You could try Free To Air satellite tv. I've never done it but it's something I've thought about. You definitely won't get all the big channels but it's something to watch and all you have to buy is the equipment. I imagine it would be like it was when I was a kid and we had one of those gigantic motorized dishes in the yard and you could point the dish with the receiver to all the different satellites. We didn't pay a dime for tv. Of course with this you can get a stationary dish or add a motor to it so you can hit the different satellites. Here's a site that describes it and the current list of free channels.
FTAList.com - The easy list of North American free-to-air TV channels