How to Replace Cable TV for About $25 a Month
You'll find a wide range of broadcast channels, cable networks, movies, and original shows at Disney+, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, and Paramount+.
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A lot of us are looking for ways to trim our monthly expenses—and ditching costly cable or satellite TV services is a great place to start. Those services can easily cost more than $100 a month.
Streaming video services can be a significant expense, too, especially if you subscribe to several of them. Many of the best-known services, including Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix, have recently raised their prices. And the same goes for services designed to replicate traditional TV packages—DirecTV Stream, Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, and YouTube TV. Most of them now cost $65 per month or more.
What if you’re prepared to pay only half that much? Can you still find a compelling assortment of content complete with local broadcasts?
Paramount+
Let’s start with Paramount+, which replaced CBS All Access as the company’s streaming platform in 2021, because it seems like a no-brainer for sports fans. It has a deal to show all the local-market NFL games on CBS’s schedule through 2033, plus NCAA basketball and PGA golf, including the Masters and the PGA Championship.
It also provides full-length episodes of CBS shows and new original programming, plus livestreams of local CBS affiliates in many markets.
Source: Paramount+ Source: Paramount+
The big news for the company is that it has merged its Showtime premium service into a new Paramount+ tier, called Paramount+ With Showtime.
Currently, Paramount has two subscription options, and both will be receiving price hikes starting in August. If you can live with a few advertisements, the Paramount+ Essential plan will cost $8 per month (but still just $60 for a year if you pay up front) for new subscribers once the increase kicks in. Or you can watch (mostly) ad-free on the Paramount+ With Showtime plan for $13 a month (still $120 if you pay annually). The price hike will hit current subscribers of the Paramount+ with Showtime in mid-September, but so far current Essential customers will continue to pay $6 a month for their plans. The price of the limited Paramount+ commercial option—a legacy plan no longer offered to new subscribers—will increase by $1 for current subscribers in September.
In addition to the advertisements and Showtime, the other big difference is that you won’t get your live local CBS station (except for NFL games) with the Essential plan. The pricier tier also lets you watch shows in 4K high dynamic range (including Dolby Vision) and get mobile downloads.
Both services give you access to all shows from CBS, more than 3,500 episodes from BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, the Smithsonian Channel, and other jointly owned properties. Paramount+ also has a growing number of original shows, such as “Mayor of Kingstown,” starring Jeremy Renner; “Special Ops: The Lioness,” from Taylor Sheridan; and “1923,” a series starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren that’s derived from the popular “Yellowstone” series.
Current big movies include “If,” “Bob Marley One Love,” “Transformers Rise of the Beasts,” and “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One.”
Total cost: Assuming you’re a new subscriber, with the Essential tier of Paramount+ onboard, we’ve now spent $8 of our $25 budget, leaving $17.
Disney+ Bundle
Given the assortment of high-powered entertainment brands under the Disney umbrella, it should be no surprise that we’re adding Disney+ next.
Disney recently started offering a less expensive, ad-supported plan. The Disney+ Basic plan costs $8 per month—which had been the price of its ad-free plan. For ad-free Disney+ Premium, you now have to pay $14 a month, or $140 if you pay annually.
Source: Disney+ Source: Disney+
Still, Disney+ is compelling. The company owns Lucasfilm (the “Star Wars” franchise), Marvel Studios (“The Avengers,” “Black Panther”), and Pixar (“Toy Story,” “Up”). The recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox gives it 20th Century Studios (“The Simpsons”) and the lion’s share of National Geographic content, too.
Disney+’s updated library of content includes such movies as “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” and “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Series include a second season of “Loki”; “The Beatles: Get Back,” from Peter Jackson; and the popular series “The Mandalorian,” set in the “Star Wars” universe. Coming shows include “Echo,” a Marvel series that’s an offshoot of the “Hawkeye” series.
While Disney+ is pretty compelling on its own, we’ve decided to splurge on one of the bundles Disney offers with Hulu and ESPN+.
