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Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17
An anonymous reader writes "Nielsen, the company that studies the viewing habits of television viewers, announced its findings in a blog post Tuesday. Since 2008, the number of cable TV channels offered as a bundle rose from 129 to 189 in 2013, but in that time-frame viewers have consistently only watched an average of 17 channels. The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that 'the price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won't sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider's other channels are also served up.' Nielsen concluded in its post that 'quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers', signaling the possibility that more Americans will cut the cord after realizing that their cable bill has increased in the last few years but their consumption of content hasn't."
and nothing to watch.
I be willing to spend a few bucks a station to only get what I want. Could spend maybe $20 and get what I want and saved like $60
... is why cable companies sell "packages"
On 17 channels, how many actual shows are being watched...
Most people would be financially better off just buying what they like on iTunes, even at $3/episode.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I live in rural Texas and have one choice for Internet and TV. I pay $128 a month for 250 channels and a 30MBit connection. I watch the following channels:
- BBC America
- SyFy
- Travel
- History
- HGTV
- USA
- Animal Planet
- Local affiliate for Revolution TV show
- My kids watch Nick Jr. and Nick, sometimes Disney
Maybe 10 channels.. what a waste of money. I have the least amount of channels I can get and still qualify for the bundle. If I could get BBC America, I would gladly cut cable, as the rest I can get online.
So even with 189 channels, Pink Floyd is still pretty close with the lyrics from "Nobody's Home"
I've got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.
Wife is addicted to crap TV. I would cancel my $200/mo U-Verse service in a second if she'd let me.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I am convinced that the price per channel would go up if everyone was able to purchase channels a la carte.
It costs $X to produce all the content, and they need to charge each customer more than $Y (where y = x / number of customers) on average in order to make a profit. Everybody knows no one could possibly be watching 200 channels. But if all of a sudden people decide they want to only pay for 20 channels, then everybody is going to be paying the same price for just those 20 channels.
People want a la carte because they think it will be cheaper, but it probably won't be on average. For example It'll be cheaper for people who watch 5 channels and more expensive for people who watch 30.
The real way to save money on a la carte, is to cut out the middle man (e.g. the cable companies). If you can purchase content directly from the supplier (e.g. from HBO, or comedy central, etc), that's however many less salaraies that need to be paid by your subscription costs.
On-demand streaming is the future of TV. The cable and satellite companies are going the way of bookstores and newspapers.
Does this number include the duplicate HD channels, the spanish channels, the religious channels, or the pay-per-view channels? 36 shopping channels? Really? REALLY PEOPLE?!? AMAZON ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YA?!?!?
... And here I am, with about 50 channels, including multiple music channels, for $95/monthly.
Only watching 5 of them.
Yay Canada! Am I right?
Cut the cable years ago, and the one thing I miss is decent sports. My favorite, IndyCar, is typically relegated to NBCSN (with streaming available only to cable subscribers). Soccer, especially Premier League, is the same way. Even some "headline" events - e.g. major college football bowl games - are on ESPN now.
I'm fairly certain they hang onto those sports broadcasts because it's the only thing of value they have left. Can't wait for this to reach its inevitable conclusion.
My apartment has a deal with the cable company that requires me to pay the apartment complex an extra $38/mo on my rent payment; supposedly this goes towards cable service, but it doesn't reduce the cost if you ask for a cable TV quote from the cable company, so I suspect they're just pocketing the cash.
I only ever watch for live college football games on channels that are available locally OTA as HD (except I don't have an HD anttenna), so somehow I'm paying $38/mo for analog downsampling of HDTV channels that are all available for free in my area.
Fuck Time Warner Cable.
p.s. I live in the cheapest and worst-rated apartment complex (hint: it's section 8 housing) on the "good" side of a city with over 1 million residents; I'd have to pay about $100 more per month if I moved anywhere else on this side of the city, so that's why I tolerate the $38/mo price-gouging.
Always posting your damn host file apk software links. Just stop.
I dumped Dish earlier this year. Same reasons; too many commercials on the few channels I did watch, and their last price hike crossed the $50 line.
They tried to convince me stay by offering a free upgrade to HD, but I told them I didn't have an HDTV. That is not strictly speaking true, my TV will do 720P, but it does not have an HDMI input (it has component, composite and S-video.) But close enough. All these HDMI-only boxes are useless (including yours Apple.) And no I'm not replacing my TV until it dies.
They finally gave up and went away. I got a bottom end Roku for watching the few things that might interest me. The one "local" TV station (only 120 miles away) has a Roku channel, so I get some local news and the weather.
