons that by the end of the year, a little over a week, I will get rid of cable TV.

I watch TV but there are so many times when the TV is just background moose. I had the Courtney Cox junk on for 10 minutes knowing I didn't care about her. I wanted something on just to have on but I got frustrated because it was junk. I knew going downstairs I could get news made me shut the thing off.

For a few months I looked at the cable bill, looked at what and how I watches TV and began to wonder why continue to pay? Cable shows I want to watch I can get online. I don't have a HDTV to take advantage of crisp sounds and colors but now that can be gained with online downloads. Any advantage cable may have had is gone because of the Internet.

For fast breaking news I go to the Internet and if it's really strong stuff sites will have the feed live.

I can do all this for half the price I'm paying now. Even with local stations that have converted to HD, my TV tuner on the computer gets the signals. There's just no need to pay for cable.

A few years ago I canceled cable and it wasn't too bad. At that time Internet shows were hard to come by and I was out it for a year and did OK. With the advances I think doing without will be even better.