Nalod slashed his cable bill to 118$ a month, all premium channels gone, including NBA TV. Actually my service does not carry it.
Not ready to give up live tv or my cable boxes (I have 4 TV's). I got just one room DVR and put a Mac Mini on my main room. For now, it can fuel my amazon prime.

My bill was $200 a month last year and I have been bringing it down. I do have Netflix and started getting blue ray discs again. I like the Idea of SlingTV but with 4 TV's its not for me. Apple is rumored to be coming with a similar service. My Internet stand alone is $70 per month buts its super fast fiber optical right to my house. If Apple comes with a service rumored to be $40 before premiums that is a parallel move for me but I will rid myself of cable rental boxes but I gather will have to purchase $69 apple TV boxes.

Where I use to only have Time warner cable I now have three choice carriers plus Direct TV. With the INternet the competition is regulating where government need not.
I am still considering a league pass or just pay $6.95 per game and stream via my Mac Mini.

The landscape is changing as might the price of teams might have peaked as well. this article might not be correct but its worth keeping an eye on. ESPN is slashing costs as rumors of subscription rates dropping for the first time. If true, TV revenue might have peaked and thus franchise value as well.

Donald Sterling gets the last laugh?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/the-sports-bubble-is-about-to-pop.html

$200 Cable bills might eventually go the way of the dinosaur, but to me that just means our highspeed internet will wind up costing $200 a month.

If you think about how much you pay per month for home internet, cell phones and data plans - realize those companies are all doing quite well since the smart phone and internet revolution.

People are paying for different stuff now, but they're probably paying for more overall and (in most cases) it's the same service providers pocketing the $$$.

SupremeCommander wrote:The best thing I have done is bare minimum + sports channels + internet + HBO Now and I am paying just under $110/mo. I would like to get it lower bu if I don't pay for the sports packaged I end up pissing my money away at the bar. I would like to lower it even more but that number seems reasonable

Yea that package almost got me, but I'd feel bad saying to my lady "Hey baby, sorry we don't get any channels you like, but here are a dozen sports channels that I won't even watch that much" — just so I can watch my Knicks. Hope I don't just give that money away to the bar. Cable knows it has to compete and it's more flexible than before, but all the entrenched interest will keep it more byzantine than I'd like it to be.

I may be stuck in the 20th century, but I just can't bring myself to have a $100+ bill for television... where I'll just have to watch a bunch of ads anyway and find myself watching something mindlessly.

crzymdups wrote:Sports aren't in trouble as much as traditional cable providers like Time Warner - those guys are very worried about the 18-34yr old demographic "cord cutting" - but those companies are transitioning to being internet streaming services, too.

$200 Cable bills might eventually go the way of the dinosaur, but to me that just means our highspeed internet will wind up costing $200 a month.

If you think about how much you pay per month for home internet, cell phones and data plans - realize those companies are all doing quite well since the smart phone and internet revolution.

People are paying for different stuff now, but they're probably paying for more overall and (in most cases) it's the same service providers pocketing the $$$.

But if ESPN is in fact losing subscribers, and for example pay about 1.5bil to the NBA in its last contract, the next one is not going to be as high, and if so, its one less bidder. Now, Perhaps League pass is not making up difference? I don't know.

I do know nothing goes up forever.

http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/outkick-the-coverage/espn-has-lost-7-million-subscribers-the-past-two-years-112515

yellowboy90 wrote:Wow, I thought I was spending a lot of money for cable/internet. We only had 2 tv's but our services with DVR boxes and premium channels were $189. I dumped 1 for and reduced my pkg to get down to $150. Almost a year ago I started looking around for the best way to cut the cord and was going to go OTa and sling but I then just settled for a basic cable and internet pkg. I initially thought it was going to be a just my local and national channels but it tuner out to be over 100 channels plus internet for $40+.

My only issue is not having dvr ability.

Im paying $10 a month for one room DVR. I miss whole house but just seeing how it goes.

Taxes are no joke either.

If I only had one TV I could really cut this thing down in half!

And going a la carte isn't going to help either.

I'm about $150 with 2 phones, 2 tvs and internet @ FIOS - dropped the dvr because it was $11 per month and I wanted to scale back a bit.

Key to me was having Cablevision & FIOS to play off each other. Without that, I'd kinda be screwed.

yellowboy90 wrote:Wow, I thought I was spending a lot of money for cable/internet. We only had 2 tv's but our services with DVR boxes and premium channels were $189. I dumped 1 for and reduced my pkg to get down to $150. Almost a year ago I started looking around for the best way to cut the cord and was going to go OTa and sling but I then just settled for a basic cable and internet pkg. I initially thought it was going to be a just my local and national channels but it tuner out to be over 100 channels plus internet for $40+.

My only issue is not having dvr ability.

DrAlphaeus wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Wow, I thought I was spending a lot of money for cable/internet. We only had 2 tv's but our services with DVR boxes and premium channels were $189. I dumped 1 for and reduced my pkg to get down to $150. Almost a year ago I started looking around for the best way to cut the cord and was going to go OTa and sling but I then just settled for a basic cable and internet pkg. I initially thought it was going to be a just my local and national channels but it tuner out to be over 100 channels plus internet for $40+.

My only issue is not having dvr ability.

I had a similar experience. We had gotten our bill down to $118 a month. My plan was to go with ballstreams and playon for the cable/sports that I would lose. We went to what was supposed to be very basic cable with internet and our bill is $56.00. However, we kept channels 2-73. Local channels are in hd and some of the cable channels are broadcast in hd on channels higher than 73. I did some research and found out that cable (twc) in our case, has to come out to your home and put a filter on your cable to prevent you from getting channels above 22. It has been almost a year and has not happened for us. Playon and ballstreams are great resources for cord cutters. A friend of mine got the Sunday Ticket broad band for $100 (the college student rate) and loves it. There are a lot of options out there.

Ah yea, Ballstreams... forgot about that. I wish I felt more comfortable going with that. What is keeping the long arm of the league from getting the right copyright lawyers to shut that down?