OPINION — Another month. Another day of opening bills. Another realization that you need to do something to bring those bills under control. Where do you start?

Why not your television watching? Your cable or satellite bill is probably one of your biggest expenses every month. And one that is fairly easy to control.

Caveat: If you must have your sports channels and subscribe to the big packages, this article is not for you. But if you really wish to save some money and can afford to not watch every game, every week, then read on.

First off, what did we do before cable TV? Antennas. Pointed hopefully in the direction of Cedar City to see if we could pick up any of the channels that came from the translators there.

We’ve come a long way since then. St. George is a hotbed of TV translators now. Probably 80 percent of St. George residents could pick up 10-15 channels with an outside antenna on their home.

For example, I live in the middle of St. George, near the temple. The TV receives 27 channels on my outside antenna. All the major networks, favorites like MeTV, Antenna TV and CoziTV, PBS stations including PBS world channel, PBS kids, and PBS create, Heroes and Icons, Comet, Charge!, Grit, Movies, and even an audio feed of KUER NPR Radio out of Salt Lake City. With amazing quality, too.

Your mileage may vary. If you visit www.overtheairdigitaltv.com and put your address in, it will give you an idea of what channels you could receive at your location. Remember, this is only an estimate, but at my location it’s a pretty good one.

Stick with rooftop antennas if you can. The inside antennas will cut the incoming signal down to sometimes unusable levels. Even the flat panel antennas that are so widely touted will attenuate, or reduce, the signal to your TV.

Along those lines, take the “mileage” claims you read on the TV antenna boxes with a huge grain of salt. A flat TV antenna on the inside wall of your house is not going to receive a signal 80 miles away. It depends on a lot more than that. You want out on the open air, and as high as you can get it, to receive the best signal and the most channels.

Now, about those missing cable channels? First off, get a subscription to Netflix. For under $12 per month you get not only movies and TV shows, you also get great local content that you can’t even get on the cable and satellite systems. One of my recent favorites was “Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest Of Your Life.” Comfort food for TV watchers. Made my monthly subscription worth it.

Then, to replace some of those missing cable channels, check out Sling TV. For under $50 per month, History, A&E, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, sports channels, and many more can be streamed from your phone to your television. If your TV does not support streaming, my suggestion is Chromecast from Google. A $35 device in one of the HDMI ports on your TV will stream from your computer, your tablet, or your phone.

You will need a decent internet speed to stream to your TV. I have 60 Mbps from the cable company and it can support two streaming feeds plus two gamers in the house and incidental use at the same time.

Other streaming services are available. Philo, Amazon Prime, Hulu, DirecTV now all offer streaming. The above is simply what my household is using, and we are more than happy with it. For a one-time investment of under $100 for the antenna and Chromecast, plus a monthly fee of about $60, it beats the $150 I was paying to DirecTV monthly for over 10 years when I finally bit down and cut the cable. Internet costs? With or without TV, we would have to have internet anyway, so I’m not including that.

That amounts to a savings of approximately $1,080 per year.

Cord cutting is not just a fad for millenials. You can reduce your TV bills without being completely clueless about what’s on TV. Google it and find the services. Most offer a free trial period to allow you to make up your mind.

Besides, cable and satellite TV are SO last century.

Ric Wayman is the news and opinion editor of Southern Utah Now. The above is his opinion and may not reflect the opinion of the staff and management of Southern Utah Now.