The smart people are currently looking for ways to cut their expenses to save money and feel more financially secure. Today I found a way to save $33 a month without even giving up anything. I looked at my cable bill and decided to make a change.

My cable bill is paid each month via a credit card which I pay in full every billing cycle. I wasn't paying much attention, until I saw that my cable bill for the month was $151. Huh? My bill wasn't that much. I took a look, and saw that my bill used to be $135 a month, until I got a mysterious increase in my internet access. I thought I'd give the cable company a call and see if I couldn't get that extra $16 a month removed.

By the time I got off the phone, my monthly bill was down to $118, and it didn't hurt a bit. As I talked over my bill with the customer service representative, I was reminded that I was paying $13 a month for HBO. If I had to guess, I'd say I watch HBO once a month at the very most. Time to give up the HBO that I won't even miss anyway.

In a recent poll of customers and their satisfaction with customer service cable and satellite providers have been ranked the lowest, dropping 3% since the first survey was performed last year. This drop in satisfaction with customer service is even more pronounced for cable companies who many customers are out of touch with their needs. The survey performed by the CFI group found that cable and satellite companies failed to help 20% of customers calling them for assistance, something which may be attributed to the growing complexity with cable and satellite company offerings.

The survey additionally showed that the percent of people who looked elsewhere for help including online, fell by half to just 17%. With more people going straight to the company for help it's no surprise that customer service representatives, under a deluge of support calls, are found to be unable to effectively handle an issue or seem uncaring. Still it's sad that these companies have a disorder, I refer to as the cable company complex, in which they believe customer's will stay no matter what, because the competition doesn't exist. Direct TV has been cashing in on this dissatisfaction with its recent "You deserve better than Cable" advertising campaign, which sadly sums up my experience with cable customer service.

Late last year during a service call to figure out why my HD reception was better described as LD or Low Def, a "glitch" caused my cable box to become de-authorized, which prompted the first of many calls. Time Warner was able to quickly turn my box back on and to their credit they had improved the HD picture quality, however several months later a large bill showed up including an additional cable box and a PPV movie purchase.

Oprah Winfrey, easily the most successful self-made business woman in the United States, has added one more piece to her empire with "OWN," the Oprah Winfrey Network. She's doing the cable network with Discovery Communications, and it's expected to launch in the second half of 2009. Discovery Health Channel will be converted into this new channel.

They say Oprah will be the part of the creative process for the channel, helping to develop topics and shows that are popular with the viewers of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." She's already got her talk show, "O" the Oprah magazine, and "Oprah and Friends," a station on XM Satellite Radio.

This cable television station will compete with Oxygen, a cable network that currently focuses on programming for women. Oprah was an early investor in that channel, but eventually reduced her involvement when she said that the channel didn't reflect her voice. The other major competitor in the arena of women's stations is Lifetime Television.

Oprah emphasized that OWN will not be just for women, but will try to reach a broader audience that includes entire families. I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out and how much this channel reflects what Oxygen used to be. There are a zillion channels available to viewers these days, so it's difficult to launch and sustain a new channel. Discovery says they're looking to bring stronger brand recognition to some of their channels, and certainly, aligning with Oprah is probably an excellent way to do that for at least one of their channels.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.