Hulu—now wholly owned by Disney—fills a pretty big hole with content from popular broadcast and cable channels. Some shows can be watched in real time, but most are available either one day or one week later. That’s a good way to get programming from ABC, AMC, Bravo, Big Ten Network, CBS, E, ESPN, Fox, Fox Sports, FX, NBC, NFL Network, Oxygen, PBS, Syfy, and USA Network. Hulu is also home to originals such as “The Bear”; “Only Murders in the Building,” based on the novel; and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Note, however, that many NBC shows are now available only on Peacock.
ESPN+ adds sports to the mix, including everything from Major League Baseball to college football and basketball, hockey, soccer, and UFC fights. You also get access to documentaries such as the “30 for 30” series.
There are now several plan options, all of which received price hikes late last year. Duo Basic, which costs $10 a month, gives you the ad-supported versions of both Disney+ and Hulu. An ad-free Duo Premium plan costs $20 a month. Trio Basic adds ESPN+ with ads, for $15 month, while a premium version of the bundle, called Trio Premium, has ad-free Disney+, ad-free Hulu, and ESPN+ for $25 a month.
To keep the price down, we’d suggest getting one of the ad-supported versions of the bundles. We’ve picked Duo Basic, but you can add ESPN+, for an additional $5 a month, if you’re a die-hard sports fan.
Total cost: With Paramount+ and the $10 price for the Duo Basic Disney+ bundle, we’ve now spent $18 of our $25 monthly budget. That doesn’t leave much money for a third service, but read on.
Source: Peacock Source: Peacock
To start, you get access to all of NBC’s Olympic coverage. Then there’s the exclusive next-day access to current NBC and Bravo shows, plus the full complement of programming from NBCUniversal’s properties: Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, USA Network, and Universal Studios. Peacock now has a deal with Universal that sees that company’s new movies stream exclusively on Peacock after leaving theaters. The deal includes movies such as “Cocaine Bear,” “Renfield,” “Jurassic World: Dominion,” and “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
Peacock is also licensing shows from ABC, A&E, and Fox. And it has a deal with Paramount to add content from CBS, Paramount, Showtime, and Viacom, plus movies from Blumhouse, DreamWorks, Focus Features, Illumination, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros.
Peacock’s original programming is another great reason to subscribe to a Premium plan. Original series include “Yellowstone”; “The Continental,” based on the world of John Wick; “Love Island”; and “Poker Face,” starring Natasha Lyonne. Movies include “Kung Fu Panda” and “Money Man.”
For sports fans, Peacock streams Premier League soccer games, golf tournaments, and WWE Network matches. It also recently signed an extension with the NFL to show Sunday night NFL games that air on NBC through 2033. This season, Peacock will also air an exclusive regular-season game from Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Total cost: By adding Peacock to the plan at $8 per month, we’ve raised the total to $26, or just $1 more than our goal
So How Did We Do?
In the end, we proved that it’s possible to get a fully featured TV plan for about $25 per month. (While our plans now cost $26 a month because of recent price hikes, you can keep that total under $25 by subscribing to one of the annual plans and pro-rating it on a monthly basis.)
On the other hand, if you want CBS broadcasts and Showtime, we recommend stepping up to the $13-a-month Paramount+ plan with Showtime, which would bring your monthly total to just over $30 a month.
You’ll end up paying a bit more if you opt for one of the ad-free Disney+ bundles we mentioned above, or if you add Max, though that service now has a cheaper $10 a month ad-supported plan. You can also now bundle Max with Disney+ Basic and Hulu for $17 a month with ads, or $30 without them.
For a lot of us, though, that’s still quite a bargain compared with a typical pay TV package.
However you decide to put together your own package, you get a pretty compelling assortment of broadcast TV, cable content, movies, sports, and live events.
And don’t forget that you can supplement everything here with the classic TV shows and movies offered by free ad-supported streaming services such as Pluto TV, Tubi, and Xumo.
Of course, we know that some people do need to get live local broadcasts. Depending on where you live, you might be able to do that free by using an antenna.
And if you need a streaming player, you can check out the three models below; more are available in our full streaming player ratings, available to CR members.
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