I strongly support anyone who cuts cable or satellite service. We have been 'off' the cable/satellite TV service for three years now. We have cable internet, free over air antenna, and netflix streaming. Together, they total about $63 month. Additionally, through the internet, I can actually dial up many movies and TV programs, as well as live sports. Yeah, some of the streaming is not actually completely legit, but it is available and anything that challenges these monopolistic cable/satellite providers is OK by me. The prices for their services have gotten out of hand.
When we travel, we see what we're missing in the hotels, but honestly about 85% of the channel offerings we don't watch. Until these companies lower their profit margins and/or start offering a la carte channel selections, it's just not worth it to pay the high prices for what we consider to be a waste of money. I think if enough people follow suit, they may face the reality of how their pricing & packages are becoming obsolete. I was happily surprised to see that HBO will soon be offering stand alone online streaming. This is the way of the future. It is interesting to watch how strongly the cable companies are now trying to gain control of the IP bandwidth market - they obviously can see the writing on the wall as people start to gravitate away from their overpriced TV packages and start to get what they want from internet streaming services. I feel strongly that they should not be allowed to control this market as well, as we will just have a repeat of the monopolies they already have. They are going to fight tooth and nail to protect their high profits.
It wasn't long ago that a basic cable service with 30 or so channels was about 25 bucks a month. Even though we can easily afford it, it's crazy to me to pay over a hundred bucks a month for TV. And if you combine this with your typical smartphone bill, it can easily add up to well over 200 bucks a month. We have simple flip phones, and avoid the higher costs of smartphone pricing as well. Again, a personal choice, but I don't need/miss having the latest greatest smartphone. All I want to be able to do is make/receive a phone call from my mobile phone. Besides that, I notice a lot of people use them to avoid talking to each other anymore when out in public, or even sitting in a room with friends!
A little bit of a rant. sorry...