There are cable equivalents for streaming; Pluto TV, Plex TV, Peacock, YouTube TV, ...
The only difference is *certain* live sports. E.g. local ice hockey. I can get it on cable or the “Bally’s” app for a subscription. Both are too expensive for what they are. I quit paying cable to just watch my Red Wings.
Some local channels are digitally broadcast over-the-air. I don’t miss cable TV.
Pluto TV is free, the others are not.
You should become a Stars fan. We have a free streaming channel called Victory +. Besides, the Red Wings stank.
I've not had cable for at least 25 years, in part because the price kept going up (even though I paid a year in advance to save money -- they'd just say, "your new due date is..."), in part because of being short on cash, but mostly because I wasn't watching more than two or three of the cable channels.
Having too many channels with too little content has been cable's biggest problem (at least for consumers, and imho) for decades.
Had they used their vaunted bandwidth to diversify into a single-package deal (cable TV, www, landline phone) and made the channels a la carte, the whole freakin' country would be on broadband by now.
My only paid channel per se is Amazon Prime, and that started as a home shopping thing. My favorite of the rerun channels is Tubi and Roku Channel, but I also spend a chunk of time on the YouTube app on the Roku.
YouTube's "Let's interrupt the content in the middle of a sentence" policy is benighted, and while it's not the worst thing Google does, it is the one for which the mgmt should have the ever-loving **** kicked out of them.