Local TV blackout

My Minnesota Vikings have one of their biggest games in a while this afternoon, with their first trip to the playoffs in four years. Unfortunately, the NFL blackout rules apply in our home for a very simple reason -- we don't have TV.

Anne and I have always persisted stubbornly without cable/satellite TV. This worked out relatively well in Oakland. We could get most of the major networks (although the time that NBC moved its transmitter right before the Olympics was pretty annoying) plus a handful of local channels that showed things like Cantonese news and Cheaters. We figured this was entertainment enough, so we never plunked down the extra money for cable.

Things changed when we moved to Vermont. We could no longer rely on getting a signal with our set-top rabbit ears. I've heard rumors of getting PBS in Poultney, but haven't had any luck myself. Nevertheless, we decided to save the money and go without TV. Now it's not like we're those people who condescendingly say "Well, we don't watch TV" because the truth is we watch a lot of TV. We just have to watch it all on DVD. Like a lot of our neighbors, we are now devoted Netflix subscribers. This works out pretty well because it's about half the price of cable, and we get to choose what we want to watch. Especially now that Watch Instantly is available for the Mac, it's almost like having live TV coming into our house. OK, not quite, but it's getting there.

But that still leaves us in the cold when it comes to live sports. I had to "watch" the Vikings finally clinch a playoff spot against the Giants with ESPN's ridiculous Gamecast, and had to put Matt and Cascade through the same to watch their beloved Beavers in the Sun Bowl last week. If you think football is slow and boring, try watching it this way. Unfortunately, the local pub is closed on Sunday and Monday (prime football watching days), so I have seen very little football since I moved here.

[A funny thing happened to us shortly after we moved here related to our lack of TV. I got a call from AC Nielsen asking us to track our TV watching. I told the woman that we didn't have TV reception, so our data wouldn't be too useful. She seemed a bit bemused, but said to go ahead and complete the survey anyway. Now I've always wanted to be a Nielsen family and help influence which shows stay on the air and which get cancelled. I'm convinced that if I'd been tracking my TV viewing a couple years ago, Arrested Development would still be on the air. (Not that it would do me any good without television.) My stepdad suggested I fill out the form in the spirit of OJ Simpson: this is what I would have watched had I watched TV. Instead, I just left all of the time slots blank and sent it back. Anne and I were paid $20 for our trouble, which seemed like a pretty fair compensation.]

There's a big TV antenna on top of our barn, and if I ever get the motivation, I might actually try to see if I can get it to work. We went ahead and got one of the government-subsidized digital converters for our analog TV, so we're poised to have television in our home again. In the meantime, Anne and I will make the trip up to Rutland and the nearest sports bar to watch this afternoon's game. Skol, Vikings!