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Cutting the Cord? Time Warner Loses 184,000 TV Subscribers In One Quarter
Mr D from 63 (3395377) writes Time Warner Cable's results have been buoyed recently by higher subscriber numbers for broadband Internet service. In the latest period, however, Time Warner Cable lost 184,000 overall residential customer relationships [Note: non-paywalled coverage at Bloomberg and Reuters]. The addition of 92,000 residential high-speed data customers was offset by 184,000 fewer residential video customers in the quarter. Triple play customers fell by 24,000, while residential voice additions were 14,000.
It sounds absurd that people are getting better internet speeds from wireless carriers than their ISPs, but here we are.
When these clowns raise their residential tv rates every 3 months or so.
We found a sweet spot at 40 a month for basic boxless catv and 20/5 Internet. Funny thing is we would have gladly removed all tv services but they would have charged more for the service going Internet only.
I'm cutting them out of my life as soon as our city wide giga broadband rolls out
Yup. We got rid of cable TV something like five years ago. Keeping it was already in jeopardy when I realized I was coming home from work and watching four hours of CSI every evening on Spike, and starting to see reruns of episodes that I could have sworn were just shown, and the straw that broke the camel's back was the removal of Turner Classic Movies from our cable package. Since getting rid of cable we've found ourselves actually engaging in our hobbies again, as opposed to just passively staring at the screen.
A lady at work the other day didn't seem to know that one could still receive over-the-air broadcasts for television. I wonder how many people don't realize this and are paying for TV that they don't want or need.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I am rooting for a death spiral. There are so many cable channels that would die a very quick death in any sort of ala carte system where they actually had to compete. The system has been cable system has been setup to extract maximum dollars, while providing very low quality (maximizing profit). I'd much rather see an ala carte system with a few very good premium channels, along with some scrappy quirky channel, and let the invisible hand slap down the rest. I want to be able to get HBO without ESPN, QVC, TLC,CNN, Fox News, etc. Get it down to a handful of good channels that i pick out for $20 a month and I might sign back up.
For now I watch a few things on Hulu and Netflix, and buy dozen or so DVD's a year. I am pretty happy with what I get for the money, and I am very glad that ESPN doesn't get one red cent from me.
Cable TV is pretty expensive for what you get, it's full of ads you can't really choose what content you want, etc. It has to become competitive to survive.... well that's how it should work but then the music industry was also faced with this conundrum ~15 years ago and I think they chose to lobby their way into survival, I expect the same song and dance from Cable.
We had a baby in 2010, cut the cord because we didn't want to contaminate him will all the bullshit. Sports is the only thing we remotely miss..
This is very easy to stop if they want, cut out the reality shit, produce quality content. Make the news news again with a bit less opinion. And by quality content, I'd say figuring out Law and Order and CSI and then making n versions of those shows in different cities probably isn't good enough. No more American Idol type crap. Like real quality entertainment, like dramas and comedies. I'd gladly pay for a news channel and 5 to 10 channels with good quality stuff on it.
That takes money, takes risk and takes some intelligence to try to suss out the good from the bad. Thus I predict it won't happen, not from the current batch of media and distribution companies. They're too fat and lazy and used to just cashing checks.
Local cable company recently swapped to a completely digital signal so everyone had to rent a new tuner box for every TV in their house (at something like $10 a month each). We stopped using cable but my dad kept with it.
One thing he noticed is his internet connection went to (even more) shit after the change. So he disconnected all the TVs yesterday and wired it so the cable signal just goes to the modem.
3x the download speeds and half the ping time, plus he loved not having to deal with constant commercials as he watched the news on his computer.
Cable companies are shooting themselves in the foot trying to squeeze a couple extra drops of revenue out of people.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
GP said they weren't in the US, so CableCard might not be an option. I am in Canada and nobody here offers CableCard, which is why we had to give up TiVo when it came time to get an HDTV. TiVo is CableCard only (and there's a good reason for it). The real reason they want to encrypt everything is to rent you the DVR.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I was in the same boat you were. I was a very happy TiVo customer here in Canada, until we moved to an HDTV.
The funny thing was having to try to convince the customer service woman at TiVo that no, I couldn't upgrade to TiVo HD. The concept that I couldn't get a CableCard from my local provider was so alien to her that I had to explain it several times (and even point her to TiVo's own webpage explaining why TiVo HD wasn't available in Canada). Even then I don't think she was quite convinced.
I guess that TiVo had so few Canadian customers that she really hadn't had to deal with the situation before. I still miss out old TiVo; the Motorola box we got from Shaw is great for 1080p video and Dolby Digital audio (neither of which our TiVo 2 could handle); but the user interface and software absolutely suck compared to the TiVo. It's always trying to do dumb stuff, like start a new scheduled recording on the tuner I'm using to watch something, even though nothing is being recorded (or is scheduled to record) on the other tuner at the time; menus you can't move back up from (even if you're several screens down, if you need to go up one menu you frequently (but not always!) have to exit entirely and start over again, drilling back down to where you wanted to be), not being able to filter out all the myriad of channels we don't get form the listings (I've simulated this by setting up a "favourites" list containing only those channels we get, but the way the interface is setup managing this when a few channels change often means I have to remove the favourites list and start over again), and ugly, ugly on-screen graphics (crappy fonts with no smoothing, no built-in upscaling for SD channels, so the entire UI changes to a more compressed version to fit within 480p, etc.). I could probably go on all day. I believe they have better boxes available now, but as I had to buy this one, I don't see it as worthwhile to "upgrade" to another non-TiVo box that is probably equally crappy.
Yaz
When the government put out regulations where companies couldn't use lead-based solder in consumer electronics products anymore (it's still widely available for private purchase), all electronic devices began suffering significantly shorter operational life.
We should note that the RoHS (pronounced "roe-hass") regulations do not apply in the US, but they're a major hassle in the EU. And yes, the lead-free solder is a real pain in the ass to use and leads to a lot of junction failures. A local community college even offers a special class on how to solder under RoHS.
On the upside, you can pick up a lot of "failed" commercial products and with a quick re-solder with real solder you can bring them back to life cheap.
We've revived many a printer (newer hp laserjets like the 1320 for example) this way. You remove the controller card and bake it in the oven for a few minutes. Once re-installed, they work like new.