We sent our TV out the door two and half years ago when they switched the over-the-air broadcast from analog to digital (we had an old TV with rabbit ears). We haven't looked back since.
Of course, for a while we went to the local video rental store (unlimited for 10$/month, excluding new releases), but after two years we had seen pretty much all that was worth watching over there, so we switched to Netflix 6 months ago. We watch something almost every night and the lack of publicity is well worth the 8$/month it costs.

Now, when we go to my parent's house and watch cable TV with advertisements every 5 minutes, we can't believe that we used to put up with that.

Cheers.