Mine is like that Annie. We don't have a landline and ours is $252 We do have all the movie channels. He is the only one that watches it. I don't want to change, because he would complain if he couldn't just flip channels or know exactly which number carries his shows.

Streaming, while nice, you have to search for what you want. He would hate that.

We went to the office once and I complained about the high cost and the fact that we were long time customers and didn't get any breaks, but new people did. You might ask and see if you can get a break. They gave us a bundle that lowered it for I think 18 months.

I pay about $40 for internet via cable andanother $22 or so to stream Netflix and Amazon with the help of ROKU. No special movie channels but I am happy with what I have.

We cut cable a while back, it wasn't worth it for us. Instead we stream- Netflix and Paramount. The Paramount started last fall when mom came to visit and we needed Jeopardy for her :) We have kept it because we like a few shows and channels. We have a Rokku on our TV.

I also stream PlutoTV a lot. It's free. Has channels and plays like TV, mostly older stuff wtih some live news channels.

An OOMA land line is the cheapest, but then you have to have Broadband to hook it up & make it work efficiently.

I don't like feeling ripped off....but ......I'd stick with what you have and be comfortable.

I agree that cable is an obscene amount of money but I've decided that at my age It's a major source of entretainment for me and I can live with it. Besides there's nowhere else you can go and get CNBC, CNN and MSNBC live. Fortunaterly I can afford this bill but feel for those who can't.

We cut the cord quite a few years ago. Presently, we have a landline and internet at our permanent residence and pay about $100.00 a month. I have recently spoken to them about cancelling while we are at our second place, but was told I can put a hold on services and pay only $7.00 a month while away. Nice!

We do have Prime and smart tv's, which is enough for us, along with just antennas. We really don't miss cable at all.

I would call your cable company and have a conversation with them about possibly cancelling. Most of the time, they will offer a special rate for awhile. Frontier is still working out the glitches and I haven't heard good things about their service.

We dumped our cable service a few years ago now and switched to internet only because of similar issues - ridiculously raised rates for more limited channels and super annoying cable equipment. Their remote had about 100 teeny tiny buttons.

You can hook up dumb TVs to Roku or Amazon Fire Sticks and get loads of streaming TV - both free and subscription. As long as the TV has HDMI input and you have good wifi, you don't need any other special connectors. Both cost less than $30. I prefer Roku to the Fire Stick. It just works better with a remote that's easier to use, and you can access Prime on Roku as well, you don't need a Fire Stick for that.

And no more having to keep the TV near the cable outlet either.

We haven’t had cable in years. Then we got Netflix, then a Fire stick, and it is true that looking for something, whether something specific or just inspiration, is a total pain in the neck. We do use ”Just Watch” if we know what we are looking for, but still.

We have an antenna, and you’d be surprised the news you can get. BBC, France24, DW. And some things are available online.

When we dropped the landline, we transferred the number to one of our cells. When my aunt moved to senior living, she transferred her old landline number to her cell.

There are lots of options out there. But But, this from someone who has had cable for maybe 3 years total in life (and when I’m in a hotel with cable, I watch nothing but HGTV, so maybe it’s a good thing I don’t live with it).

Every time our contract expires we do the same dance with Comcast. At present we have a one year contract for internet and TV for just shy of $130/mo.

We have two smart TVs. You might upgrade there; low end smart TVs are dirt cheap. You could enjoy greater resolution along with the ease of streaming, which we use a LOT, via Amazon Prime with a $5/mo. add-on for PBS Masterpiece. IDK when we last watched commercial TV -- outside of a ball game. We have our own sound system and a BluRay.

We do not miss our landline; switched the number to one of two cell phones, where we share a family plan with DS, paying our share at $200/yr.

I understand about a DH who must have certain sports channels, and we both want CNN. We both like Comcast's voice-activated remote.

