They're high and going higher.  It's my understanding that federal legislation preempted any local control or review of rates for renewals of franchises or for services added to existing franchises--it's all done at the top now or by competition between the providers of cable v satellite and between satellite providers.  Couple that with the need for a good signal--pretty much eliminating an alternate antennae, and the decline of the "broadcast" network system as a delivery system we in the States have entered a "bend over and hold your ankles" approach to pricing for programing on our flat screen receivers.  Cable and satellite providers have thus far prevented any requirement that would mandate the availability of "buffet" choices of programing insisting instead on set menu groupings.  My choice would be buffet, but then less popular programing might be pushed off the available lists--or at least that's what some in  the industry and writers have said.
Alternative, and I'm not doing it, is don't subscribe, read books or magazines instead or talk to each other rather than the boob tube.  I enjoy what I do watch, and will continue to pay more than I think it's worth, and bitch about the system.

Hurricane Katrina might be the problem with prices down here in the south!!  Many people left cable--due to the cables being destroyed and found out satellite--down here, is a great value.

Cable, at least in NO, is problematic--they're required to wire the whole city, the whole city isn't totally populated yet, something like 20% still hasn't returned for the population and a lot of space between homes in the flooded areas.  So they probably are sucking air because of the cost requirements they have to meet for infrastructure and programing required by their franchise agreement. That coupled with the fact that although cable was up & running in the high and dry areas when they reopened the City reentry was followed by a cutting of cable service by the Company for all the city for several months and that put a lot of us, including me, off cable forever.  We do DSL through ATT & it's fast enough for us.  The TV is
DishTV--and except for outages during heavy thunderstorms it's really nice.  Cable went out too, but then one of their techs had to fix it and that took a couple of days on occasion.  I'd say that only one or two houses in the immediate vicinity of our house stayed w/ cable, everyone else has moved to satellite and DSL.