this has been very educational for me. I despise charter, which is what I have and have had for years. I'm sick to death of them trying to push their landline phone service on me, we don't need landline. We do watch quite a lot of tv, but only a few channels. I was really hesitant to go with uverse, that's att, and I was so delighted to get them out of my life back in the days of long distance landlines. Sounds like I need to look into this roku????

When I was ready to revamp the services I pay for - I created a spreadsheet with all of the services and their prices today and after the new subscriber bonuses expired...

Television: Charter, U-Verse, DirecTv, Dish
Internet: Charter, U-Verse
Landline Phone: Charter, U-Verse, Vonage

After I crunched all the numbers and did it both with and without bundling costs, I came to these conclusions:

1. Bundling is a great incentive for the new subscriber and not a deal for those who stick with a bundle after the honeymoon is over.
2. Unless you like rewiring your network, phones, and TV every year or two - look beyond the new customer discount. Look at the customer service reputations, quality of service, and rate increases over the last few years.
3. Every area - even different neighborhoods in Janesville - has different pricing schemes. Areas that charter competes with U-Verse are cheaper than areas that have no competition. Yeah, seems shady doesn't it?
4. In my area I got DirecTv for television, Charter 30Mbps internet, and Vonage for my landline which I plan to keep until my kids are old enough to get their own cells.

In two years, I'll be back crunching the same numbers and evaluating switching again... I have no loyalty to any company, I'm out for #1 and trying not to step in #2.

I haven't had cable in 5 years and couldn't be happier. I have Netflix so if I'm in the mood for TV or a movie I'm good for only $10/month. Cable companies are insane, why would I want to pay the price to watch Tv just to have to watch commericals or channels I don't want so their companies can blow half their revenue on advertising as much as possible. It's stupid. I wish I had a enough money to start a cable company and only charge you for the channels you want to have. I have no use of the spanish or god channels.

havent had pay tv in years , we stream netflex and hulu , and the antenna pulls in a ton of channel s, the sports is the only thing we have issues with .

I have two words for you: ROKU and NETFLIX!
If you already have internet sevice, you buy the tiny Roku box at Walmart for under 100.00 and you can get loads of news and tv AND MUSIC! Get the netflix option for about 8.00 a month and there are loads of great tv: kids shows, documentaries, popular stuff---with NO COMMERCIALS! LOVE IT!

I'll be making the call tomorrow.

We went from extended basic to basic cable in 2000. In 2005 we dropped the cable altogether and used rabbit ears and then a digital converter. In February our TV turned 20 years old..then it decided it was done. We didn't replace it. We have 5 kids and it is rarely missed. They watch dvds on the computer occasionally.

paying to watch informercials seem like a waste to me. I have netflix and go to the redbox for a movie now and then. Get around 10 local channels in hd off a tower antenna so thats more that enough tv for me and the kids.

They should have pay by channel. Only pay for the few channels you watch, and not the thousands you don't watch

Lets hope free tv stays free. Here is a article about Rupert Murdoch threating free tv in dec 2009.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/29...

I dumped satellite over a year ago. We just watch Netflix on TV now. $9 a month vs $50 is a no brainer. We have the internet so we don't need to wait for local news. National news too. We haven't missed anything of any importance.

We have not had cable or even TVs in our home for many years. We donated the then newer TVs to anyone who wanted them. Many did not want them because they did not have flat screens and this happened when those first came out. People sure can be picky with free. We also have no land line or internet at home. Those are at the office so our time at home is our own with the exception of our cellphones.

We also have a rule of not talking, texting or answering our cell phones in a moving vehicle unless someone answers for us.

We spend our time with family, reading, talking to each other, volunteering, and working in our business. We receive several newspapers at our house(including the Gazette) and view others on line so we get a variety of thoughts and viewpoints. Do we miss the TVs occasionally for a special movie or event - only occasionally. Most sports are available at various locations in town, including smart phones for free.

Have not had cable for many years, and only occasionally miss it when I hear about something on cable that I would watch. It is unaffordable at this time.
So we use an indoor antenna for broadcast stations, but we watch more stuff from the internet, mostly Netflix.

We really should get together and boycott cable and satellite TV until they get the rates under control. Our Government did a good thing by giving us network stations in HD over the airwaves for free. I'm surprised that more people have not invested in a decent antenna -- they don't cost much.

Did years ago - pay for all that garbage? What a relief. You're welcome to support it, but not me!

It's not like gas...you don't need it to get to work and around town! If most everyone dropped it for 3-6 months, I imagine they might have to figure out a way to reduce the prices and improve the quality.

