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Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services
suraj.sun writes "Netflix and Hulu are convincing millions of cable, satellite and telco subscribers to cut the cord and dive into video streaming. That's the conclusion of a new report released this week by the Convergence Consulting Group, which finds that 2.65 million Americans canceled TV subscriptions between 2008-2011 in favor of lower-cost internet subscription services or video platforms. Though Convergence co-founder Brahm Eiley projects that the number of people opting out of TV subscription services will begin to slow in 2012 and 2013. Part of the problem, Eiley argues, may be the rising price tag for streaming rights to programming which could cause fiscal fits for Netflix."
It's cheaper to get Amazon Prime, Hulu, AND Netflix than it is to pay for cable.
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Also known as the Department of Shit We Already Know. Next, we explain how fewer people write handwritten letters after the advent of "electronic mail".
After 12 years of paying for TV, I finally cut the cord. The final straw for me were the distracting popups shown at the bottom of the screen in the middle of the shows. I mean really, think about. You are paying for the "priviledge" of being a product subjected to insistent advertising. How ridiculous is that? My average bill was around $100 month. That's over $12,000 a decade for chrissakes! What do I have to show for that expense now? Absolutely nothing!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Let's see:
* Cable TV with the few channels that air shows I want to watch: ~$100/mo.
* Cable TV with only basic channels + Internet ~$75/mo.
* Internet only: ~$50/mo.
Netflix: $8/mo.
Between stuff available online, stuff downloadable as a torrent and netflix, WHY would I want to watch something that is:
* Only available according to the broadcaster's schedule
* Chopped up to make room for 15mins of advertising at a minimum
* Where the ads are broadcast louder than the shows
* The shows worth watching are all scattered on specialty stations each of which costs me extra $$$ to watch, or broadcast in another country but not here and simply not available.
Cable TV and the 5000 channels of shit have priced themselves out of the market, the huge number of (mostly pointless) channels have spread the advertising potential so thin that none of them can make anything that isn't a cheap reality tv show etc.
TV is dead IMHO. The only problem is that the shows I like to watch still cost money to produce, and they need revenue from somewhere. Hopefully the deals with Netflix and other services are sufficient to provide that money. Hopefully this also kills off the shitty programming that isn't worth the time and money it took to make it. Let the viewers decide. I would much rather spend $8 per month than ever see another ad again in my life.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
There's really no need to have cable anymore unless you want live sports. Practically everything else is available online for free.
That and cable news. I would love to get my parents to switch, it kills me to see them sending $100 to Comcast every month. But they are absolutely addicted to the talking heads. I have tried to introduce them to online news, but so far online news is mostly text based with short video clips. Until there is a mainstream site that streams 24 hour news presented by a human, they (and many others) will never give up their precious cable.
First, yes, cable costs too much. I'm not technically old enough to "remember" the days when one of the major selling points of cable TV was the theoretical lack of commercials. After all, you're paying for the TV channels directly, why would you need commercials? But companies are greedy, and folks learned to tolerate commercials, and now you get where we are today. You're paying to be advertised to. And don't think I've not noticed the same creep happening with Hulu, originally one commercial per show, now 2-3 commercial breaks per half hour show, with 1-2 commercials each break... (However, Hulu's the internet equivalent of free-broadcast TV, so I cut it a lot of slack.)
What really turned me off and pisses me off now, though, is the return of the cable box. When cable was new, the cable box was a requirement. I remember it oddly fondly. Old fake-wood plastic with a sliding linear tuner, up to channel 35 or 55, even though we only got up to 21 or 22...
Then came Cable-ready TV's! You can just plug 'em in, use a remote, handy dandy!
Now, with the Digital transition, you're dependent on cable boxes again, which I understand from a practical stand point. Older TV's aren't Digital Cable ready. Annoying, but acceptable.
However, even with Digital Cable-Ready TV's you still need to rent a "box" from the cable company, except now it's a card. You have to have a cable-company specific decryption card, which my local company charges you monthly rent for, in addition to the "subscription" fee for digital cable, which just happened to increase as they transitioned these past 6 months. Plus, my understanding is, they can use it as a poor-mans Nielson, track my habits, make MORE money from me that way...