RealMadrid App - TV In-App Purchase - 4.99
How much was your cable again? Did it cost more than $4.99?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So the reason we can't pick and choose, instead of buying bundles is because of anti-competitive measures by the suppliers?
considering the Nielson rating of their blog.
... counting pay-per-view and sports-only channels. Closer to 300 not counting them. I still regularly watch only 3 - 5 of them.
The content providers WON'T sell ala carte.
The content providers require bundling
BLAME Disney and the other content providers
I used to work in the industry.
Why do you thing congress dropped this issue like a great stinking turd years ago
BTW there is nothing new in this post. All old news
Before we cut the cable, our family watched:
PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, E and A&E
We switched to a pure NetFlix and HD antenna environment and couldn't think of going back. We even upgraded all the TVs in the house with the first year savings. Even the ESPN "exclusive" stuff (college basketball and football) can be streamed from somewhere for free.
I have not subscribed to cable in more than 20 years and have not watched broadcast in more than 12 years !
Ha ha
FU
...and nothing on. The Boss said it well.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And a big part of that is the over $60 a year you're spending on ESPN and associated networked even if you never watch sports.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
The fact that most people only watch a few channels doesn't really mean that a la carte would be cheaper overall.
Imagine that there are two channels. It takes a hundred bucks to keep the channel airing for a month. We have two viewers, A and B. A likes channel 1, and B likes channel 2, and they dislike the other channel. Right now, they each pay $100 to watch both channels, although they only look at one. Each channel gets paid $50 per bill.
So imagine that we switched to A la carte. Now A only subscribes to 1, and B only subscribes to 2. They channels still need the same amount of money to stay on the air, so what is the new price? subscribing to channel 1 is $100, and subscribing to channel 2 is $100 too. both channels get the same amount of money, both people pay the same bill... and they now get half the programming. Success?
So let's say that now ESPN charges $20 per subscriber. They do so, because they believe that the value they provide to the average subscriber is about $20. Let's say I don't like ESPN, Well, ESPN didn't get any less valuable, it's just that I will not pay the $20, and said $20 are going to be passed on as rate hikes to the people that want to watch the channel.
So while some people that really just watch very few, cheap channels, might get some savings, if your 17 channels include ESPN, Disney Channel, CNN, AMC and HBO, guess what? You will probably be paying a whole lot more than before, as unbundling makes every single channel more expensive, and you just happened to like 'anchor' channels that can really ask for a premium.
You pay for the opportunity to ride every ride, but most people are going to hit only 5-10 of them in a visit. If they charged per-ride, the popular ones would be overpriced, and the niche-rides (some that you might love) would eventually disappear.
Finally turned on HBO recently, since part of the HOA goodies.
Ten, count them - 10, HBO channels, and of those 6 were playing the same movie
I believe if you can still buy a la carte programming with in C-band satellite dish. I got rid of my dish about 4 years ago but I had a 4DTV digital receiver and I only HBO and the SCI fi channel. Sci fi channel I used to pay $50 per year. HBO was I think $15 per month but it included all the HBOs, east, west, actionn spanish.
It'll stop the ESPNs and CNNs from extorting cable providers. ESPN charges a BOATLOAD for licensing because they know that cable providers can't risk losing the 33% or so of their base for whom that would be a showstopper. Now, if we have a la carte, do you think that 1/3 of the customer base will pay 3 times as much each for ESPN (that would probably be about $25/month) to maintain pricing parity? NO!
It'll also eliminate the garbage channel suites (with clones repeating the same content) as well has putting pressure on content providers to produce stuff we want to see. I really don't give a damn if 50% of channels go away since we're not watching that filler anyway!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The new thing they seem to like to do is "simulcast" shows across several channels like it's a big event. But they've been happy to make entire channels out of the shows from other channels for a while now. The illusion of quantity.
You all know that they have the technology - via the digital set-top boxes - to only charge you for the minutes you watch, but no-one even talks about that. Why am I paying for ESPN even when I'm watching NBC?
That's why the cable companies are "fighting" ala carte & will finally give in. They don't want folks really thinking about this.
If my phone company can charge me by the minute why can't the cable TV company?
>"Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17"
I must be above average then (or perhaps below average), since I get something like 300+ channels and watch maybe 8?
Ones I can get over the air (so I don't count those 6, of which I might even watch only 3)+
History
Science
NatGeo
SciFi
AMC
Epix
Encore
WGN
I am happy with my FREE 54 digital channels I get from my antenna!
