My mom dropped her cable after they tacked on a $2 a month sports fee, and she doesn't watch sports. She had WOW. They also jacked up the rental rate on the DVR. I got her set up with a HTPC and NAS. She already had Amazon Prime, and I got her Netflix as well.
Yeah, but what would she do without you? Probably just pay the man.
That is the irony in all the cord cutting: the people who have the lowest demands on the content, and therefore would save the most, are the ones most disconnected from modern TV technology.
Most cord cutters/shavers are 20/30-something techies who can only BARELY get by with Daddy's HBOGO login or TPB because they will be DAMNED before they miss that new GOT episode. They know every new show, and want to watch every major sports game, which ironically means they would actually get their money's worth out of cable if they weren't too cheap to pay that bill.
Meanwhile grandma, who pays $100 a month to only watch basic cable channels, would have more options than she ever could imagine with a FireTV if someone would teach her to use it and hook it up. But most of the time no one will, so she continues to pay the man which means paying an entity like ESPN that will never give her benefit.
I feel that phone plans are the same way. I know many 20/30 somethings still on the parent's family plan, often to keep "unlimited." All these revenue plays by the companies to try to suck in younger consumers are just tucking them that much further into the apron strings. When the baby boomers die all kinds of stuff across the board are going to fall down because they are the ones that are artificially keeping the material standard of living high for the slacker/boomerang Generation Y.