Oh, and let's not forget that there's a new format/standard for the cable cards that's coming out, and your "Digital Cable-Ready" TV may not be able to use the NEW card, so you're back on the damn box again...
Really? I'm really going to PAY for a service that's LESS convenient than it was in the 1980's? That makes my functional technology artificially obsolescent? I'm going to accept a BACKWARDS movement in capabilities and convenience? When I don't even use 95% of what they make me pay for anyways, but tolerated because it was "good enough, barely?"
Hell, NO. I'm taking advantage of the digital transition to drop cable. I'm not dropping TV entirely, I know myself, but Over-the-air, with Netflix, Hulu, and DVD supplements will be enough for me.
Screw 'em.
(Of course, I think those cunning bastards at Comcast, or some of them at least, have realized that as cable becomes more of a hassle more people are going to be Net-only households, thus their aggressive acquisition of so much internet infrastructure, but that's another delusional rant for another time.)
I get the basic channels for free. How? Simple, I have cable internet and phone over which basic cable comes through unfiltered. When I asked the installer about it he told me they do not have filters for that range. Since that gets me my locals, weather being most important, its all good.
What is really sad. I was paying for basic cable. I subscribed to the basic service using the website for 12.95 a month. Then come January someone at work mentioned that their cable bill went up by $5.00 and they say increases in internet charges too. Other people later chimed in to say similar. Well I did check my bill and lo and behold, I was now being charged 17.95 for basic cable. I called, cancelled it, and still have it all because my televisions can read it just fine. Best part about it, on their website it is still 12.95 but I cannot get it. Seems the local version of the same provider could care less about the web site pricing.
TL;DR. Cable is killing itself because the right hand doesn't let the left hand in on what it is doing. Worse, they have tried to follow this combo model where they aim for over one hundred a month in combined charges. I am at 62 now with phone and internet (16/4 btw) and still have more TV than I want.
I do know one thing, more people would drop cable and sat like a rock if you could stream HBO; there are people at work who get HBO and Cable simply for Game of Thrones!) and other "premium" channels.
A side note, my cable lists a cap of 250g a month. I haven't hit that cap yet but I am wondering if the improved show quality (1080p) offered by some services will push me over.
TV schedules need to revolve around me, not some schedule determined in a room in NYC or LA. Once a provider can time shift all their content then they will have value to me, but probably not as much as they will want to charge.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Aye, that was the last thread holding my father to paying for cable as well. I eventually convinced him to start reading his news instead of watching it. I showed him the CNN website and the BBC, and got him to start listening to NPR.
Text is superior to watching a talking head anyway; it's just hard to convince people of that generation--assuming your parents are within a generation of 50yo.
It came down to time. You can read a rundown of the news in just a few minutes that would normally take an hour if you were trying to watch it on cable with commercials. But I know a lot of people are devoted to their particular favorite news personality so that keeps them tuning into that channel every day.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
1. Yes it does, but I don't see how being tied to the prejudices and interests of media companies is any better.
2. That bothers me also but broadcast television really sucks. Being tied to a schedule not of my making is a horrible waste of human resources.
This "sin" you speak of is a minor one in recent human history. If you want a truly shameful medium look towards broadcast radio. From jingoistic recruitment drives in WWI via genocidal propaganda during WWII and many places including Maoist China to the slaughter in Bosnia and Rwanda, radio and in lesser extent television has been the 20th century greatest killer. It is time for something less totalitarian than broadcast media.
Hulu pisses me off because even if you pay for + you still get increasingly more commercials (seriously, they started with just a couple of commercials per show, now they rival over the air amounts).
The thing that REALLY pisses me off about Hulu is the lack of agnosticism. You can only watch THIS show on a computer, you can't watch it on your TV with your BluRay player or on your phone - even if you paid for Plus. I had Plus for a month and told them to shove it.
Seriously, before I got Plus I was looking at BluRay players at a store, I wanted to check out their site on my phone to see if a player had added support for Plus or not. EVEN THE FAQ SECTION redirected me to an alert and denial. I wasn't allowed to look at the compatible device list because I was a filthy mobile phone user.