It would be interesting to see if those 17 average out to specific channels, or categories of channels. i.e. Sports Broadcasts.
Honestly, I'd be a cord cutter and I know a lot of other people who would as well, if there were *reliable* alternate way to get the sporting events I want to watch. Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, Auto Racing, just to name a few that you can't really get outside of a cable subscription. Football *could* be piled in there as well, mostly because there are relatively few games on the broadcast channels on any given weekend for a given region. However, NFL is probably the *most* available of any sport.
I never watch anything else that can't be reliably streamed from Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc. But I have to pay for all of it to get the sports. ):
1-5 channels $80
6-10 channels $90
11-15 channels $100
16-20 channels $120
21+ channels $150
The average bill goes up, people get less variety, and everyone is happy that we're not paying for stuff we rarely watch.
Guys! It isn't the so-called "cable providers" that will have anything to say about this issue. I mean, what are these "channels" that you speak of? If you want to watch Game of Thrones or whatever, just pay $1 per episode directly to the content producer to watch it. I think this is the way it will end up.
You don't seem to understand that you aren't paying for the channels you are paying for the service, the cost to run cable, interconnect the network, power, technical support, home installation, etc. Add to that the profit that they suck out off you and you're looking at $15 or so of your bill which is actually going towards paying for content.
With the average price of a channel at less than $0.20 how much do you really think anyone is going to be saving by dropping channels? That's the average price, the channels which is heavily skewed because of the few channels which cost several dollars is weighted against most channels which are just a few cents. Dropping a hundred or so channel is likely to save the cable company a few dollars (if that, you would expect support costs and equipment costs to increase to support this).
Ala Carte makes absolutely no economic sense for anyone, you're going to end up paying more for less at the end of the day. Cable companies are evil enough as it is, ala carte won't change any of that.
The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that 'the price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won't sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider's other channels are also served up.'
Then cable will die.
When a company decides it is better to not provide value to it's customers, and there is now a plethora of other options, they will soon find themselves without customers.
When I moved a year ago I haven't signed back up for satellite or cable at the new house. Honestly, its just not worth the bill. I pay $8 per month for Netflix and paid $50 one time for a decent HDTV antenna. That gives me plenty of stuff to browse around on and basic broadcast TV. If HBO made HBO GO available as a separate service I'd probably get it just for Game of Thrones, but I'm still doing OK without it (honestly, I'm torrenting it, but I'd be willing to pay $5/month for HBO GO if they'd do it).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Well, there's like a bajillion web sites, and I only visit about ten on a regular basis! Who's wasting bandwidth now? Checkmate, new media!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I'd be willing to bet that at least half of what people watch is available over the air. It used to be that content from Discover's channels was worth paying for but now they have nothing but crappy reality shows. I cut the cord a long time ago. I'd rather spend the money on trips to the beach.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
...is the only reason to have cable today, and the cable companies know it. This is why they are focused on content lock-in on live sports. This is why some major networks to only allow online streaming to verified cable TV subscribers. This is why my $125 MLB TV subscription will not allow me to watch local games online.
The only hope is that enough people cut the cord so that cable companies cannot afford to buy up all the content any more. Then the content creators realize they don't need cable and can offer content online without moronic rules like blackout locations and required cable subscriptions. Then devices can be created to neatly aggregate your online content (the stuff you want and nothing else), and cable TV can RIP next to land line phones.
And yes, I recently cut the cable in case you were wondering.
...is the only reason to have cable today, and the cable companies know it. This is why they are focused on content lock-in on live sports. This is why some major networks to only allow online streaming to verified cable TV subscribers. This is why my $125 MLB TV subscription will not allow me to watch local games online.
:-(
The only hope is that enough people cut the cord so that cable companies cannot afford to buy up all the content any more. Then the content creators realize they don't need cable and can offer content online without moronic rules like blackout locations and required cable subscriptions. Then devices can be created to neatly aggregate your online content (the stuff you want and nothing else), and cable TV can RIP next to land line phones.
And yes, I recently cut the cable in case you were wondering.
PS sorry for the double post, was not logged in the first time
Now I just get internet TV, free stuff like Crackle, and subscriptions to Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and NetFlix. Still waaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than cable/satellite.
That's why I cut the cord 5 years ago (cable was free from previous employer, when I had to pay for it, cut the cord. When we moved to HD in 2011, got myself an HVR-1600, built an external antenna, reinstalled BeyondTV and never looked back).
