Before the advent of cable, every TV channel was free. Sure, there weren’t all that many channels, and technically they were paid for by commercials, but once you bought a TV, you didn’t have to spend a cent to watch whatever was available in your area. Oh, how things have changed.
It’s easy to let these services fall into the background alongside your other monthly bills, but how much do you actually need them? That’s what I wanted to find out. I decided that, for one month — May 2018, to be specific — I would cancel all my subscriptions and see what it was like to get by with only what you may watch for free.
The experiment
To dive as deep as possible, I also added a few other restrictions. Despite having anOTA antenna, I decided not to use it. I also never reached into my movie collection. My goal was to watch what was provided by free and legal streaming services. This means I also never dove intolegal gray areas like Kodi(at least, what most people use Kodi for) orTerrarium TV. Now let’s move on to what Ididuse.
The results
The first positive is pretty obvious: The money you save. My old bundles of subscriptions stacked up to roughly $80 to $100 per month. Cutting this down to absolutely nothing gave me a little extra spending money, but if you were to do this even half of the year, that is some major cash back in your pocket. This wasn’t really the point of the experiment, but it was a welcome bonus.
Another positive is just how much content is out there and available to watch for free. During the month-long period, I watched several interesting documentaries, a handful of movies (including some really bad ones), and a whole lot of British sitcoms. This wasn’t even skimming the surface of what was available, but it was enough for me.
If you wanted to go even further and install every possible free streaming service, you would find even more to watch, but eventually, you would start to notice that a lot of these services are offering up the same content.
If you’re only using one service, it may seem like there is a ton of content — and there is, especially considering it’s free — but you hit a point of diminishing returns when you start adding more services, only to find out they offer a lot of similar stuff. Many of the same movies and TV shows seem to pop up on every free streaming service.
You might find you weren’t using some services all that much in the first place.
This goes doubly so when it comes to Pluto TV, the live TV service. At the start of the month, looking through the available channels, it seemed like an incredible amount of things to watch. But as I watched them, I noticed that a lot of the same episodes of a given show seemed to air again, week after week. For me, live TV is mostly a background thing, but if you’re actively watching a lot, this could start to become an annoyance.
Then, of course, there are commercials. Yes, they’re there but compared to watching an hour of cable TV, you’re either getting the same amount or less, depending on what service you’re watching. The fact that I didn’t even think to include them when this article was first published shows just how little I was bothered by commercials.
You don’t need what you think you need
When I first started this experiment, I figured that at the end of the month, I would have something worth writing about and then I would renew my usual subscriptions. That didn’t happen.
If a show comes outon Netflixor Hulu, it’s easy to pay for a month or two, then cancel again once I’ve finished the series.
Following up
This article was originally published on July 07, 2025, and as I am writing this it’s early August of the same year. I began the “experiment” in May, and I haven’t gone back to using a live TV streaming service yet. I also don’t currently have a subscription to an on-demand streaming service. That’s not to say I stuck to entirely free services.
Things might be different for you. But if you find yourself wondering why you’re spending so much money on streaming services you barely have time to watch, it might be worth canceling some or all of them. Give it some time, then add them back as necessary. You might find you weren’t using some services all that much in the first place.