So let me get this straight:
I can watch American Dad with my BluRay player.
I can't watch a nearly 10 year old Spiderman Cartoon series that never really took off.
I can watch Family guy with my phone.
I can't watch an obscure Japanese import cartoon few people know about.
I can't watch the Simpsons on my BluRay player?
Most shows I want to watch are not approved for "TV Viewing", they charge for that inconvenience and I still have to watch commercials. Screw them.
I may consider getting Hulu Plus again after I buy an HD TV and a media PC for it. (That's right, my BluRay player is hooked up to my SD 36" Diamatron CRT!)
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I can't watch an obscure Japanese import cartoon few people know about.
Yea, I can't watch Sailor Moon either..
Cable companies and content providers want to live in a world where all play back devices are "pay for play" and consumers have to pay a marginal fee for every video watched and every song listened to. Even better would be if the play back devices could detect how many people were in the room and a charge per viewer/listener could be assessed. Fortunately for consumers such a system is presently unworkable.
But encrypted digital channels allow cable providers to get pretty close. On top of subscription fees and premium packages, consumers now have to rent a set top box (or cable card) for each playback device in the house. My television with clear QAM tuner, useless. My wife's eyeTV with the clear QAM tuner, useless. My DVR with the clear QAM tuner, useless. To get set top boxes for all those devices would almost double my cable bill.
So I did the reasonable thing, I cancelled the TV portion and kept just the Internet and phone service. But, unlike the ones mentioned in the article, I didn't replace the subscription with online streaming. There are some shows I miss (AMC's Walking Dead, Comedy Central's The Daily Show, MSNBC's Morning Joe) but, at least so far as I can tell, there is no streaming service that has all of those shows available unless I sign back up for a TV package at a cable provider.
People have hit on two major issues as to why cable is dying: first, the on-demand issue (who wants to have to be in front of a TV on a weekday at 7pm to catch their show - or what if it only comes on at 2 am?); second, the cost (paying for Netflix and internet can be a lot cheaper than extended cable and internet, and it can offer more variety of shows).
However, I want to expand on the cost issue. For me it isn't just the rising cost, but the cost for comparable goods. Who here remembers when over-the-air (OTA) television stations when off the air in the wee hours of the morning? Ah, I fondly remember the "Indian" crying or the waving flag/bald eagle playing at sign-off. To fill their late night blocks, many stations (especially the independents) would buy up whatever was cheap - old movies, B movies, or whatever was in the equivalent of the discount bin for TV. Eventually cable took over with its 24 hour schedule of reruns - and TV viewing was good for insomniacs.
However, things have changed significantly in cable land. Late night shifted from a "lets fill the airwaves with cheap shows" to "lets make money by selling ad time to people who make 30-60 minute commercials - score!!!".
I am a night owl, I am most likely going to watch TV between 10pm and 4am. Not their main market, I know, but I've watched infomercials take over the wee hours of the morning, creep into the just after midnight hour, and now see the bloody things as early as 9pm. Heck, they are even creeping into the daytime hours now.
TL;DR Long story short - I dumped cable not only because the price kept were going up, I dumped it the minute I realized they were asking me to pay to watch commercials (infomercials) rather than entertainment shows during the hours I was most likely to watch! As mentioned, the shortening of shows due to increasing ads is hard enough to swallow - but when most of the channels of expensive extended cable are nothing but ads on the late night, why the heck should I keep paying more for less?!? This is why I dumped cable and even have to avoid many OTA channels. Thankfully, ad-free Netflix and Amazon Prime is there for us night owls.
1) Doesn't it bother anyone that by having the choice of what to see and when, you simply reinforce your own interests/prejudices, rather than open your mind to new ideas? This is probably the Internet's greatest sin.