I get all Montreal channels, and PBS Mountain Lake (14 channels so far). No luck for Vermont channels, Mount Royal is blocking LOS to Mt Mansfield. I thought I would miss some shows, but on some days I would need 3 tuners in the HTPC to be able to record everything. I would *never* go back to cable. First, I would need to rent or buy a box to give me the HD my tuners allow me to get, The same box would be encumbered with DRM, and I would need to pay around 25-30$ minimum to get the same channels I get for free (with less compression, no static, perfect picture). What I don't get OTA I stream on the 'net.
My big rant on Canada's DTV transition is how bad it was handled. It was never mentionned that you could just buy a 50$ converter, all that people understood is they needed to subscribe to cable or they would lose TV. Those converters were almost non-existent in stores, and couldn't we have had coupons like in the US?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
In 1996, my rural cable system sent us a big mailer: GOOD NEWS, WE'RE ADDING SIX CHANNELS!
As it turned out, there were three religious networks and three new shopping channels. I sent them a letter (they were not an ISP back then) suggesting they combine all that crap into one channel, call it The Jeezus Shopping Network, and that would free up the other five analog channels for stuff I actually wanted to watch.
Never heard back from them.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Nobody wants to hear this, but it's the truth and people should understand it:
"95% of all Slashdot
The price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served a la carte because we won't accept negative interference with our profit margins.
FTFY. You're welcome.
Went to pay my Uverse bill friday, it had jumped 50% (from 117 to 179). Went through the series I record, found 11 channels I actually care about.
Called Uverse Monday, was on hold 40 minutes and they disconnected me.
Called again Tues, was on hold 40 minutes and they disconnected me.
Called again this morning, ended up agreeing to fewer channels, no HD, no Showtime, for the same damned price I'd been paying the last 4 years.
I'm thinking I'll spend tomorrow researching laws (I live in California) to see if that verbal contract is valid, and what my options are.
My understanding is ESPN adds $2/mo to my cable bill. I never watch ESPN. When do I get the option to say "No thanks, I'd prefer $2/mon over watching steroid injected dudes do stuff I don't care about" ?
If gigabit internet were more common, we could subscribe to the channels we want a la carte and stream them over the internet for a modest price. I'd pay $5 a month for a channel I like which is probably more than they get from cable providers per subscriber.
Now why would the cable providers not want tha--.... ohhhhhhhhh.
30 years ago I had cable tv. About 20 local and non-local channels. Then all of a sudden the cable company told us we owed them a lot of money. We showed them a copy of their bill, which we had paid and was stamped by them 'Paid'. The story they told me was (and I was only 8 at the time and didn't have degrees in CS or EE), "Computers don't ever make mistakes". So they got 3 months worth of extra cable out of us, and never again. About 4 years ago the cruddy old TV became digital. I have had ADSL broadband for about 15 years. Now my telephone provider calls once a month offering a bundle for only double what I'm paying now for just internet and phone, they will offer 20 channels of crappy tv (7 of which I already get over the air). I have turned them down on every turn. I get what I get from TV. I get a bit more entertainment from the internet. I read books once in a while, and do things away from screens once in a while. I usually embrace free wherever I can.
Dependant on money from cable companies for these ratings things? Is this a form of shooting themselves in the foot or biting the hand that feeds them? Non-american here - in Australia, we have Foxtel, Optus and Austar - the latter 2 just replay Foxtel's offering's IIRC. Due to this non-competition (the way Rupert likes it), you dont get much for the $AUD you give them.
Average subscriber get's 10 and pays for 30.
What is this "TV" thing you speak of?
I dropped cable years ago, and my TV hasn't been turned on since (in fact it's up in the attic collecting dust).
Don't really miss it at all... the few shows I feel like watching I can find online.
Higher than what the content providers get from the cable providers, but still less than what you pay for the cable package. Which seems like a pretty decent deal.
Content providers like the WWE are already rolling out their own internet offerings. Other content providers are known to be considering the same.
And yes, its rolling out for prices that their fans would jump for. $9.99 is well within OP's budget of $20.
Nothing to Watch. Move Along.
Why is Snark Required?
First, when this guys talk about x americans, they are extrapolating from a few families they are studying. My family was a couple of decades ago a study "family". All of the families chosen where from friends of friends, which meant the majority would be of a certain background and economic group. Besides, we often left the TV on or inputed that a certain member of the family was watching when none was, just to look good in the stats and continue to be part of the program. We werent the only ones.
Sure, lots of channels will cease to exist. But the makers of the content are already using different outlets like youtube to get their content out there. Once they get enough following there, they might strike a deal with netflix or a similar company. Just because "24/7 content you can't choose" goes away doesn't mean that you can't replace it with "content you choose whenever you want it".
