I’m about ready to cancel all three of my video subscriptions, and the paper version of the Toronto Star. I just don’t watch TV often enough — lately, not at all — and the newspapers are available on line for less than half the price. If I suddenly come down with a desperate desire to watch a movie, I can rent it on iTunes.

I have been through this process before, more than once. Back in the ‘90s, when my first marriage broke up, I disconnected the cable and put the TV in the basement, promising myself I would set it up again if I missed it. I didn’t miss it, and a couple of months later gave the TV and the VCR to a young couple whose apartment building burned down, taking all their stuff with it. When Edmund and I had been married a couple of years, I unhooked the cable again when we realized that we were paying more than a hundred bucks a month and rarely found anything we liked on the hundreds of channels we had access to.

The subscription services I actually use are Spotify, for music and podcasts, and Sirius XM, for satellite radio both at home and in the car. I think those are worth keeping.