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Cable Companies Hate Cord-Cutting, but It's Not Going Away (Video)
On May 29, Steven J. Vaughan Nichols (known far and wide as SJVN) wrote an article for ZDNet headlined, Now more than ever, the Internet belongs to cord-cutters. A few days before that, he wrote another one headlined, Mary Meeker's Internet report: User growth slowing, but disruption full speed ahead. And last December he wrote one titled, Reports show it's becoming a cord cutter's world. SJVN obviously sees a trend here. So do a lot of other people, including cable TV and local TV executives who are biting their nails and asking themselves, "Whatever shall we do?" So far, says SJVN, the answers they've come up with are not encouraging.
NOTE from Roblimo: We're trying something different with this video, namely keeping it down to about 4 minutes but running a text transcript that covers our 20+ minute conversation with SJVN. Is this is a good idea? Please let us know.
NOTE from Roblimo: We're trying something different with this video, namely keeping it down to about 4 minutes but running a text transcript that covers our 20+ minute conversation with SJVN. Is this is a good idea? Please let us know.
Give me the transcript or just audio. The videos are mainly 2 people with headphones on talking to each other via the computer. And the person asking the questions seems like they are reading the questions for the first time.
A few months back, my last deal with the cable company was expiring and the "new deal" they offered me was a $30 price increase for essentially the same service. They claimed that the retail value was $40 more than that so I was getting a "good deal." Of course, I'd never pay their supposed retail value, much less what they were offering.
We had been considering cutting the cord for awhile, so I had my research in place. We were already Netflix and Amazon Prime subscribers. (The latter for shipping and music as well as movies.) We added Hulu and an OTA antenna. We'll also buy some shows from Amazon VOD and will buy more DVDs than we used to.
Even with these extra expenses, we're still saving over $60 a month. That $700+ each year can go to other places besides TV shows that we never watch and monopolistic cable companies that just want more money from me each year for the same (or worse) service. (Unfortunately, our cable company is the only wired, high-speed Internet ISP in our area, so we're stuck still giving them money, but we've minimized this.)
Cables companies will primarily become internet providers and satellite companies will provide programming to the peeps in the boonies.
Personally, I say "freaking awesome". Both industries treated their customers like crap for decades. Reap what you've sown you jackasses.
but running a text transcript that covers our 20+ minute conversation with SJVN. Is this is a good idea? Please let us know.
YES, thank you!
I can read all the transcripts I want at work, but unless the video starts with the Microsoft theme song and immediately proceeds to Mark Russanovich telling me how to make Windows its bitch, I'll pretty much never look at anything requiring sound.
Cable companies originally offered a larger seclection of channels which wre commercial free. I cut cable when they drove me nuts with time/life commercials and raised the reate from 12.95/mo. Haven't subscribed since. Netflix is eating their lunch for programming.
The truth shall set you free!
Fuck you CableCo and the horse you rode in on.
For so long you've been bending your customers over a barrel and fucking them hard up the ass. Now it's your turn over the barrel.
Suck it.
This was a really bad interview. People used to prepare for interviews. Well, he brought his scissors, but nothing else. He didn't have any numbers or sources where this numbers would come from. He didn't know the name of the company he wanted to talk about. CRAZY...
Yes, it's a fantastic idea!
Better yet... leave out the video entirely and just give us the transcript.
Reading a transcript is not only faster, but reading text is, in general, MUCH better for information absorbtion because the reader has control over the input flow. (Unless you're dislexic, in which case I point you to https://opendyslexic.org .)
There are so many places that insist on doing video for everything, and it irritates me to no end.
Sports needs to be in it's own HBO like package.
Maybe even Disney channel as well it's cost is about X2 the price of nickelodeon.
As for sports in most EU sat / cable systems / Foxtel / sky (NZ) sports is it's own add on pack.
canadian systems have pick and pay tv soon (and some older plans have theme packs where you don't have to take sports I think you can still have them if you keep them on bell sat tv)
canadian systems also let you buy the box / rent to own without the $8-$10 outlet / mirroring fees that we have in the USA.
Cable card flopped hear and systems still hit you with $6-8 outlet fees + cable card rent fees on them as well. BHN even used to bill you to rent the SDV tuner.
Posted this before but for some reason it went through as an AC and then Slashdot wouldn't even let me reply to it with my name:
A few months back, my last deal with the cable company was expiring and the "new deal" they offered me was a $30 price increase for essentially the same service. They claimed that the retail value was $40 more than that so I was getting a "good deal." Of course, I'd never pay their supposed retail value, much less what they were offering.