TV has been the industrial age of amusement and news. In a lot of "industrial" products, we are now producing custom ordered items, keeping the price low because of automation. If you don't buy your car off the lot, you can have any colour, engine and accessory package you want. It will be produced especially for you and it won't cost you a dollar more than the same car would cost you off the lot. I don't fit in confection sizes (too tall) and I have a lot of my clothing made. Compared to name brands, my clothing is cheaper and often higher in quality. This is because they now have computer controlled cutting machines that calculate the correct fabric cuts and the fabric gets cut by a robot. This is how modern TV is going to work as well.
People now have a choice what content to watch and when to watch it. It may be bad for TV channel owners, but in the end, this will provide improved quality and diversity of content at a price that people are willing to pay for it. Advertising models will adapt to this. In show product placement, more ads on the cheaper subscription compared to the premium one and so on. Don't be fussy about people moving your cheese but adapt and reap the benefits.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I don't know how the channels are over in the States but in the UK, there are an awful lot of +1 and even +2 (timeshifted channels) - are they classifying these as individual channels? I'd say nearly every channel has one of these ... you could cut the channel list by 40% if they had counted these.
Then I could at least see what my money really gets me. If the best channels were $50 per month I might be willing to watch reruns of older show. In a couple of years it would all be new to me anyways. It's not like I HAVE TO watch tv. IT's just something I do when I don't feel like doing anything.
Fine. Then watch the whole system you are defending collapse in on itself. Cable TV can no longer sustain yearly 6 to 10 percent yearly rate increases. People wages are stagnant and the price of food and energy has skyrocketed. Something is going to eventually give as people are no longer able to afford to watch television under the traditional business model. Either the industry is going to have to adapt and bring prices back in line with reality, or its a bubble that is going to burst. I am betting on the latter.
Next time they do the survey, I volunteer to be part of the baseline sample.
Channels subscribed: 0
Channels watched: 0
Channels worth watching: 0
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
HBO gets $x per month for every subscriber who subscribes to it via cable/satellite/etc.
If HBO offered an a-la-carte offering (basically the current HBO go streaming offering but available to anyone and not just those who subscribe to HBO) and charged $y for it (where $y is higher than $x) they could make MORE money than they do right now. Anyone who switched from HBO-via-cable to HBO-a-la-carte would be an increase in revenue. As would anyone who doesn't currently get HBO but who takes up the a-la-carte offering. They would however lose revenue from anyone who currently has HBO but chooses to drop it completly but this would probably be a relatively small number of people I suspect.
Anyone out there know more about the business than me and can explain why HBO doesn't do this? (offer its product a-la-carte at a price that is higher than what it gets from cable companies, thus ensuring that it doesn't lose revenue when a customer switches from HBO-via-cable to HBO a-la-carte)
Honestly I had more to watch on TV when I had to get up an turn a knob to change channels than I do these days. No cable for me.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
also gets butt raped every month...
___
coming soon for us here... the forced obsolescence of our dual tuner recorders and pc tuners (yes, we're still old analog, why spend hundreds or thousands on new lcd televisions, which have proven much shorter average lifespans than old crt sets, when we have perfectly good televisions already that will still outlast them -- newest is 32 years old) due to the cable company doing an end-around the prohibition against 'per outlet' charges by going digital only, requiring every set or device to have a cable company provided receiver, recorder, or cable card... for a monthly fee for each one, of course...
this after taking 2-4 channels off analog service every few months for the last few years (and not necessarily the lowest rated ones either).. reducing the value of ordinary and 'expanded' basic service, and naturally never reducing the price accordingly -- but rather, it's gone up over 25% in that time instead... not including the digital receiver or card needed to tune in the moved channels.
last year, they started encrypting local broadcast previously available with standard qam tuner.
they've also come up with a brilliant way to increase the accuracy of the data they compile on viewing habits by tuning their receivers to cspan after a few hours without any interaction with the receiver's ui... this is *extremely* annoying.
and finally, they even went so far as to remove the scheduling utility from the receivers, which previously allowed you to schedule manual recordings to devices that cannot control the receiver via blaster (which they significantly reduced the reliability of in a receiver firmware update) or serial port (also disabled or broken now, as well).