Have been without cable for about two months and wondered how I would survive at the beginning but I find, like the others, I don't miss it at all. My TV is used for DVDs and my computer is handy for catching viral clips of shows here and there (like Donald Driver on DWTS.) In fact, it's better. I didn't have to sit through anyone else! Now going without Internet??? That's a horse of a different color.

Do it the old fashioned way. With a TV antenna. Why pay for something that is (nearly) free?

I dropped Charter's TV (but kept their Internet) and went with DirecTV. I've had more weather-related satellite reception outages than I ever had with Charter's cable service.

I'm debating Uverse when my contract is up, but will jump to the first provider of a la carte channel subscriptions( even if I pay a penalty to do so). I know that will drop the income stream of the provider that offers individual channel selection, but they will be able to negotiate their upstream costs when some formerly bundled channels see a serious drop in subscribers once people can choose NOT to subscribe to a bunch of premium channels to be able to watch one channel. I'm on DirecTV's choice plan - $150 channels, and nothing worth watching (or watching a second time) right now.

We cut the cable over a year ago and went with Netflix and Huluplus on the Roku. And now our phones, wii, and kindle all stream them too. Do I miss network television? Not really. Never watched much sports to begin with. I do miss the history channel, but that's about it. With Netflix my 4 year old can pick her own cartoons to watch, and we have Huluplus for most of the shows we watch on Abc, Nbc and Fox. We don't get Ellen, American Idol, or America's got talent though.... Still worth saving the money though. Phone and net are $85 vs the $170 we were paying for HD receivers and extra channels that we weren't watching due to Netflix in the first place.

We cut Charter when they raised my bill $60 in one month, with no warning or increase in service....We are doing just fine without them and so are the kids

I took the plunge - I have an antenna on my garage - I get perfect reception of all the networks plus there are 3 channels for 21 and 2 for each of the others. My ever-so basic cable cost was way too high for just the networks with no extra anything. And kept going up up up all the time. It gave me great pleasure to call and cancel cable!

If I want to watch any of the HBO, AMC or any of the other cable special programs, IE "Breaking Bad", "Dexter" etc. I just go to the video store and rent them - for a FRACTION of the cost of the monthly cable YEA! Cable Free! Whoopee!

Cut that cord several years ago and only miss a couple of the channels...scifi, discovery, food network and hallmark. I really don't miss it that much. Bought an anteana for $13 on closeout at Radio Shaq and I get all the Rockford & Madison channels FREE. love ME tv has all the old tv shows I use to love to watch and on Sat night Svengholie...where I can see all those old B rated movies you just don't see much of anymore...kinda fun for a change than all that so called "reality" tv.

I cut it a year ago. I put up an antenna and can pick up 40 or more over-the-air channels from Madison and Milwaukee. Best thing is, its free.

Cut mine months ago and now do what Irish Mafia does. Don't mind at all. Would probably go back if a la carte is ever offered (depending on price).

Wouldn`t ever think of it. I`m retired and don`t know what I`d do without TV. As a matter of fact I just had DirecTV installed yesterday, and kept my Charter cable. I added DirecTV to watch my Colts. The NFL package was free with a 2 yr committment.

gazettefan, I don't have Charter - their top tier internet was still wonky for me after multiple fixes and 4 new routers (the signal dropped briefly every 17 minutes). I changed to ATT U-Verse. Their "Basic" is 20 local channels for ~$20 (packaged). I still save $50 a month having dropped from their 200 channel option.

I cut the cable 17 years ago when my bill went from $40 to $45 - a 12.5% increase with no increase in service and haven't missed it. I have no idea what it would cost today but it's money I'm spending elsewhere.

DTV is the way to go. With all those stations people have I always hear complaints that there is nothing on they want to watch anyway. What I hated the most when I DID have cable was that although I was paying for it, when I came home from work all that was on was infomercials. Went with free TV ever since then. I just wish there was a similar alternative for Cell Phones!!

I guess I cut the cord in 1998. We had just the cable that got the network stations and a few other things. We cancelled and have never had it since. After such a long time it is interesting to see what is on the tube these days. It is mostly offensive, demeaning, violent and basically stupid (not much different than in 1998!). I'm amazed people will hand over their hard-earned money for that. Glad it's not part of my life.

Vector, I recently told Charter that I wanted to cut back from expanded basis to basic. They said that basic by itself is no longer allowed and that I had to pay 60 bucks for basic/expanded basic together; so I dropped all Charter's TV and now only have its Internet.

Let us know if they allow you to have only basic.

I took the baby step and cut back to Basic - comparatively cheap when bundled - because the U-Verse customer service rep did her job and suggested I might regret not having local stations. Sadly, when you do that the dvr is disabled, and I don't watch things on a schedule anymore, so I'll be cancelling Basic as well.

