Things change and irritate me

i So, a while back I had picked up some music video channels that I had enjoyed but that I’d kinda stopped watching for a bit, although I was starting to get back into watching them a bit more lately. So, while looking around to prepare for adding a Canadian news channel pack to my service, I noticed an announcement that those channels were all being dropped by my provider. Looking at the rest of the package, there isn’t that much else in there that I care about, meaning that I now have to decide what I’m going to do about it.

The whole chain, though, follows on from changes. I want to keep at least one package of news channels on my service just in case something happens and I want to follow it on the news. The American networks are too expensive, so I can choose between a International news package and a Canadian news package. Obviously, the Canadian news package would show news more relevant to Canada, but the International news package has more channels and also has the BBC World News channel, which I like better than the Canadian options. So, for the longest time, I stuck with the International news channel.

But then I noticed that due to changes in how the shows work I wasn’t watching any other channel but the BBC World News channel. And then they said that they were cancelling one of the shows I did watch semi-regularly and replacing it with a new show, which then got me wondering if there’d be anything for me to watch on it at all. As it turns out, it’s really just a name change and a change in some of the hosts, at least for now, but with me once I start thinking about something or changing something I keep thinking about it even if the initial conditions have changed.

So, I decided that I should try the Canadian news package until about New Year’s — when I’m going to plan everything out again — while keeping the International news package as well, to see which package works best for me. This gives me a few months with my regular schedule and a month — hopefully — when I’m off to see what works and what I like.

But then I was reminded of the other packages I have that aren’t going to be as good anymore. There’s one of music channels — just music, no videos — that I never listen to anymore, and the one that’s changed so much — one channel dropped out, three were dropped — that I don’t think there’s anything left in there that I care about. I was going to leave this until after New Year’s like I did with the others, but there’s so little left in that package that I really don’t think it makes sense to keep it around.

However … there really isn’t anything that great to replace those packages with. And I don’t want to keep both news packages because I don’t watch the news often enough to spend that much money on them. So I might end up cutting off some of my cable packages. I’d spend less, which is good, but also wouldn’t watch it as much, which is bad. I’m watching DVDs and the like more often now anyway, but I still need to keep the service for the sports channels.

This is the same annoyance I had with comics subscriptions: things kept changing and I didn’t want to have to keep paying attention to adapt when that happened. Still, it hasn’t been as frequent and I’ve been able to keep this line-up for years, so it isn’t that annoying. Yet.