We had been considering cutting the cord for awhile, so I had my research in place. We were already Netflix and Amazon Prime subscribers. (The latter for shipping and music as well as movies.) We added Hulu and an OTA antenna. We'll also buy some shows from Amazon VOD and will buy more DVDs than we used to.
Even with these extra expenses, we're still saving over $60 a month. That $700+ each year can go to other places besides TV shows that we never watch and monopolistic cable companies that just want more money from me each year for the same (or worse) service. (Unfortunately, our cable company is the only wired, high-speed Internet ISP in our area, so we're stuck still giving them money, but we've minimized this.)
As a followup, I received an offer from my ex-cable-tv company today for $10 TV service. There was an asterisk, of course. The price was only for 1 year and didn't include equipment costs, the various taxes/fees they add in, etc. My guess is that the $10 TV Service would wind up being at least $20 a month. Sorry, Time Warner Cable, but I'm not going back to you for TV service.
They thought cable guaranteed them an income without them having to provide any additional value, or even any value.
They are slowly - very slowly - beginning to get a dim idea that that might no longer be the case.
I do not feel sorry for them. I will continue to boycott them no matter how much they may pretend to change.
Can you please define your stupid buzzwords? FOR FUCK'S SAKE not everyone is a dumbass loser parroting soundbites
Did it myself a couple of weeks ago. Realized I'd not fired up the TV to sit down and watch a program in months. Watching a show with forced commercials on someone else's schedule is a fool's passtime.
Inevitably got transferred to the "retention specialist" who half-heartedly (but persistently) went through the list of manipulative mind games one learns from an afternoon of reading "How to win friends and influence people" - Felt sorry for the poor guy. Its his job to sell things people don't want, and he knew from the getgo that I wasn't going to keep anything but (admittedly very fast and reliable) 60 megabit internet service.
Still, he had to go through the motions because that's his job. 15 minutes of time wasted for us both.
Hey cable companies. Try selling your customers something they want instead of force-bundled 50+ a month packages designed to squeeze you if you want more than a full line-up of religious programming and HSN.
Cable companies originally offered OTA TV in areas are where hard to pick it on your own. HBO and the other cable channels came later. Back in the C-band days the channels there had ad's.
I used to pay Comcast $39.95 a month for Internet and TV service bundled for basic TV, which I barely used. So, I dropped the TV service which saved me all of $5.00. When I moved to New Jersey, Optimum Online now charges me $54.95 a month for Internet only. Thinks $119.95 for "Triple Play" is a bargain (I already get a year of Skype for $60 which works out to $5.00 a month), and I could get Netflix or Amazon Plus for much less for the differential between $59.95 and $119.95. If they don't want people to cut the cords. LOWER PRICES! This is marketing 101. It's obvious that people are cutting the cord because we can get a lot of the same content cheaper over the air with an antenna, over the internet, or by some other method without paying such high prices. Cable companies have to make money by VOLUME, not by trying to squeeze every penny from a dwindling number of subscribers. You charge LESS to MORE users, not MORE to LES and LESS users. What business school did these geniuses go to? They used to offer me triple play at $89.95 a month. You mean to tell me rhat yers later, with more users to spread the costs out over, you need to charge $119.95 a month to keep doors open?
Been a cable cutter for 3 plus years, never will look back. Netflix and Amazon, along with Red Box.
Video interviews are a pain in the keyster to watch. The more you can do to get rid of them, the better. Videos should only be used when you actually need to show the audience something visual. Watching a web cam pointed at someone's face for 20 minutes adds absolutely zero value whatsoever to the story. And cutting it down to 4 minutes doesn't necessarily add much value if I have to go and read the transcript anyway. If I have to read the transcript anyway, the video serves no purpose.
Trouble is, transcripts of interviews aren't much better anyway. Reading an interview is a painful process. It wastes too much time because I have to sift through a bunch of conversation to glean the useful information out of the transcript. And far too often the signal to noise ratio in an interview isn't very high. I much prefer articles where a journalist takes the useful information out of the interview and presents it in a clear and concise article about the topic.
So yeah, the more you can get rid of interviews on video, transcripts of conversation, etc. and replace them with well written articles, the better.
Seems it's time that the Cable Provider Lobbyists command Congress to enact the Affordable Cable TV Act which will require all US Citizens to purchase a Cable TV+Internet+Phone Bundle from the newly created National Cable Marketplace or face a Tax Penalty.
Perhaps the RIAA and MPAA can follow suit with mandatory Music and Movie Purchase Quotas through Apple, Amazon and Walmart
Of the latest buzzword bingo - what are 'cord cutters'?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Steven J. Vaughan Nichols (known far and wide as SJVN)
who the eff is SJVN? I dispute the assertion that he is known far and wide.
