Prepare to be blown away. I hope you’re wearing shoes because this news bit is so astounding it will *literally* knock your socks off. They will fly, unaided, from your feet.

Here it is, are you ready?

Turns out, Americans would give up their TV service before they’d give up their Internet service. Anyone surprised? Anyone? No?

To be fair, people really love having their TV service. I have friends who are chomping at the bit for the next season of Game of Thrones to start, and I believe are paying for cable just so they can watch it. I have another friend who claims they wouldn’t be able to live if they couldn’t watch Judge Judy. Seriously.

The thing is, much of that is available if you have Internet service and a little patience. For example, you all know I’m a reluctant fan of The Walking Dead, and I am able to buy episodes through a (legit) video marketplace the day after they air for $3.00 per HD episode, or $2.00 for SD. So I pay $12.00 a month for that show as opposed to $131 I was paying for cable just to watch that one show. And you’d be surprised what can be found on YouTube.

Even the SuperBowl was streamed online this year for anyone who wanted to watch, cable subscription or not.

In fairness to people who love TV, some networks seem like they love being beholden to cable companies (by the way, one of the big issues with the Comcast / Time-Warner merger is that the new company will be able to extort higher carrier fees from content providers, meaning the networks, which will then be passed on to you) . HBO requires a cable service to watch their shows online, as does HGTV and many others, but if you’re patient many shows end up on DVD or Netflix or somewhere else in relatively short order.

It was an adjustment giving up my cable TV service, but I’m glad I did it. There’s a sense of freedom and independence that came with it, and apparently I’m not the only one who came to that conclusion. And that is not going unnoticed.

I should also mention this bizarre point made in the original article: “Pew noted spectacular growth in use of the Web, especially since 1995.” So, in other words, there has been spectacular growth in the single most revolutionary development since the introduction of the transistor, especially if we start counting from the day it was made available to the general public. Stop the presses!