“...there is no place where you can go to watch good wholesome TV.”
Yesterday I called DirecTV and halved our cable bill. We want to ditch it all as soon as we line up some good alternative(s). There are so many ways to get service, but they’re all in different types of media, and willy-nilly all over the place. I wish there were a site that aggregates all the options and explains how each is used.
Last week I cancelled our AT&T landline. I told the rep it was because they were illegally turning over private citizens’ phone information to Democrats. (I think she had heard it before from her tone. It almost sounded like she was sympathetic.)
“Yesterday I called DirecTV and halved our cable bill.”
More details please.
Cordcutters News is a good site for what you're looking for, MM.
https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/
Look under Beginners Guide to Cord Cutting to start.
We walked away from DirecTV about five years ago and substituted a roof-mounted antenna for over the air (OTA) local stations plus streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. We've since dropped Netflix and picked up a few others. To stream, we use both a Roku and an Amazon Fire Stick. I had only planned on using the Roku, but the cheapo TV in the bedroom won't work with it so we got the Fire Stick and it works well.
The most difficult thing to get used to is not being able to aimlessly flick through channel after channel other than the OTA channels and even with 30-some now, it's not all that much flicking. However, there is an immense amount of content out there for free and pay on the streaming side of things.
Free generally means ad-supported, but I don't mind the ads very much since there are generally fewer of them than on regular TV. Streaming services like Hulu and CBS All Access also have ad-supported subscriptions in addition to their full no ad services which can allow you to pay about half the full subscription price and therefore get more streaming services for your buck. So you can pay $11.99 for Hulu without ads which is certainly nice or for that same $11.99, you can instead get two streaming services by going with the ad-supported Hulu and CBS All Access subscriptions which are each $5.99. Streaming services can add up which makes this kind of mixing and matching helpful in finding a balance. Otherwise you may find yourself back where you started in terms of how much you're paying to watch things.
In terms of the antenna, if you're so inclined, you need to find where the stations are in your area in order to properly point the antenna. We got insanely lucky that our local stations are in the same spot as the DirecTV satellite (~238 degrees SW) which enabled us to remove the LNB from the satellite dish and mount the antenna on its arm. The place to find that out is TVFool.com (http://tvfool.com) where you follow the Click Here link to enter your address to see a coverage map of your local stations. That map can be saved for use on the OTA subreddit of reddit.com where some extremely helpful and giving folks will read the map and recommend the antenna(s) you can buy.
There's more, but that should get you going. I'm happy to answer what I can for you.