Been without TV for more than a decade now and have zero regrets. More time to waste on things that are actually fun. TV has gotten so bad, the only thing it does for me is getting my blood-pressure up on the rare occasions I am exposed to it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And well make business again.
Signed: Cord Cutter
..and you can lose the video altogether for all I care.
I'm unlikely to watch any internet video while browsing/surfing, especially "news".
Why do we call this "cutting the cord" anyway? Generally speaking people aren't going all wireless (bandwidth constraints are a serious consideration), they're still dependent on some line for internet. Sure, broadcast HDTV is great, if you're close enough to the towers to get the often weakened digital signals.
The US cable companies have done a good job of tying up live sports programming onto their networks; they get exclusive games for some teams, exclusive playoff game rights outside local markets (and sometimes they can even enforce blackouts in local markets) and if the particular sport league has any internet streaming capabilities it will cost you more ultimately to get that a la cart than it just would to have the cable TV access bundled with your internet.
I'm in Canada and I've been moving away from cable. I've managed to get the wife down to basic cable. We still have Internet from our cable provider though.
Here's the thing though. The price of our internet has gone up. Even with Netflix, our Internet usage is barely 100 GB / month.
It's almost like they want their $130-$150 a month for cable/internet/phone. It almost doesn't matter if you from one, they'll just jack up the rates of the other eventually.
Such is the power of monopoly.
I think cutting the cord is a bit pre mature in describing what most people do. Many discontinue cable or satellite TV service like I did 5 years ago. But I kept cable broadband internet as I am sure many do or switch to a broadband provider. The question becomes, is cable companies really losing money with TV service drops or are they making more profit selling internet service? Let's be honest here, re broadcasting TV services costs money. Cable and satellite companies have to do contracts with networks to re broadcast their service. With Internet the cable company pays to use a trunk line and generally maintains possible DNS servers and email. It get's a bit more complicated but you get the picture. Internet is generally easier and cheaper then TV. The only thing cable has to fear is wireless doing better speed and becoming cheaper. Because at some point cable will have to upgrade service lines in order to increase speed. That may involve increasing subscription rates along with improved speed. However, if TV goes away, that would significantly increase bandwidth on lines for internet. It will be interesting to see how cable and satellite deal with the issues of the TV cutters.
As the title says, they suck. Hate seeing this recent change at slashdot, the only change on any website that I frequent where I've actually taken the time to email the admin for feedback about anything. Love this site, but hate the videos. Give us a filter, where those of us who hate seeing that crap on the front page can weed it out by default.
Chances are, your cable company and your ISP are one and the same. I have Earthlink through Brighthouse and they just raised the bill by $2 last month. It's now up to $45.95/mo, for 15Mbps down/1Mbps up. It seems the more people cut cords, the more the cable companies will push back by raising prices on "Internet only" service. I'd be thrilled to tell them where to stick it and switch to a less expensive competitor, except there isn't one. AT&T is the only other local broadband provider (very slow DSL) and their limited-time promotional rate only applies if you're signing up for bundled services.
It's foolish to think cable companies are just going to roll over and get used to lower profits. I'll bet a couple years from now, we'll all be paying about $90-$120 just for broadband and then paying Netflix/Amazon/Apple for TV service. We'll reminiscence about the good ol' days when that amount of money used to buy broadband access and cable TV service!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
People talk about cutting the cord cause cable it pricey. But then they turn around and get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime and maybe some others. Each of those have a monthly cost. When you start to add all of those together + your ISP it comes out to about the same amount you were paying for cable.
Few people seem to mention this as an option, but broadcast TV is very extensive in many areas.
We live ~40 miles from the nearest city, but we still receive all local stations in full HD (better than cable or fiber in quality) and about 40 special interest channels, all with a $100 attic antenna.
Great advancement, this is great. I hate when people want me to spend time watching videos without the option to skim the text.
I'm cord free. Well TV+Internet at least. I dropped AT&T uverse once it became obvious they couldn't keep the service running for longer than a month and that I'd have to waste every weekend of my life dealing with them. AT&T was my only wired option so now I'm using antenna for TV and a T-Mobile hotspot for my internet (which is actually faster than AT&T uverse). Like most who coord cut, I don't miss being wired at all. The benefit of wireless internet is that if something goes wrong, it goes wrong for A LOT of people (and not just you) so they actually have to fix it. And since I have a good signal from my house, there's really almost no chance it goes out. Disadvantage is the price of course.
More and more cable companies are either requiring you to buy some sort of "basic cable" TV service or they are pricing things such that "internet + basic cable" is cheaper than just internet service.
They are doing this so that they can artificially inflate the numbers of cable subscribers they have.