Actually, that is why I like my Netflix subscription. I watch it... a lot. I've seen almost all the things I want to see on it, and the rate of new content is slower than I would like - but I do only pay $8 a month, so I don't expect a lot. However, when it is 3 am on a sleepless night off with nothing to do (everything is closed and I don't think my neighbors would appreciate me cutting the lawn or building a shed at that hour), I will turn on Netflix and watch a show before going to bed. I find myself often going into sections I normally wouldn't, loading up something I don't think I'd normally watch, and finding out I really enjoyed it. Then I follow the suggestions based on that film until I run out of content - only to repeat the exploration again when I run out of stuff a few months down the road.
Think of it this way - its like internet browsing. I look up something on wikipedia, a blue link of an interesting word (or unknown word) gets followed, then an article link at the bottom takes me to a new web page, and so forth, until I am on a totally unrelated topic - a topic that I would have thought of looking into without that flow of links taking me there. I sort of do the same thing on Netflix as I do on my web browsing. So, no, I don't think the Internet and personal choice simply reinforces my own interest/prejudices - however, exploring one's interests is not always a bad thing. Just as I make it a point to go to new restaurants and places in my life, I also find it acceptable to go to my favorite diner or place frequently. The trick is balancing likes with new experiences.
Apple are on thier way to winning this war on cable. The new AppleTV was quietly updated to 1080p and requires no local time shifting storage solution. The have secured agreements so you can get most shows one day behind air date, with premium shows from HBO released after season ends. No commercials for the majority except for Glee which did put in post show adverts that put it in my will not watch again list. No monthly fee so you can not buy anything new and still have access to you previous purchases. Prediction: Apple will release AppleTV iOS apps with user selectable channels and lower the bar to become a broadcaster with Apple doing delivery. Tight integration with iPads and iPhones for remote control with Siri voice query as option. Maybe a TV set with AppleTV docking station to allow for brain upgrades without replacing set every time.
to pad their subscriber numbers. I cut the cord over a year ago and they keep calling me to give me "free" basic cable in order to pad their subscriber numbers and get more ad money. I always find it amusing when the person on the phone can't believe that I don't want "free" cable. I tell them I get everything I need over the internet and down't want cable. If they offer it to you, don't take it. It'll just prolong the life of an obsolete business model. I can only assume Comcast will eventually take the next next step and *require* you to have cable if you use broadband. If and when that happens I hope there is a firestorm of lawsuits...
Everyone seems to be forgetting how terrible TV is now-a-days. Reality TV is awful. They have shows about parking meter attendants? Pawn Shops? Random slutty women that marry rich and then spend their days gossiping about each other? How many carbon copies of "Star Search" are they going to make? The only decent TV is on AMC, HBO and Showtime. All of which you can get on DVD/Netflix after the seasons over. Network and cable TV is doomed.
In 2004 I got fed up with the commercials, the repeats, the mindless blather and the realization that sitting in front of a TV was a consummate waste of time. It wasn't entertaining - one rarely sees "entertainment" of any value. It wasn't informative - "if it bleeds, it leads" being the editorial policy of "news" programs. The movies were limited in availability, always way behind the current theater showings, and rarely good enough to sit through. I gave my TV to a shelter for women, canceled cable service (satellite, actually) entirely, renewed my library card and rediscovered the unlimited world of books. It felt like my IQ increased by 20 points within weeks. I suddenly had a lot of time to be with friends, read, and take my dog for long walks. I could go to bed when I got ready, not "having to" finish a 10pm show or the 11pm news. I was able to approach purchasing decisions without the "help" of TV ads. I was able to decide whom to vote for without hearing attack ads for months before an election. (Money in politics? Meh.) How liberating! If anyone wants their life back, they ought to think carefully about how many hours they spend in front of the box being immersed in pseudo-entertainment and plied with propaganda about products, services and politicians. Think carefully, too, about whether they really like being the lowest common denominator to whom most TV "content" is pitched. And think of how much richer life could be with all those hours devoted to something else.
These days all you really need is a powerful laptop & a smart HDTV connected to it
Except nobody* wants to connect a computer to a TV. See this comment and this comment and this comment. If you want, I can dig up more.
and an unlimited or very high cap cable/dsl service
Which the cable Internet companies are trying to kill precisely because it encourages cable TV customers to become former customers. Comcast prefers to just let its Tata uplink saturate.
