As many of you know I became a cord cutter in our new home my wife and I made the design out of the need to save money in our new home and it has been a great experience to this point. The only cable we have is 100mb of internet bandwidth that we have coming in from our ISP (Internet Service Provider). Many of the friends my wife and I know can live off of Netflix content and do not care about new shows until they come onto Netflix and they can binge watch them. My wife and I have lots of shows we really like and really can’t live on Netflix content alone plus there are shows we like to keep up with weekly. The one thing I have noticed as a cord cutter is certain channels you just can’t get without cable.

Granted two of the stations below I could get with Sling as premium add-ons that come with extra package purchases. But none of the 3 of these come standard on Hulu Live, PlayStation Vue, Amazon Stations, DirectTV NOW or YouTubeTV the big hitters in the cord cutter space.

The first channel you cannot get without cable is CMT (Country Music Television). While I am not a huge country music fan there is one show my oldest daughter and I like and that’s Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Ranch. While I like CMT shows there is no way to even buy the service independently like FX the only way to get the channel is with a cable or Sling with an extra paid channel subscription which will set you back $75 dollars.

The second channel that is an issue is HGTV it’s another channel that you cannot get without a cable subscription or a Sling subscription with an extra package. HGTV has been incredibly successful with original programming and has really been popular amount all demographics. You would think with the number of millennials watching fixer-upper shows they would make it easier to get the channel online but they do not, unfortunately.

The final channel is the TLC network which has been very successful with shows like Counting On, Rattled and Unexpected. Unlike CMT and HGTV TLC does offer some content on their website but many to all of their primetime shows require a cable subscription. Services like fuboTV, Hulu Live, PlayStation Vue, Amazon Stations, DirectTV NOW or YouTubeTV all have their selling points. TLC, however, is not one of them.

In my research for this article, I found as well the very successful BravoTV, UP Channel and The Outdoor Channel are the same situation as TLC you cannot get them without a cable subscription. The Outdoor Channel does not even offer buying a single episode via Amazon or iTunes for a cord cutter like me they keep their content exclusively on their channel only.

While I enjoy being a cord cutter and it’s been a huge money saver for our family it does stink that certain channels you cannot get without cable. I am sure there are many more then the ones I have listed.