___
if only the fcc wasn't run by former industry executives or lobbyists... clearqam broadcast and expanded basic could be a requirement.. since with analog service all you needed was a 'catv ready' set or vcr, clearqam should be the 'new' catv ready.. adding another 5-8 dollars a month, per set or recorder for going 'digital only' is a fucking money grab, plain and simple... when technology has existed for decades to restrict channels to paying customers, and even restrict which channels a subscriber does get... instead, we get digital only, jacked up prices, extra charges for receivers and cable cards, no longer have the freedom from cable company mandated equipment, and now get to pay someone (or someones, plural, in the case of something like a tivo equipped with cable company provided cards) in order to exercise our rights provided by universal v sony back in 1984.. we might have some oversight over the constant rate increases, and crippling of other services in order to promote their own (internet throttles, quotas and outright interfering or blocking traffic to purposefully hurt competing online services)... and we get spied on now too, as cable companies log every channel change, at a minimum, and sell that data and accompanying demographics for yet more revenues... no way around that when you are forced to use their receivers or cards... but the government could have curtailed that.
Sure, lots of channels will cease to exist. But the makers of the content are already using different outlets like youtube to get their content out there thit k website bán hàng
The Movie Industry, the Music Industry and the Cable Industry; providers of homogenized CRAP all some to lead down the road to mediocrity, in the caes of Cable; 250 channels of nothing on, or worse, nothing worth watching. Cut the cord and take a dump on hollywood, they deserve it.
Your Cable/Satellite/TV provider has no choice. The content provider sells the channels you want in packages that include other channels that are more profitable to the content provider. So there might be 1 premium channel in a package, but along with it the cable company is forced to also include infomercial channels, shopping channels, channels with nothing but reruns from the 50's, etc... The Cable companies want à la carte channels just as much as the consumers, they just can't risk alienating the media providers. They're the ones that have control of the industry.
In a way, bundling weakens the argument that downloaders/file sharers don't pay for their content. Anyone who has had a cable subscription for any length of time has paid for every program aired during the duration of that subscription and has the right to watch them. With a multi-channel tuner and a DVR with really large storage capacity, every show on every channel of interest could be saved for later viewing, legally. It's not a big stretch to view the cloud as the aforementioned DVR. In a sense, filesharing could be viewed as extreme timeshifting, at least for anyone who had cable when the show in question was broadcast.
Honestly if they did shows "ala-carte" things would be different. I would GLADLY pay for TV shows I like Fox cancels Almost Human and replaces it with another cop show that has a lower average IQ rating so it will work better for the typical FOX viewer.
IF shows were Ala-Carte I could give my money directly to the show creators. Betting Firefly would be brought back to life in a heartbeat if FOX did not want to let that IP rot and Die.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In a world where the average consumer is watching almost 20 channels, "most consumers" would not be better off with alacarte due to pricing dynamics.
I will note we don't know the median so there is no way to get at the skew. This means we could have a small subset that watch either 1 channel or 50 channels that imbalance the estimates of how many would be "better off".
You are free to pick & choose the "none" option. My big screen is for watching blueray . . .
The typical content of basic cable continually amazes me with its lousy quality. How can it be that with hundreds of channels to chose from and there is almost never anything interesting to watch? If not documentaries, then incisive news? If not that then original or recent fiction, or comedy or old musical concerts? If not that, then reruns of HIT TV shows from years or decades past?
How?
The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the providers, or maybe the cable company itself, has PLANNED to restrict quality and shovel shit instead. Half the population is below average in IQ after all and will apparently swallow anything you shovel at them rather than just turn the damned TV off.
The shit makes the pay per view options stand out in bold relief, after all. Except I find it more relieving to just unplug or turn off instead.
Everytime I go somewhere where there is cable or satellite, it's the same thing, people surf channels.
They can't decide on what to watch.
Then they have their DVR with butloads of crap they didn't want to record, entire series of bizarre, mind-numbing time wasting "programming" that they feel almost like they have to watch them.
I gave up satellite several years ago and haven't looked back. Netflix gives me the interesting, commercial free content of all stripes, and my crystal clear, free, over the air PBS programming gives me all the news and educational programming I could ever need.
Fox News?
CNN?
Who watches that crap?
The only thing, and we all know this, that keeps cable and satellite going is Sports.
Yes, I miss this...
However, I have found ways to work around it, such as sports bars, friends houses and of course, frontrow/firstrow-sports.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I find since having gotten rid of service from the local cable provider (die! Rogers! die!) over 3 years ago, having exactly zero channels to choose from takes comfortably out of "entertainment multiple choice", and into the realm of defining my own style of entertainment, whether from an online provider (NetFlix when they have good content, or other web providers who offer it, if it's interesting), DVD/BluRay (if I want to own it), and other sources for anything else I want to watch.
