The Monkey Shack

My wife and I recently had the conversation about whether or not we should keep our Dish Network subscription or just cancel it all together. We'd had the same conversation before, but we've never actually gone through with it. As soon as the topic came up this time I immediately began trying to think of all the possible things I would ever want to watch on TV but would no longer be able to. What if I wanted to catch the game one night? What about when my wife wants to watch The Hills or Jon and Kate Plus 8? What about when our 3-year-old wants to watch a cartoon on Disney Channel after breakfast?

I've made similar lists when we have had the discussion in the past, and each time we agree that we'd better keep Dish instead. But I'm no longer convinced that is true. Let's start with my son. He would rather watch Cars for the 15,000th time than watch anything else on TV. Second, he and I watched two episodes of Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on my BlackBerry last night before he went to bed. As for my wife, she watches The Hills or The City online more often than she does on TV. And I'm never home enough to actually watch a full game (I didn't even watch a full quarter of the Super Bowl), but have instead gotten used to following games on my phone with ESPN's mobile GameTracker.

Go to the web site of any network and you can watch full episodes of pretty much any show, at your own convenience. I haven't seen a single episode of The Office on TV in two years, instead watching them online over the weekend. Same goes for 24. And with sites like Hulu or Joost offering free movies and TV shows, rarely do you come across anything on television that isn't also readily available in its entirety online.

Internet users in the U.S. viewed a record 14.3 billion videos in December alone. That's BILLION, with a "B" (cue up Dr. Evil). Hulu visitors watched more than 24 million videos the same month. Joost users viewed 818,000 hours of video in January, up 25 percent from the previous month. The future of television is online, and that future has in many ways already arrived.

That's it, I'm gonna call Dish Network right away on my phone. As soon as my son is done watching cartoons on it.