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400,000 American Homes Have Dumped Pay TV This Year
redkemper writes "More than 400,000 American homes have cut the cord and ditched their cable and satellite pay-TV services since the start of 2012. The figure includes 169,000 subscribers shed by Time Warner Cable last quarter, marking the service provider's tenth consecutive quarter of customer losses. It also includes the 52,000 net subscribers DirecTV lost this past quarter, and 176,000 customers who left Comcast."
...and I haven't regretted 1 minute of it.
Now if only the giants would see this as a reason to innovate and increase competition and lower costs. We haven't quite gotten there yet.
So these numbers are about to get a whole lot worse.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Usenet + SAB + Sickbeard = I'm satisfied
Much better view without their worthless wires overhead in my backyard.
...but for some reason my cable/internet provider charges less for 10Mbps when it's also packaged with their basic cable than they do when it's by itself. So, I gladly accepted their $8/month credit to add basic cable, and I simply unplugged the cable from my TV as soon as the cable guy had left. Strange thing is, this isn't a special as part of signing up with a contract, since I have no contract with them.
I really don't get how they do their accounting, and I'm beginning to think they don't either since they're losing so many customers.
I really hope some of the companies out there (HBO especially, I needs my Game of Thrones fix) figure out other ways of getting money from customers. I wouldn't want to see the shows I like cut back or eliminated if the tv/cable networks go the way of newspapers. So, dear cable/tv companies: We have money, we want to support your art. Let's figure something out!
Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems, and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble!
So. A rich little man with white hair died. What has that got to do with the price of rice, right? And *why* is that woe to us? Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans, are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA - the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new Chairman of the Board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome God-damned propoganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?
So, you listen to me. Listen to me: Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth... Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth.
But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, or that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! *WE* are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF...
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Even worse, they still limit what you can see. The BBC has Olympics coverage right with their iplayer and catchup links. That's the way we all want to watch TV and we are willing to pay for it as well.
Don't let the door knob get wedged up your ass on the way out.
Sincerely,
A Happy Ex-customer
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I unplugged 32 years ago.
However, after watching a crew do the filming of a tv show here in Portland a while ago, I was shocked at how many people and how long to took to film tv shows. It takes several hours or even days to film what would be about a minute on tv.
Those people are all paid union wages
Those people are paid by advertisers and subscribers.
So, I can foresee one of two things happening if enough pull the plug like I did.
Either we will see worse shows (skimping on the costs of filming) or more commercials to make up the lose of subscriber revenue.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
DirecTV alone added a record 645,000 subscribers in the latest quarter. And they added 593,000 subscribers in Latin America during the first quarter.
...interactive.
Honestly, other than live sports broadcasts, paid TV is crap. HBO and Showtime have good shows they put out, but I don't need to see them first-air, and they don't play relatively-recent movie releases anymore on those channels.
Cable Television used to be the best thing ever. It used to be you would see amazing amounts of programming that were simply unavailable through traditional networks. This content existed because the major networks had frankly rejected a lot of good ideas. Well those great ideas turned into formulas in a mature industry, formulas that are now followed without deviation. The Discovery channel used to pick up all the untouched NOVA ideas and it was awesome, now when I turn on the multitude of science/engineering channels I'm left to try to not punch my television into pieces because it's telling me that Egypt was built by aliens. The comedy channel used to be almost 24-hour-a-day stand up routines, which was fantastic, it changed from that a long time ago. Thankfully the cartoon network is still the lone shining beacon of basic cable that still provides true entertainment, but it's the only one at this point.
Cable died because they got cheap, they went low-margin-formulaic on their content generation, and hence their content is essentially all crap.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
And nothing of value was lost.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year Two Thousand Forty.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Content providers keep adding more and more commercials to content, the content gets worse and worse, and they keep driving up subscription costs by demanding more $$$ from cable companies and demanding worthless channels to be bundled together.
TW charges too much, keeps pushing their prime channels to higher priced tiers, and refuses to offer als carte programming to customers.
