We were a little late to the cord cutting party. We had cable at our main Vermont home in 2008. When we decided that we wanted tv at our Vermont summer home 25 miles away in a more rural location there was no OTA according to the various web tools and we didn't like the idea of having two cable bills.
So we had Dish Network installed in 2008. When we first installed Dish, they would do 4 rooms free... our flexible installer agreed to install a satellite dish and 3 of the 4 rooms at our main home and 1 room at our summer home 25 miles away... and I paid him separately for the second satellite dish and installation.
In 2010 we demolished and rebuilt the summer home and made it our main home in early 2011. Then we did the inverse... in DW's surname (which conveniently is different from mine), with our flexible installer installing 3 of 4 rooms in the new home and 1 room at the former main home which we planned to sell. In Dec 2011 we sold the former main home and eliminated that "room from our Dish contract.
Since we snowbird, we were going on vacation hold for 6 months while we were in Florida. We went on vacation hold in Dec 2019 paid the ~$5/mongh vacation hold fee until we got back in early 2020, at which point I had learned about YTTV and at $50/month it was cheaper then Dish so we decided to give it a trial month while Dish was still on vacation hold. The trial went well and met DW's approval, so we killed Dish and returned all the equipment and used YTTV for the summer home.
Wouldn't you know it. a couple months later YTTV added some channels that I could care less about and jacked the price up to $65/month. Now $15/month more shouldn't be a big deal but it peed me off so I cancelled YTTV the day after they announced knowing that I could always easily go back to YTTV once the time that we had paid for ran out.
Then I was searching for other alternatives before our YTTV month ran out and came across a webpage where someone plugged a coax cable to the tv and pushed the copper wire nub on the other end of the coax into the slot of the flathead screw that holds the cover for an electrical recepticle and ran a channel scan. I decided to give it a try (it was a slow day). Sure enough, I got one channel, but a channel that I know shares the tower with numerous other channels.
Off to Walmart. Bought 3 antennas and tried them all and got a number of channels. Decided to move to the attic. Got more channels. Tried a few other antennas. Ended up with an YAGI-style antenna mounted in the attic and get ~30 channels... all the major channels except Fox.
Later installed a Fire TV Recast in the attic that "broadcasts" via our home wifi network to each of our 4 tvs throughout the house... monthly cost... $0. All 4 tvs use the same FireTV remote and same Fire TV interface for live OTA, recorded OTA or streaming.
The downside is that at our Florida condo Comcast cable is included in the condo fee and while we could use OTA and streaming in Florida we are paying for cable anyway so we use it. The blessing in disguise is that when we are in Vermont DW can use our Comcast credentials to stream her beloved HGTV, we use the same credentials to watch major golf rounds that are not on broadcast channels, Wimbledon, US Open tennis, etc and I use it to view CNBC.
So the cable in our condo fee for 2023 is $41/mo (we get a screaming deal under our bulk contract) and we pay another ~$40/mo for streaming. We have Peacock from our Comcast cable on the condo, Prime and then flip beween Paramount+, Apple TV+, HBO/Max, BritBox, etc watch a bunch of stuff and then turn them off and another one on. So methinks less than $100/month for two different homes is pretty good.