* Outside the tiny, commercially insignificant minority that reads Slashdot and the various HTPC forums.
I bet there are thousands of people who would be willing to subscribe to HBO.... if they didn't have to spend $80+ to be eligible to subscribe.
why can't HBO just sell there own stream? maybe they can but the cable co will be pissed off if HBO where to bypass them.
The right thing to do is to drop the cable news entirely. Same with talk radio. They're bad for you, and bad for the country.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Consider pirating the content. It doesn't cost anything and comes with none of those restrictions. I know, you tried to do the "right" thing, you went out of your way to try to give your money to the people who drone on and on about needing the money -- but when you did, they turned you down and said they didn't want your money. I don't know what they are thinking, but it's pretty darn clear they don't want your money, so stop trying so hard. Just go get what you want (content with no hassle) and if the authorized people ever want your money, then they'll give you what you want in exchange for it. Good luck.
Hulu pisses me off because even if you pay for + you still get increasingly more commercials (seriously, they started with just a couple of commercials per show, now they rival over the air amounts).
The thing that REALLY pisses me off about Hulu is the lack of agnosticism. You can only watch THIS show on a computer, you can't watch it on your TV with your BluRay player or on your phone - even if you paid for Plus. >
If your BR player is internet capable (most are) you can use PlayOn and stream any internet video to your TV regardless of Hulu rules. We have it and love it. No need for a dedicated HTPC or constantly plugging in your laptop. So either have a smart TV or a net connected BR player and you're good to go with all of Hulu, ESPN3, all the networks, MLB, NHL, etc.
I don't dispute there's quite a few anti-copyright people on here, but I would argue that this isn't a strongly anti-copyright place, it's an anti-stupidity and despite the constant ripping into one another and trolling a pro-ethics website.
Most Slashdotters I think you will find actually agree with some sort of copyright protection, as long as it's fair and it expires. You will not find a consensus on what is a fair term. Most Slashdotters are pro creative talent making a profit and anti-big media exploiting that talent and its consumers.
You will find a lot of Humble Bundle, creative commons, and direct sales fans here but not many fans of Sony/BMG and their ilk.
Slashdot isn't full of underhanded thieves, it's full of people who want things to make sense and understand the right thing shouldn't take huge amounts of effort or unnecessary amounts of cash to do.
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At that rate, it's over 150 hours of streaming - or about five hours a day.
Five hours per household, not five hours per person. Reduce that for operating system updates, application and game downloads, web surfing, Farcebook, etc.
You would not see a drop in subscribers, just a drop/change in services. The subscribers still need the internet pipe. For me, it is cheaper for me to keep the cheapest package of cable TV so I can get bundling discounts. I get a one the premium cable internet services packages (20MB down / 6 MB up [ Comcast New England area] ). If i just got the internet package it would cost me $75 before taxes. if i bundle the two, I can both for $68 before taxes. I really only use the TV to watch one show (Conan O'Brien). I could go without it too.
If the pricing was worth while, I would love to drop cable TV and used the reclaimed money on NetFlix,Hulu, etc... but the number just don't work now. Honestly, I think the cable companies bank on that. With this messed up pricing, they still keep the majority of their money versus it going to another service. This also slows adoption of streaming services.
No good deed goes unpunished.
YUP.... I tried to buy music from itunes, got locked out of a song that disappeared from my phone. Got married and enabled "home sharing" only to find that I could install wife's songs on my phone, but they would not play. Switched to android and found that I could not convert the nonencrypted AAC songs into 128kmp3s w/o paying $20 for a converter. So I downloaded the very same songs I'd bought. Bought books from Google books only to find that I have to install a special bloated version of adobe to read the files... which they failed to mention that they we selling me a PDF. I've all but given up on trying to get things correctly. They make the hurdles just too high.
I'm planning to cancel Netflix in favor of cable. I'm sick of too many choices and poor quality of content in Netflix streaming, and I like the curated, premium-quality content of the movie channels. I also like commercials -- I think it's interesting and weird to see what giant companies think that we think is "cool". Additionally, the technical quality is much better on cable -- everything is full HD with no waiting.