We all know that the providers force the cable companies to take "all or nothing" deals. So instead of true pick and choose a la carte plans where you could pick individual channels they could if they wanted to have a la carte "blocks". So you can get the ABC/Disney/ESPN block and the CBS/whatever block.
That would possibly put the cable providers in a weird position though. They wouldn't need to fight with the providers over contracts anymore, the providers would answer to the customers who would take it or leave it. I, for one, would like to have the ABC/Disney content packed separately from the ESPN package. Of course the parent company would be free to offer them as separate packages rather than an all-or-nothing package.
There's nothing saying that it has to be black and white, this way or that way. The cable companies can offer this a la carte blocks and still have standard cable line ups.
If nothing else, it would be nice to at least "perform the experiment". But since so many people (and corporations) fear change, this will continue to drag out as speculation for some time to come.
I refuse to sign
I would think that the average would be lower, especially in this economy. The "network" channels plus a few of the basic cable channels. Maybe eight or nine total for the most part, with very rare ventures into maybe two or three more. Do people really sign up for "pay" channels anymore?
I think that if people could really buy ala carte instead of having to buy nearly 200 channels or nothing, the numbers might be different.
We dumped cable during dot com bust (I was out of work at the time) and went to Netflix. You can't imagine what reducing your TV budget from $120 a month to $6 a month does to your budget. We also invested in this think called an Antenna, which was surprisingly cheap. Our homeowner's association did not allow antennas (thereby handing a monopoly to a local really terrible cable company) but the communications act of 1996 invalidated that.
We had cable again for a short time in 2006 to try out the latest crop of DVRs, and they stink. Sluggish response and not enough disk space. (I think I calculated once that DVR disk space costs 12 times as much as the same space purchased at Best Buy.) Dumped all of that at the beginning of the current recession, got a roku instead. (A one time cost that was less than one month in cable TV fees.) Wife and child watch shows a year or so out of date, but they have gotten used to it, and they can binge watch. (Which isn't necessarily a good thing....)
I need internet as I work from home, but fortunately fiber is available in my area, so I don't have to deal with comcrap. Now we have two Rokus, one upstairs and one downstairs, wife has a Hulu account and daughter has her own Netflix account, and all I'm paying for is the network.
The cable TV model is obsolete for several reasons -- real time vs demand, package vs ala carte, and unreasonable cost. But I think it will take an older generation (what I call the "tv tray generation") dying out before the cable companies finally go under. But it's inevitable.
Me? I really don't have much time for TV. Fridays is "pizza and movie night", and we take turns picking the movie, but other than that and The Big Bang Theory, I'm largely ignorant of what's on the tube. And -- a little insight -- you'd be astonished at how much productive time that frees up.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
54 channels is an unusually large number of options. I have about a third of that and I live in a major city.
I have no doubt that the results of this poll are accurate. It just stands to reason. Even if you happened to actually enjoy all the content of those 200 channels how could you possibly watch it all? There are just not enough hours in the day.
For me, about the only thing I watch live on cable is sporting events. Or the local news. Rarely movies because of all the commercials. Same with weekly TV series. The commercials just ruin the flow of it for me. The rest of it I will DVR and watch later - while skipping over the commercials. Almost all the movies and weekly series that I watch now come from Netflix.
The TV Cartels...oops, Cable Providers - know full well that most people only watch a small fraction of the available TV channels. They will continue to fight a la carte programming tooth and nail. Why? Because the current model makes them more money. As always, the bottom line is the bottom line.
As the technology improves it becomes easier to cut the cord. Personally the only reason I even have cable is that my wife likes to watch some programming that's not available anywhere else. So I keep it to keep her happy. Happy wife, happy life :-)
Were it only me in the household, I could easily see going to Netflix only. I might miss the sports for a while but eventually I'd find something better to do with my time and probably wonder why I even watched sports in the first place.
Meanwhile, the TV cartels sit by and watch as the technology makes it easier and easier to escape from their filthy grip.
I personally think that cable providers are dying out and will probably be gone soon. In my house we have roughly 400 channels, and I believe only two are watched; my parents watch NCIS and I watch Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley. If it were up to me I wouldn't have cable at all, the cost to watch ratio just isn't worth it.
nothing has changed since he penned this decades ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5...
Hundreds of channels, and we only watched a few. Cutting the cable saves us enough money every month to pay for Amazon Prime + Netflix, and leave enough to take the family out to a movie theater (including over-priced concessions). Side effect, we've found some of the over-the-air stations, like Cozi, to be more enjoyable and family-friendly with their retro-programming than many current TV series. And the streamed content we do watch, we watch WHEN we want and HOW we want unlike nearly all the standard cable channel programming.
