by Larry Brody
Yesterday we linked to a video from one of our regular contributors, Cord Cutters News, which covered the latest developments in – aw, you guessed it – cord cutting.
Today the Brody family has its own developments to announce. Without further ado:
- After six straight months of having the Acorn streaming channel as part of our Amazon Prime playlist, Gwen and I have cancelled it.
- After four straight days of having the Britbox streaming channel as part of our Amazon Prime playlist, Gwen and I have cancelled it as well.
Strange as it may seem, the we cancelled both for the same reason.
We ran out of shows to watch.
The number of shows on both channels is limited. Also limited is the number of genuinely new or even recent shows.
Acorn has some interesting shows, especially those made for/by Acorn itself, but for the most they only play one or two seasons of them (and their other shows) at a time, which is frustrating as hell when Google tells us that four or five or even more seasons of shows we’ve been enjoying exist but aren’t being made available.
Britbox also has some interesting shows, including some that are startlingly and gratifyingly excellent. Most of those, however, are a decade or more old and available elsewhere. Like at Acorn, for example.
I’m willing to return to Acorn when they start showing more seasons of Candice Renoir, a French police procedural the Brodys thoroughly enjoy, and to Britbox when new episodes of Vera and Endeavour return (unless Acorn gets them first).
For now we’re sticking to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video (the basic choices), and Paramount+.
The ability to mix and match and stop watching and paying for a channel when you’ve exhausted its supply is the best thing about cord cutting as far as I’m concerned.
Well, that’s actually the second best thing. Number One is the free viewing week most streamers offer. The four days during which we saw everything we thought we would like on Britbox were amazingly, wonderfully, satisfyingly free.
