I know a couple who have both Comcast TV for the wife and Dish or DirectTV for the husband. Not cheap.
Someone I know got Times-Warner cable to give her a special deal. Somehow she has pretty much just basic cable and low speed Internet, and Universal Sports. At first they said they couldn't sell her Universal Sports without selling her an extremely expensive channel line-up, but a day or two later they called her back, and said they had created a special deal just for her.
Cable providers like Comcast and Times-Warner are apparently not "common carriers" - which means they do not have to offer every customer the same prices and deals. They can and should be bargained with. It helps to find out what deals their competitors - phone companies like Verizon, and satellite companies like Dish and DirectTV - can offer, and it may help to switch back and forth between providers every year or two.
Unfortunately, one neighbor tells me they have to re-align their mast-mounted satellite dish after storms, once a month or so. So, unless there is a better way to do that, satellite dishes can be problematical.
If I was setting up a TV system for myself alone, I would go with an antenna to get the major broadcast channels, and subscribe to Hulu+ and maybe Netflix (and get a 3-6 megabit/second Internet connection to watch Hulu and Netflix). That includes just about all the shows I watch regularly (NBC, CBS, ABC which the antenna picks up, and SyFy and BBC America which are on Hulu+), and would be far cheaper than cable TV.
Though that would exclude Universal Sports...