It's interesting that we pay Comcast, but their advertising for residential is all about Xfinity. IDK how long it takes for the public to stop associating Comcast with eternal delays for service.

$300 is too much. Cut the cable.

When our cable goes up we call and tell them we're thinking of getting a Dish and they lower it. We pay 226.00, I think; for Spectrum. It's the only cable in our area. That includes internet and landline. We watch a lot of tv so we think that's a fair price.

That's insane. I used to have satellite tv but every year they'd jack the price up over $70? Can't remember now. Anyway, when I'd call to cancel they'd offer the lower price again. What a scam, the last time, I just told them no. That was something like ten years ago. I can't imagine paying even $100 for the garbage tv they put out. I read and watch the news online. All the news stations have videos on youtube.

Internet only here is around $75-$80/month. We dropped our landline too - the phone co.'s service & maintenance for landlines here was horrible. We ported the landline # to a cell phone as well.

That is an awful lot of money, at least it would be for me. I got rid of cable years ago and have antenna TV. I have Tivo so I can record, pause, etc. I get a lot of channels because I am close to the city so that might be something you would have to consider. I have internet and just my cell phone. It all works for me but then I'm the only one here and don't have anyone else to consider. You've gotten some good suggestions and maybe the first one is to complain to your current service. Or you could cancel, go on vacation for a week and then start a new service again. I don't have a smart tv either but I did just "join" PBS as a Passport member. That allows me to watch their programming on demand and from Season One on any series they have. Could DH get CNBC online and then hook up to your tv to watch it? I'm not at all conversant in setting these kinds of things up. We have a guy here, he goes by Antenna Cowboy. He came and set up my outisde antenna, hooked up the tv and got everything up and running. He's still available if I have questions and I appreciate that. With Tivo, I get a channel guide as well as record and pause. That is less than $8 a month. I think you can always add other services as well and would probably be much cheaper. I hope you can figure all this out. Because we are in a city, we have several cable companies to choose from but they are all more than I want to pay.

Good luck.

I cut the cable about 7 or 8 years ago, and have been perfectly happy since -- though I admit it would be difficult if I liked watching sports. Mine is a dumb TV, and I use it, and computer monitors, which are hooked up to the internet through either an Apple TV box or a Google Chrome dongle. I vary my streaming subscriptions frequently - I'll subscribe to one or two for a few months, then cancel them and subscribe to another for several months, etc.....switching them around so I'm not paying for too many at once. Amazon Prime is the only one I have full time. It's great that I can cancel and sign back up easily on line, and there are so many good options out there if you're looking for good things to watch (not just current, new things to watch). Not just the well known ones like Netflix, Disney+, or Hulu, but BritBox for British stuff, Criterion for great old movies, Hoopla and Kanopy from the library, AcornTV for more British stuff (but I like BritBox better), Curiosity Stream for documentaries.....

I agree with summersrhythm and Kathsgrdn, y'all are nuts to pay that much TV, especially for worthless news channels. I don't watch any news channels, because they all get on my nerves. Kathsgrdn is right, nearly everything on TV is garbage.

When we lived in the Houston area, we got about 100 channels for free....just on antennae. But when we moved up here, we could barely get two, so we got DirectTV. I think it was about $60 something a month. I care nothing about tv but my husband was an invalid, and he enjoyed watching tv. Mostly old westerns, which I particularly can't stand, so would busy myself elsewhere.

After he passed, it went to $96.10. That is with no special movie channels or sports channel or anything extra. Then it went to $110 something. I canceled. I should have done it sooner, but just felt overwhelmed with all I had to deal with.

I do have a ROKU tv....and it was cheap. Like, about $125. I get free movie channels and was able to add some of the sites that I watched on the computer. I watch a lot of documentaries and YouTube and I don't care about regular tv at all. The only time it was a problem, was during some recent bad weather, tornado warnings, and my ISP went down. So I couldn't follow where the storm was moving.