757 channels and nothing's on....
And even between myself and my wife, who's much more of a tv addict, I have grave doubts that we watch 12 channels. Unfortunately, one or two of them are part of a bundle (except on DirecTV), or we could get by for less $$.
Cafe choice of channels? That's too hard for the cable companies.... (Hell, give me BBCA and you can take away *every* ESPN channel there is, but I have no choice, I have to pay for them in the bundle.)
mark
I see no value in all the excess channels that I will never watch. If my bill ended up $10 a month higher but I only received channels that I wanted, I would see value in that and would happily pay because I wouldn't have all the excess crap.
By going a la carte I am voting with my dollars on which stations I believe should survive.
I want a la carte programming because I hate paying for shit I don't use. I don't care if it will cost more, because then as a consumer I will have value in my purchase.
That's because there's only about three channel's worth of TV worth watching on those 189 channels, spread among the seventeen you watch.
That is all.
A la carte is the only way consumers can reign in costs. I, too, get duplicate and triplicate channels and the only differences are some are HD, others digital and then others some other crappy technology where all things are blurry...not sure what century those stations still live in...I probably watch a dozen channels at most and not often. I almost wish I could opt for per hour charges at least for our household where everyone is more often on the computer, reading kindle, etc...and most of the stuff I watch I can get online now too...
I have a good, legal, alternative for viewing the content I like. So far, services like Hulu suck, and Netflix does not have everything I like. Until then, I am stuck getting screwed by the cable giants.
I haven't been in the MSO space for almost 15 years now... but I can tell you that back then "a la carte" would have worked just fine. It would have been comparable price-wise to the bundling options (maybe even slightly cheaper). Those leading the industry back then fed the "a la carte makes things more expensive" propaganda down the throats of their customers and over time people just assumed it was accurate. But they and the networks were in bed together (and probably still are).
I've sifted through 300+ posts of "Gee, I bend over every month and let stretch all of my orifices to the snapping point, but keeps me coming back. But I pine for a la carte!"
Is it *really* worth it? Really? $150/month is $1800 per year folks. How much entertainment could you buy with $1800 per year outside of cable? A lot, I would bet. Is what you get through cable worth $1800 bucks per year?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
for one yes, zillions of channels that I have zero interest in watching. Some channels I find myself watching less (I gave up on Discovery and AMC years ago) and I've noticed TCM is going downhill (do they really have to show Singing In The Rain three times a month? we all have the DVD). I probably can cut the cord and not miss much. However, living in condo limits OTA.
Speaking of OTA, I find amusing advertisements "watch HDTV for free with this amazing device! You can spend $100/month, that's $1200 per year and $12,000 for 10 years! But with this for only $19.95 you will never need to subscribe or pay monthly fees. You can watch lots of HDTV from the major broadcasters thanks to the FCC ruling that says they must broadcast digital over the air. Call this number and get started on watching HDTV for free!" Geez, it's an antenna but that is a clever line about FCC (they didn't say TV has to be broadcast over the air for free viewing, it just has to be digital). I'm old enough to remember when receiving TV from an antenna is common practice but I guess for many young people have never seen that so they figure this "device" is amazing (young techies are exception).
mfwright@batnet.com
Those five services give you more to watch than you could ever get around to in a lifetime and much cheaper than cable.
could it be that all the other channels are "Sell you something" channels. That's what I have on my cable. 600 channels, 550 trying to sell me something I don't need.
Paying around $130/mo for cable, internet and phone (yes - I still need a POTS line for the work I do from home). It's not terribly cheap, but for the bundle I do see value in it. Between me, the wife and daughter, we regularly watch about 12 or so channels on and off. Most of what we watch is DVR'ed - so between the three of us, we usually have an evening's worth of viewing on any given night, with Netflix as a fall-back option. It works for us.
As for a la carte programming... what we may see in the not too distant future is customers paying a trivial amount for each channel you want in your a la carte package. How they're gonna make their money is in bandwidth utilization. The more you watch, the more you pay... but will most likely be tiered bandwidth plans like most wireless carriers are doing now - rather than a metered per MB service. Your content will be delivered via IP streaming to something like a Roku box that can only be used on your home network so you're not piggybacking off a neighbor's unlimited bandwidth WiFi.
As more cable customers cut the cord, the ISP's (usually your cable company, or telco with a deal with the content providers to carry the content for a fee) will be the new content delivery service and will want a cut of the action too.
Take a walk in the woods with your kids.