the Price of Basic Cable

Expanded basic cable. That means the first 100 or so channels with a bunch of premium-ish cable channels like Comedy Central, the Sci-Fi channel, TLC, Discovery Health, Discovery, Spike, ESPN, the golf channel, Lifetime, and a variety of others. Also included are the usual local affiliates of major brand-name networks like FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC. C-SPAN and PBS are in the mix with the generic music channels like MTV and VH1, as well as two movie channels, one with commercials, one without. All the additional sports and music channels, as well as the premium movie channels, especially the "naughty" ones cost extra.

The service was OK. A few channels had poor reception, particularly the TV listings channel and the golf channel. I think the TV listings channel having poor reception is part of the reason I stopped watching so much TV and eventually canceled my TV service. The company's customer service was excellent -- polite and courteous, even if wait times were a bit long -- though I only dealt with them to open and close my account.

If you purchase the service with other products the company offers, you can expect fairly significant discounts. The more services from the company, the more the discount, but there's no way to get more and pay less than you were paying to get less.