I also like that I can get just about every radio station on ROKU, and I can listen to the news there. We also have very poor radio reception up here, so that is a plus for me, since I listen to the radio all the time.

I got tired of the yearly negotiations with my cable/internet provider when they jacked up my rates - way up. I dropped down to internet only (but last year still negotiated a lower rate). It helps that we have 2 other options for internet in my neighborhood. Oh, ATT just recently rolled out their fiberoptic in the area and offered good deals (including no price increases - yay for competition!); getting great reviews so far from the neighborhood.

I have a Roku and love it! With that I can get several free news channels (including Reuters, ABC, NBC, CBS, very many local stations, Bloomberg, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, even CBC, Sky, France24, and others - but not MSNBC or CNBC) along with many free movie channels, and more. It looks like the NBC app (different than Peacock) does offer an option to get MSNBC or CNBC but I didn't look into it enough to see what the subscription cost might be. It might require a subscription to a streaming platform that offers live TV, such as YouTubeTV, Hulu+Live, a few others.

I also subscribe to PBS Passport (for a $60 yearly donation to my local station) - with that I can play shows on demand. I have free Peacock (NBC & affiliated) and a separate NBC, and pay $3/month for Paramount (CBS & affiliated) and basic Hulu.

Overall, I think that you can get what you want at a far lower cost than you are paying now, depending on what your ISP will charge for internet alone.

The number of channels offered can be overwhelming, but you can also ignore most of them!

You can stream CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/live-tv

We cut cable television but still have cable-provided high speed Internet and landline. We have to keep the landline because cell service in our location is horrible as is OTA television transmission. Phone and Internet are about $120/month, a significant savings even losing out on the package pricing that included cable TV.

BTW, I think you have to drop service for 90 days minimum to be considered a new customer.

Annie we talked our provider's price down (triple play TV/Phone/Internet) by eliminating outdated charges for the rented converter boxes. Saved about $40/month. If you've have the same boxes for several years they may drop those box rental charges rather than losing a paying customer.

We switched from Dish to streaming about 4 years ago. I don't know why we waited so long. Our monthly costs are now:

Cable Internet - $40 at one location, $65 at another. Single service contracts, we'd have these anyway.

While internet providers try to convince customers otherwise, internet "speed" is not speed at all - it's capacity. Call it bandwidth. Think of water flowing through a pipe, always flowing at the same speed no matter what the size of the pipe is. How much water do you need, the amount that comes out of a 1 inch pipe or the amount that fits in a 2 inch pipe? For a two-four person household where no one is doing extreme high def gaming or high def video, 50 megs is more than plenty. To close the example, with just a few people simultaneously using the internet, a 50 M connection is the same speed and responsiveness as a 100 M connection. Don't pay for more than is required.

TV - We have Youtube TV, $65 per month. We can use it wherever we are, so we save money not paying for TV service for two locations. Hulu has similar service and I think the same cost. At one location a smart TV, at the other a Roku stick because it's not a smart TV. The quality and ease of use for the two is the same, no difference at all.

Telephone - As Nicole mentioned, Ooma. Spend $80 one time for the Telo hardware from Amazon, $40 one time to transfer over and keep your existing landline number, and then it's $5 a month, which is the amount of taxes. Really and truly, $5 per month. Excellent service, excellent sound quality. Payback (recovery) of the up front cost in just a few months, and you're money ahead afterward.

Misc streaming sources - Amazon Prime, Netflix, the odd other one or two - we've had these all along and would have them anyway.

I've had Ooma for nearly 10 years and it's saved me thousands of dollars. My DISH bill was approaching $130 per month and now I pay about half that. Everything else is unchanged. I think it takes little math to figure out that telco and cable TV and phone service can be had for much lower costs.

We pay $140 a month for the internet alone. We have some heavy gamers here though. We also pay for Netflix $25 a month Disney $134 a year and crave which has HBO $120 a year. In total I pay similar to what I would pay for cable before. We don't have a land line.