Comcast is no better than TW, and to add salt to the wound they spy on their customers for the government and the MAFIAA.
DirecTV has poor service, fails to deliver product, and screws customers for cancelling services. I had them for 4 weeks with the promise of internet service. No one installed the internet service. After being passed around DirecTV phone support for 90 minutes, I cancelled my service because they failed to deliver. And I STILL had to pay a $135 early termination fee, despite not signing any contractual agreement.
The industry is getting greedy and corrupt, and consumers are tired of it. Very soon my parents will join the exodus.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If it weren't for sports I think that number would be at least 10x higher.
There was a thread about "cutting the cord" on one of the AV forums recently and sports was the primary argument for sticking with cable. ESPN and its ilk are well aware of the clout they have. Networks like HBO have influence too, but if you can wait a year all of the shows worth watching on those networks are going to be out on DVD/Bluray/streaming.
I ditched cable 5 years ago and I've had to make a few sacrifices. I used to be able to watch my local BigTen basketball and football games on network TV until the BigTen Network came along. Then ESPN took Monday Night Football. Yeah, NBC has Sunday Night Football, but there was something special about MNF. I just don't watch most those games now. I also don't get to see college football bowl games or march madness games unless I go out or to a friend's house. You do miss that a little but then you remember the 100 other things you could be doing with your time and life goes on.
I do subscribe to a number of streaming services and my over the air selection is pretty decent. So, I really watch about the same amount of television that I did before I got rid of cable. I just pay a heck of a lot less now.
Some retort, "Yeah, but you still have to pay for Internet access..." Like I wasn't going to do that anyway? Yes, of course, now there is no "bundle" deal. Fortunately I live in a town with multiple cable providers (yes, 2 different coax cables are run into my home) and DSL so Internet access is reasonable even without a cable TV package.
I also didn't /have/ to buy extra equipment for watching streaming video on my TV. I use my PS3 which was not bought for streaming video but, rather, for playing games. Now it gets more use as a media player than a game console though. The only device I /did/ buy that I might not have needed to before was a Roku for the bedroom TV.
If cable companies offered an a la carte subscription service I might actually sign up again, but I don't see that happening.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Easiest habit I ever kicked.
Cable free since July? You haven't even gone two days yet.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There are no "basic" packages that cost $200 a month.
Why do people make up nonsense numbers? Or why not just say $2 million per month if you're going to make up nonsense?
Sure, cable TV packaging today involves both bundling up of channels as well as bundling of services.
In part, there is a reason for this. I'm not going to address the bundling of channels as we already know why that is done and what the financial ramifications would be if they stopped doing it. Instead, a far less obvious factor here needs to be mentioned. Cable Internet generally doesn't pay for itself. What? You mean there is a service that is being provided at a loss? Well, not really. You see, it was assumed from about 1980 on that if you could get cable TV, you would have it. The folks way out in bumble that could not get it were of course envious of their closer-in friends but the logistics and economics of wiring rural communities made it impractical. It still is impractical in many places.
So the pricing of cable Internet services was done for market-building reasons and for competitive reasons. The idea that someone would have Internet without Cable TV supporting the physical plant aspects of the connection was foreign to everyone. Nobody would do that. So cable Internet services were priced with the idea that the physical plant was supported by the TV service charge and the Internet could be priced really low to attract more customers - and bundling the services makes it even more attractive to just have all of them together.
Now you have people dropping the cable TV portion of the service and just going with the Internet connection. Admittedly, 400,000 subscribers nationwide is a drop in the bucket and isn't going to really affect anything. Should this number expand we might see some real changes being forced upon us. Changes like:
Now a lot of cable systems are going to be faced with capacity problems if more than a small fraction of their customers are trying to use IPTV streaming services. The systems were never designed for that kind of load and there is almost nothing that can be done without huge increases in bandwidth to the nodes that serve 500-1,000 homes at a time. Huge increases, like trying to deliver 10GB/sec. The other alternatives are replacing the entire cable infrastructure with fiber and eliminating the neighborhood node concept entirely. Both of these are extremely costly, so costly that it may seem foolish to embark on that course for any but the strongest players. Pushing back on IPTV delays that decision - because in many cases the decision will be to just turn it off.
