The Costco Connection

By Marc Saltzman

YOU’VE PICKED UP a shiny new tablet, but now you want to load it up with stuff to read, watch or listen to. Here’s the good news: You don’t have to blow your budget on TV shows, music, movies or e-books. In fact, if you know where to look, you don’t have to spend anything at all.

Oh sure, you’re well aware there are free games and apps, but you can also enjoy a ton of media without having to open your wallet.

Free e-books

For new releases, you can borrow e-books and audiobooks from many local libraries. This means you won’t have to physically get to a library, and you’ll never face late fees again.

All you need is your library card and the free OverDrive app. Once it’s been downloaded, you’ll be prompted to create an Adobe ID (if you don’t already have one), and authorize it to work with OverDrive. Now you can borrow e-books and audiobooks wirelessly—even current New York Times best-sellers.

For classic books, including those in the public domain (free), awesome apps include Gutenberg Project, which offers more than 46,000 free e-books and audiobooks. Popular picks include Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Shakespeare’s timeless works.

Free music

Rather than pay to download the songs by track, or subscribe to for-pay music streaming services, the free TuneIn Radio app gives you access to more than 100,000

radio stations from around the world. Use the Search feature to find something you’re in the mood to hear, be it an artist, song title, music genre or country of origin.

Want local radio? Tap to see all the AM and FM stations in your area and tune in at home or on the go (with album artwork even). Alternatively, you can listen to Internet-only stations, such as 1.FM.

Another great app is Songza, which offers
curated playlists based on the day of the week, time
of day and mood you might be in.

Free TV shows, movies

Several apps offer ways to watch television shows without having to pay anything. All of the major TV networks have free apps that let you watch full episodes. The CBS app,

for example, offers The Big Bang Theory, CSI:

Crime Scene Investigation, Survivor and The Young and the Restless, to name a few, while the NBC app offers The Voice, The Blacklist, The Tonight Show, Days of Our Lives and so on. And there’s no shortage of content to watch on the Hulu app (though you need to pay for Hulu Plus).

You can download many hundreds of free shows—often pilots or the first episode of a new season—from iTunes for the iPad and from Google Play. Also check out apps by You Tube, Crackle, SideReel, Flixster and Popcornflix.

Free podcasts and
radio shows

Finally, audio-based podcasts can be great entertainment on a long trip, whether you’re interested in downloading a comedy routine, Same goes for classic radio dramas. Popularized in the ’40s before TV took off, old-time radio (OTR) shows, as they’re referred to today, are enjoying a 21st-century renaissance thanks to the Internet and MP3 files. A whole new generation of listeners can now experience these wonderfully written and performed “theater of the mind” plays.

Filling up your tablet with these tales is as easy as subscribing to one of the many dozen OTR podcasts (some with daily updates) or bookmarking websites such as archive.org, relicradio.com and otrcat.com, each with thousands of free download-able episodes. C

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Filling your tablet

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Marc Saltzman,
a leading high-tech
reporter, contributes
to more than three
dozen prominent
publications, appears
on radio and TV, and is
the author of 15 books.
He’s on Twitter at
@marc_saltzman