Netflix went up another $5 which is always a hard one for me to swallow.

DH mostly watches everything on YouTube including old westerns.

I have Netflix crave or a recorded show of my own in the background when I'm working. It's worth it to us and to the gamers in our family.

The question, we as retired, often ask ourselves; "is this going to change the quality of our lives?"

answer that, and there you have it

DH has negotiated with our local internet/land line company a few times but the price keep creeping back up. At this point when we break down the costs..it's the internet that's the most and we aren't interested in dial up.

I hope no one's quality of life depends on the TV content they do or don't receive.

People who are housebound, invalids certainly rely on TV for some enjoyment in their lives.

Sure, but there are many other activities for housebound people besides watching TV. Hobbies, reading, working (for pay or as a volunteer), charitable work, and many other things can be done from home. If watching TV is the main activity of someone's day, few would consider that to be indicative of having a high quality of life.

"People who are housebound, invalids certainly rely on TV for some enjoyment in their lives."

Not me ! I'm housebound most of the time, except for doctor visits, am home alone much of the time. and I don't watch TV at all. I do watch videos on YouTube, where I can choose what I'm interested in, as opposed to being stuck with the drivel on TV. Even though I'm disabled, I can find so many other things to do to entertain myself besides sitting in front of a TV.

I've heard of someone who was addicted to one particular news channel and kept it on 24 hours a day. I can't even imagine how anyone can find any news channel so important that they have to have it.

yea with Comcast our bill is about $305 a month, I would do streaming if it was just me, but cable is easier for my husband to find what he wants to watch. I do need to call and see about a lower price, been a good while since I previously did.

A sincere 'Atta Girl" to you, woodrose. It sounds like you're well attuned to spending your time wisely in ways you enjoy, that don't involve watching TV.

krystalmoon2009," I would do streaming if it was just me, but cable is easier for my husband to find what he wants to watch." Yes!, Yes!, Yes! You DO understand what I am saying.

Our strategy has been to call our cable department's retention line, threaten to leave for FIOS which is available here, and always get a reduction. We are two people, have 3 cable boxes with HBO, Showtime, Starz (none of which I watch), 200 speed internet, and phone service. We use remote extenders to broadcast from one cable box to a tv in another room without a cable box, and we pay about $190 monthly. We keep rejecting any of their offers until we feel we couldnt do better.

Streaming, as I see it, has a particular problem in that because of all the different services, there is no cohesive guide, so it's sort of a hunt and find exercise, not for me.

Call your cable company and tell them you cannot afford to keep cable at their prices. They do not want lose you with so many people dropping cable. We have cable for sports. They will lower your monthly payments. We have done this several times.

I suspect I'm the opposite of your DH when it comes to TV viewing, but I do have a couple of thoughts to share.

You could start by getting a smart TV. Hisense and TCL are two brands with high quality on the low end of the price scale. You wouldn't have to pay much more than $400 for a 50" model with gorgeous picture quality. Your husband might have so much fun talking to the remote that he might not miss the shows he isn't watching.

I'm not an expert in streaming packages, but I know a wide variety are available. A sports-fan friend recently gave up his cable and got a Hulu package that includes ESPN. Just this week, CNN came out with a new streaming service, CNN+. I believe all who sign up this month will do so at a 50% discount, paying only $2.99/month. The discount remains for the life of your membership.

Internet companies rip you off too. I went from a "higher" speed down to their cheapest one and when I checked the actual upload and download speed for both, they were the same. No difference at all.

Thank you all for taking the time to share your insights and experience with me. It's been most helpful and given me a lot to think about and potential directions to go in. Right now, DH is leaning toward waiting until they finish stringing the fiber optic and we have a genuine alternative. But I will certainly call them and see if I can't get a price reduction. I have tried that in the past and gotten nowhere, but it's worthwhile to try again, now that they know a valid competitor is in the picture.