D.L. Stewart: Saving money by looking at the big pictures

The way it started was, we looked at our cable bill and decided we’re paying way too much for stuff we never watch on networks we’ve never heard of.

One problem is that there are five televisions in our house, which works out to 2.5 screens per current resident. There’s even a set in the bathroom to give us something to look at in the morning other than our images in the mirror, although I’m not sure which is more depressing.

Another problem is that modern television viewing involves streaming services and every time a hot new show comes along, such as “The Tiger King” or “Hamilton,” it’s on a different one. So we have 3.5 streaming services per current resident and by the time we figure out whether the program we want to watch that evening is on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Peacock or Fubo, it’s time to go to bed.

So we called our cable company and a helpful person there agreed that we clearly could save lots of money on our bill with one of its plans.

After that, the picture gets sort of fuzzy.

To save all that money, the helpful person said, we needed to buy the latest new “smart” TVs, because the ones we currently have are old and dumb.

But, because we have a lot in common with our current TVs, we weren’t sure what kind to buy. So we called a television consultant, who came to our house, took some measurements and said that not only were our current televisions old and dumb, they also were dinky.

The dumb old dinky set in our bedroom armoire, for instance, is only 32 inches and he said it needs to be replaced with something large enough to be comfortably viewed from anywhere in the room. Which would mean getting rid of the armoire and gouging holes in the bedroom walls for hanging a bigger set.

The set in our front room is 42 inches and sits in a giant armoire. The consultant’s recommendation was for a set large enough to be comfortably viewed from anywhere in our next-door neighbor’s living room. Not to mention more holes in the wall.

And, of course, we’d have to get rid of that armoire, too. I don’t remember how the delivery people got that thing into the room in the first place, but I’m pretty sure the only way to get it out of the room would require several husky men. Or a chainsaw.

I’m not sure what’s happening in the bathroom. I think the consultant said something about making space for a bigger set by removing the tub.


Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

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