Hi. My name is Patrick Lew. I'm a punk rocker and I love TV.

My love for television started pretty much the day I was born and stepped into this world. When I was a rugrat, me and my family had an old mid 70's Mitsubishi CRT TV in our living room. Me, my mom and my brother Ricky would watch Full House and Perfect Strangers on ABC on Friday nights after grabbing dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant. Me and my dad would sit at home on his day off work on Thursday nights binging on a brand new scary episode of Unsolved Mysteries on NBC. We didn't subscribe to cable that time. We were using rabbit ears. That is, until my mom got a job once I started Kindergarten. It was around 1991 or so, and my parents called the cable guy and hooked up our service at our house.

Because my family subscribed to cable during the 90's, I grew up with the shows that most people from my generation remember fondly like the Nickelodeon shows from the 90's like Clarissa Explains It All, Doug, Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, Are You Afraid of the Dark and more. I also enjoyed watching wrestling on Monday nights. Many many years before MTV became all about catfishing, pregnant teens and bad reality shows, they played music videos from all the latest artists in pop music! Because of that, I got into 80's and 90's rock and hip hop.

I didn't have an easy time growing up. I didn't have a lot of friends. Being an outcast and experiencing the death of my grandfather affected me deeply. I turned to TV as a source of comfort. If it wasn't rock and roll music, it was watching television that kept my mind straight. When DJ from Full House had to deal with gossip and high school crushes, it helped me cope with similar situations growing up. Whenever I would watch the latest episode of Doug on how he handled bullies or dealing with issues most kids go through as they get older, it became life lessons.

As many of you know, I play guitar and sing in a local rock band in San Francisco. My main passion in life. A lot of people my age go on Facebook to communicate with their friends, maintain their relationships with the opposite sex and for the latest news. I go on social media a lot to put my band and our music out there. But I'm more fascinated about the world around me through television.

As I got older, I wanted to know more about television. Not just the programming, but the technology itself. TV went digital in 2009, and since then, the price of paying for cable every month tripled over the last couple of years. It's kind of funny, because I enjoyed having cable growing up because of the great programming Nickelodeon and MTV was putting out. Now there were hundreds of channels, but nothing good really on the air. For the most part, I was only watching a handful of the channels that were through the bundle I subscribed to. Most of the time, I wasn't home. I was mostly touring and performing as a musician or doing something else outside the house. Plus a lot of the programming gotten very mundane. I found out there was an alternative to the big fat cable bills, so in 2013 I cut the cord officially. I bought two modern TV sets, a television antenna and a Roku and began getting my television programming through over-the-air and through streaming. I began studying the technology of TV and how it can save me money. I am all about saving money and having extra benjamins in my bank account.

Today, I'm still mesmerized by over-the-air television. I think it's the greatest medium out there even in the 21st century. You can get some amazing programming through over-the-air TV nowadays. Not just that, the picture and sound is now 3X better than what you get through cable or satellite. Speaking of programming, there's now sub-channels and we get additional programming and more channels that show things like women's interest, kid's shows, throwback channels, movies, African American programming and more. If you don't believe me, we have channels like K-POP, which is a Korean pop music network that was what MTV used to be back when it wasn't about pregnant teens. Escape is a women's interest channel which is similar to what you get on WE and Lifetime. GetTV is what AMC used to be before The Walking Dead by playing mostly Hollywood movies from the golden era. Bounce is like BET. Qubo is like Disney or Nickelodeon. BUZZR is like the Game Show Network. And Me-TV and Antenna TV is what TV Land used to be by playing nothing but throwback sitcoms and dramas from the 50's all the way until the 90's.

With that programming I can get through a television antenna and monthly subscription to Netflix, that's all I need when it comes to TV. Less is more. Because I cut the cord, I can stream some of my favorite shows I miss that are on cable like Better Call Saul or binge on some of the latest movies via Netflix. The antenna gives me 69 digital channels in San Francisco after I scanned my TV!