So as more and more people move away from broadcast TV to IPTV services we can expect to see cable systems hit very, very hard and reacting in some unexpected ways. While the Internet of 1995 was interesting and a low-cost service to be provided, today's connections are pretty pricy for the cable company without a lot of payback. Tomorrow's Internet connections are going to cost them a bloody fortune to supply and many may simply choose not to make that kind of investment.
You can always get a T-1 connection anywhere in the US and probably anywhere in Canada.
Cable TV hit the market when I was a kid. There were two main selling points-- 1) more channels in rural markets than you could get over the air, and 2) NO ADS.
What happened?
READ MY LIPS-- subscription media companies, you have a choice. Either provide FREE content that is ad supported, OR paid content that is ad free. Period. There's no way I am going to pay you to spam me with ads. Your greed has no bounds, and it looks to be doing you in. I say good riddance. Other media sources have risen up to fill the vacuum you currently occupy in ad-free media.
In the meantime, I will continue to rent or buy DVD content that is not interrupted by ads.
The content proviers force the cable/satalite/phone companies to force packages on their customers. For example, if you want AMC... you have to get all of the channels that they force you to take along with it. AMC will not allow you to get AMC without also getting IFC, WE tv, Sundance Channel, and IFC Films. Why do they force these companies to carry these other channels? Becuase the content on those channels is very very cheap... But they are full of commercial revenue. AMC itself has all of their hit shows, which are expensive.
Because the majority of content providers follow this same format, we now have hundreds of channels, most of which are airing total crap... or decades old reruns. Sprinkled inbetween these channels are the core channels that people really want to watch. Unfortunately you have no choice in your lineup, and because the content providers force everyone to sign the same contracts, you don't have any choice in what you get to watch.
Sick of it all, everyone's turning to Netflix or outright piracy.
are greatly displeased at this development.
Without most of the public distracted by sports, sitcoms and stories of young doctors/lawyers/policemen in love they are likely to find time to think and question their place in life, politics, etc.
We cant have people doing that, it'll fuck up the economy.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Ok, so almost half a million subscribers of several types have dumped various kinds of pay TV.
That sounds like a lot, right? But, there are an estimated 115 million households in the US. (via us census)
So those half a million, comprised of geeks who have found another way, and households who just can't afford both cable *and* food, are approximately .3% (point three percent) of all US households.
So... slow news day?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I dropped Cable over the AMC fight and haven't looked back. Frustrated that I'll have to wait to see Game of Thrones and Walking Dead but maybe this latest debacle will force the content providers to sell streaming services like HBO Go. The joke is Netflix streaming doesn't carry much current content but they have a ton of older stuff and they are adding faster than I can consume so at this rate I'll never run out. I mostly let it run while I work for white noise anyway. It's got the added benefit of no annoying commercials. It's why I stopped watching CNN, their ratio of news to commercials is 50/50. Completely obscene.
Even though my only current option for TV is satellite and my ISP is capped at 600 MB/day, my wife and I have seriously talked about dropping our TV subscription.
It's not Netflix or internet content. It's just shitty TV.
I'm all for shitting on the cable companies and their overpriced services, but I don't get the math in this article. The author claims the following companies lost customers: 52,000 (DirecTV), 169,000 (Time Warner), 176,000 (Comcast), and 10,000 (Dish) for a total of 407,000. The author also admits that Verizon and AT&T have added a combined 275,000 customers. Doesn't this mean that the number of people who have actually cut the cord is more in the neighborhood of 132,000. That's about a third of the number the article claims.
I would keep cable with a decent channel selection at $40.
But regardless of the starting deal it soars to $90 to $120 very quickly.
Not worth it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And FiOS and U-Verse added 275,000 users.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...