I have tried to get my wife to pause some of our subs but she absolutely refuses. She says "we're not poor" (we are not) and apparently just wants to spend $70/mo on these damn things.

Even if costs were lower, I still think we should not have so many, since it spoils our kids. I don't want them to see TV as "we have access to everything all the time". I want them to see that there are tradeoffs, and understand that we could have hundreds of dollars more if we had Netflix for half the year and Disney+ for half the year, for example.

There's also something to be said for restarting a sub and being excited to watch content that you had been waiting to see.

I remember as a kid, mostly having access to HBO/Showtime etc during their "free" week/month that came along about once a year or so. I think my dad subbed for a couple months once, but that was it. Otherwise it was just basic cable and nothing else.

Even then, 90% of the time was watching local/broadcast networks via cable.

> "we have access to everything all the time"

I remember when there were 3 networks. I remember when those networks stopped broadcasting content around midnight by playing the national anthem and then playing bars or just going off the air. I used to think the concept of UHF is kind of lost, but then realized it's kind of just what YouTube has become-weird, random, wacky content produced by just about anybody that can hit record on a camera.