Ok, I'm old school, I know. Long time Comcast or DirecTV customer. I'm now on the road so much that it makes no sense to pay for cable and Internet at home. However there are some channels we still would like access to. Best way to do it? Here's the only channels we really care about:
HGTV, FOOD NETWORK, COOKING CHANNEL, A&E, ID, HISTORY CHANNEL. Anything else is just icing on the cake.
All or most of those are on the MAX (formerly HBO max) service now.
Bad news: You've sort of missed the glory days of cord cutting. There aren't really any services where you can watch everything, and each channel is going to want $5-$10/month from you. There are also "streaming bundles" that bundle a bunch of services together for... the price of cable.
Good news: You can still save some money. We cut the cord years ago and never looked back, and we keep out content budget down to around $30/month like this: Every time we want to watch something, we subscribe to the service. Period. Doesn't matter if it's Disney+, Bob's Friendly Streaming App, Youtube, whatever. We watch what we want to watch. Then, once every month or two, I open up our subscriptions dashboard and cancel every single thing we've subscribed to. The only consistent subscription over a year is Netflix, the rest come and go as new content is released. It's a little bit of a pain, but Roku or Apple each let you use a common payment method and management portal so it only takes a minute to turn everything off, and another minute to turn stuff back on.
I was like you. I stuck with DirecTV for years, which was waaaay better than Comcast cable. But, having now gone to streaming via Firestick, I'd never go back.
Everyone will want different services depending on what you like to watch. I pretty much stick with YouTube, Hulu and MAX with the occasional subscription to Netflix to watch something like Ozark or The Crown. I had Motor Trend for awhile but kind of got tired of Roadkill and Roadworthy Rescues wasn't enough to keep me paying for it. Currently have Britbox in some kind of bundle. The nice thing is you can subscribe and drop to the various services pretty easily and they aren't expensive. About as close to ala carte as you are likely to get.
Ahoy matey 
In reply to Tom Suddard :
But I don't have a streaming app.
We did so long long ago. OTA TV has close to 40 channels, many have a lot of HGTV shows and A&E stuff plus the local channels etc. We pay for Amazon Prime and use the free services there (like TUBI, FreeVee etc) along with the Prime stuff. That does require an internet connection so you have to have something.
I'm with Cricket Wireless for my phone, which includes MAX for free
If you have wireless internet get a Roku. Roku has some free access like Tubi that has lots of movies and tv programs with advertising to pay for it.
My system is wireless but hooked to the home AT&T line with a transmitter at the end.
You can also go totally wireless, except for the A/C power connect, with something like the T-Mobile device with receiver and transmitter.
Then just do what Tom does and subscribe as needed.
Sorry, I missed the idea of not having internet at home. I'm not sure how you could have anything without internet, aside from an antenna. We pay $50/month for fiber internet without anything else bundled with it.
I missed the no internet thing too.
Back in michigan I put an antenna on my roof and pointed it to the areas with the most channels (www.antennaweb.com I think) and I was getting 60 or 70 channels. After deleting duplicates, shopping channels and a few others I don't want I was down to 40-50 channels. Multiple PBS channels (mega win in my book) and all the major networks. For the other cable channels you mentioned, you simply must have the internet.
We may go with internet, like T-Mobile
Internet intro service for $35/ month for 2 years. Cancel and re-up at the intro price every 2 years. Or just get a prepaid service at $45 a month or so.
Roku. Free service, basic hardware costs about $30, or is bundled with most new smart TVs.
Spend more time in the garage, and less watching the boob tube.
You see, the trick is to cancel cable and get so many streaming services that it actually costs more than cable.
If it were just me, I'd have internet (for Youtube) and Netflix and maybe not even Netflix. But instead we have a bunch of streaming services that we don't really watch.
In reply to Scotty Con Queso :
Yeah, that can happen very easily. When we cut the cord back in 2008 we had an antenna and eventually Netflix and Amazon. We still have those, though Netflix is much less useful, and Amazon is kept mainly for free shipping. We have used a VPN and watched stuff from BBC.
I'm not big on sports, so that's not an issue. as far as television programming, most of it is trash that I won't watch for free.
As far as internet, I switched over to that little white box Verizon sells. It only costs $25 a month.
I'll admit that I am pleasantly surprised at how well it's performed so far. It feel entirely adequate for my needs.
I think the only thing we actually pay for is Peacock. It was Paramount+ for a while, but that got the axe when they ended the last season of Beavis and Butthead. Peacock's in it for the long haul- they have Reelz and I'm a sucker for On Patrol: Live. They also have a lot of the cooking shows. Top Chef etc. We get the Disney related streams because swmbo works for the mouse. I *think* our netflix comes from Tmobile from some deal like 10 years ago we just never gave up- and Prime is basically free as much as we use the service, so the video part is a bonus.
That being said I think Tom's move is the right one. Find the service you want, re-up whenever. It's super easy these days.
Gonna be tough to cut the cord without stable wired broadband.
I run Sonarr and SABnbzd on a Synology NAS with 5x 10tb drives in RAID 5 which gives me 40tb of HGTV and all the other things my wife likes to watch.
In theory a guy could load up his NAS and take it to a friend or relatives house from time to time and refill it over a weekend. A single season of a show takes give or take 10-20gb and can be pulled down in about 20 minutes, again give or take on your broadband speed.
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