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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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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
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.
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..
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.
I have pretty much ignored TV for the past 12 years, getting my shows and movies online. I do have a cable subscription again (it comes with my internet hookup, for a few euros extra), and recently I have started to watch some TV again; my new GF sometimes likes to veg out and channel surf a little. And I am appalled at how crap TV has become. Not because of the shows but the incessant, loud commercials. And those popups, yes. Dear god, how can anyone sit through that?
What pisses me off even more than the increased ad airtime, is the fact that shows are now designed around commercial breaks, especially the non-sitcom shows. They now show you what's to come after the break, and after the break there's a short recap of what has come before, eating into the amount of actual content even further. Then there's the timing of ads. For example, at the end of Community, Troy and Abed always do a funny little skit. You guessed it: between the show's end and the skit is a commercial break. Milking the audiences' interest in the show for all it's worth.
Funny thing about those popups: I had never seen them before until recently, but I remember sitting in at some conference where a company (I think it was Adobe) announced technology to insert them on the fly. I think I was the only real consumer at that talk, all the others were content producers or broadcast people. And I recall my horror at their enthusiasm. I asked the speaker if he really thought that people were waiting for this sort of disruption during their shows, and he assured me in no uncertain tones that yes, TV stations and advertisers would love it, and the rest of the room joined in an enthusiastic brainstorm on the possibilities. Of course I meant real people, not TV airheads and marketeers. In the whole presentation, Q&A, and subsequent discussion, the topic of us the viewers or our viewing pleasure did not come up once.
That enthusiasm leads me to believe that it's only a matter of time before Hulu and all other streaming services will start inserting ads and popups into their streams. Streaming media will simply replace cable broadcasts; what changes is the selection of content and the on-demand nature of the medium, but the ads will come back. Even if there will be a few premium channels offering ad-free content for a little extra, at some point even they might cave in to pressure or temptation. The once ad-free premium TV channels around here all have caved in long ago.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...