With hulu, netflix, amazon prime etc. streamed through my devices, I have more than enough to entertain me at a lower cost and on my schedule. I *do* wish that I could affordably get HBO Go without associating it with "the cord."

Cut the cord a year ago and glad I did. It took a bit, but I have the moddifed rabbit ears that pick up just about every public station including all the PBS's, Me and This, 2 different music stations (country and Cool), etc... The money I saved (around $170 a month for phone internet and cable thru AT&T) is nice. Thats over $2,000 a year.

Mine is like $130 a month for internet and The basic w/ a box. Im debating this as well.. could hook my PC up to it and watch anything on youtube free...eliminate cable TV and just have internet.
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Charter just cut a lot of their free on demand stuff, a lot of on demand channels you have to pay extra for now. So the price went up and what you get got less.
I really dislike Charter, they've known about the crappy cables in my whole neighborhood for a long time they said... but dont do anything about it.

I cut off cable tv about three years ago. What I get in on the rabbit ears & TV tuner is enough for me. I get local programming and PBS. If there's anything else I want to watch, I have DVDs, Netflix and the internet.

Since I ditched digital cable, I find that I'm not scheduling my life around TV. I plan for my two hour-long programs when the new season starts but aside from that, I maybe log less than 8 hours of television a week. The local channels I get are a bit strange sometimes with all of the "retro" programming they offer, but the "CoolTV" music channel is alright because it actually airs nothing but videos.
I also like that I get three different PBS stations. One is your standard PBS with childrens shows, NOVA, documentaries, etc. Another is called the Wisconsin channel that airs history programs and Wisconsin-based educational/cultural programming. The last channel is called Create and shows cooking, travel, and craft-type shows.

I don't think you could convince me to go back to paying for TV programming.

"Have you considered cutting the cord?"
Only once every month when I write a $200 check to Charter.

I haven't had cable in 4ish years. I was only paying $25 a month for the barest minimum plan and, like you, was rarely watching it. Initially I switched to antenna and continued to watch very little TV and lots of movies from my reasonably extensive collection. I also began "collecting" TV box sets from eBay to watch. Last year I first heard about Roku and loved the idea. I got it with my tax return this year and LOVE IT! I now pay $15 a month for Hulu Plus and Netflix combined and watch it constantly. I could cancel Hulu Plus and be ok, but I'm going to wait for the fall TV season to start up before I decide for sure. At this point I haven't signed up for Amazon Prime because I calculated I would have to watch 2-3 movies per month to justify the cost and at this point I don't watch that many movies that I don't already own. Perhaps in the future. As one of the characters on Matt Damon's movie The Rainmaker says CUT CUT CUT! :)

I haven't had cable in 14 years. I haven't had any television whatsoever since the switch to digital. I don't miss it at all.

I like TV. We watch about 3 hours a night but with DVR cuts it down to 2 hours. I have a computer hooked up to the TV but this doesn't work in the bedroom. Would need another Computer I think. In winter sometime will watch HGTV all day on a sunday (vs football).
We turn in on a music station often as well. So I believe we get our monies worth. Just seems TOO HIGH. I agree lets cut the price and get to chose 50 ish fav stations.

I will be cutting the cord soon. My wife watches too many episodes of "Snapped", and I think she's starting to get ideas.

We cut the cord 3 months ago and haven't looked back. Got a good high def antenna and mounted on the same pole the DirectTV satellite dish came off using the same cables and can seamlessly pull all broadcast stations in from Madison and Rockford. Yes, I too have been struggling to fill my sports fix. I'm a big NASCAR fan and have been able to substitute with radio/live video from NASCAR website/ and the occasional web stream through JUSTINTV (on Roku). Milwaukee Brewer games are a different story but then again I don't really miss them with the lousy way they've been playing. We got a Roku box and Amazon Prime so all in all the expenditures were about $175 + 1yr of Prime for $79. I've already spent less in the same time than I would have on our DirectTV bills and am now pocketing the savings for a future vacation.

As a college student, money is tight to begin with now add on a $70 monthly Charter bill (which includes basic cable and internet) and things are extremely tight. I have been considering dropping the cable at the end of the year when my contract is up. Since I am not home often and really only watch a few shows I could easily do without. I do have Netflix and, like the author, I can download TV episodes online. I wish you could customize your cable plan such as picking the channels you receive therefore you only pay for the ones you actually watch. You're right... Charter should be nervous.

I'm the opposite. I didn't have cable for most of my life & bit the bullet when I had a child. I have uverse & love it. No technical issues. Price is ridiculous though.

I would love to cut the cord on all pay tv, I miss my old wyngard

We "cut the cord" three years ago. We do use Netflix and Hulu if there is something on that we wanted to see. Do I miss it? Not really. It is much quieter around here without the T.V.s in our house going when no one is really watching them.