That’s it, Chicken Licken!

Did I swear? What do you think? It really hurt. I came out of my kitchen door, rounded the corner and clang!

My ankle caught the edge of a massive rust-flecked metal dish. I hopped on one foot, cursing like a sailor.

A stream of bad language flowed out of me, as murky and foul as the Whanganui River after a flood. It wasn’t a good look for a journalist who’s supposed to have an extensive vocabulary at his disposal.

And when I had almost exhausted my stock of swear words and my ankle had been downgraded from ‘‘probably broken’’ to ‘‘swollen and throbbing’’, I raised my fist towards the UHF TV transmitter on a distant hill and bellowed out one last cuss for good measure: ‘‘F… you, Sky TV!’’

I should, of course, take some responsibility myself.

My old Sky dish was only lying on the path because a technician had just whipped it off my roof and replaced it with a digital Freeview aerial.

Tired of coughing up high monthly fees for a lot of old bollocks I didn’t watch, I had finally cut the Sky cord, which had started to feel like an expensive noose.

Busted ankle aside, it was such a painless process, I wondered why I’d left it so long.

Others had been far less patient. When I phoned around a bunch of mates for a quick survey, three quarters had quit Sky over the past two years.

I put out a ‘‘who else has bailed from Sky?’’ tweet, and my cellphone’s notification alert started chirping like an over-caffeinated cockatoo.

People were suddenly queuing up to condense their disgust into pithy one liners of 140 characters or less.

There was universal condemnation of the company’s pricing structure, with those who were still Sky subscribers doing so grudgingly to access sports coverage.

Sky was perceived as being very slow to adapt to an increasingly crowded entertainment market.

A subscription price point that made sense during times of monopoly now seemed downright arrogant.

How dare they charge a thumping $50 a month for a compulsory basic package that I never watch, wailed the multitudes, just so I can then cough up a further tenner or so to watch the channels I want, like SoHo or Rialto?

And so, understandably, a mass exodus had begun.

What were fellow Sky absconders now doing instead?

Most reported that they watched Lightbox or NEON as part of a cheap bundle deal, paid for Netflix, watched live sports games at friends’ houses or the pub rather than at home, and accessed other film and TV content via ‘‘nefarious means’’.

This is my plan, too, now that I’ve ditched the dish at long last.

I will be sitting with an icepack of frozen peas on my ankle, streaming more good shows than ever before, and spending my old Sky subs money on a better class of beer.

Tired of coughing up high monthly fees for a lot of old bollocks I didn't watch, I had finally cut the Sky cord...