Cut cords all you want. As soon as it starts effecting their bottom line they'll just raise the isp rates to compensate. I can't believe this isn't more obvious to people.
No, DICE. I will not watch your videos. I don't care how long (or short) they are.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
gonna killem'
we (customers) have been asking to eliminate bundling for years
i hate that we are starting out on a bad foot with sling tv bundling channels...i wish they had at least attempted real a la carte pricing before going to this ship
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
espn put a $5 per month sports charge on my bill.
I watch no sports at all....and never ESPN.
I decided that $60 per year sent to ESPN made less than zero sense.
SNIP ! Neftlix, Hulu and piracy (arrrr) fill the gap.
So, ESPN cost the cable co a $200 per month sucker, er, subscriber.
Triple Play = How to charge people $49.95 a month for low volume "VOICE" service, padding the profit margins. We cut everything but INTERNET. Comcast will be internet only here shortly, or it will die trying to stay the same as it is now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
With the demise of tvtorrents.com, I got tired of trying to find TV episodes online and went back to IPTV with a PVR. Sure there are other sites where I could have gotten the content, but tvtorrents.com had made it easy to follow a show instead of searching through a bunch of bogus torrents that you have to actually watch to know if you got a legit episode or not.
The torrent sites are too full of fake crap nowadays to be worth the hassle. Well, maybe "fake" is too strong a word: shittily transcoded might be better.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
another brilliant idea from the editors of Dice/Slashdot
Look, if you're going to do an interview, please try to stay on topic. You don't need to veer off into a discussion about some local wing restaurant, or some long extended rant about your local ISP choices, and how you decided to pick one versus the other.
Nobody watches, listens to, or (in my case) reads an interview to see what the interviewer has to say about random topics. They watch/listen/read the interview to see what the interviewee has to say about the topic on hand.
Maybe I read too much into the transcript, but it seemed too much of the time SJVN was just saying "Yeah", "Right", or "Got it" -- when what he really meant was "Can we get back to the part of the interview process where you ask me questions on the subject at hand"?
That interview transcript is five minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Yaz
With HTML 5 why would anybody use flash for something like this. It's stupid. I'm not opening another browser with flash just to watch the video.
I don't care who this guy is or how insightful he is. Video chats are stupid. Please stop "innovating" and get rid of all this new crap you've added to the site.
Robert Murray Wilson, talking about transparent superconductors he's developed.
Chris, from ClickSpring, talking about building a clock.
Myfordboy showing how to cast aluminum at home.
Kevin Karsch et. al. rendering synthetic objects into legacy photographs
It's no great effort to find interesting and informative videos on the net. If you have the time to tape someone talking, you have the time to seek out things that nerds might want to see.
Also, there's really no feedback from the slashdot submission process. If a video doesn't meet your requirements, it's impossible to tell *why* they don't meet them, so that submitters could modify their selection process.
But this is beside the point. I'm not suggesting that you show other peoples' videos, I'm suggesting that *you* use the medium properly when making your own videos.
These same points were made back when Slashdot started video'ing people, to no great effect. Vinegar is needed to catch your attention. You have the perfect opportunity to use "directed practice based on feedback" which would turn you into a world-class videographer in a couple of years.
viz: The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
Seriously. You have access to high-end feedback you could leverage to improve your technique. You should use it.
The channel that cut out to show the same bloody basketball highlights repeatedly and make me miss an important play during an NHL game?
..but I wonder if that figure includes porn, which does not count as 'cable cutting traffic'.
Yes I and only I have had a revelation on how cable companies can gain audience shares. In a flash of inspiration it all came to me. Better programs and lower prices ! Wow they should pay me a fortune for diagnosing their problems.
Don't want them, don't watch them.
-- Fuck Beta
Cable made sense when you paid for upfront to avoid advertising, as opposed to free to air that was paid for by annoying, interrupting advertising. Now you pay for... what exactly? To see adds, just like on free to air?
I'm just hoping that streaming services don't fall into the same trap... oh wait, that's right, they're already investigating it (see recent /. story I can't be bothered searching for). Insert grumble about greedy, short sighted companies here I guess.
You charge LESS to MORE users, not MORE to LES and LESS users.
That's true if most of your costs are fixed infrastructure costs. But the big TV networks charge a royalty per user.
Frankly I don't give a shit about your videos. I watched one once and it was amateurish and painful.
The transcript, that's what I want, and now you've provided it. Make the video as long or as short as you want, just keep the transcript.
Graham
They can go deep throat a syphilitic goat's cock.
Some cut the cord and drop watching TV altogether.
And sans TV, you don't know what movies are out and worth watching. So no movies. So no DVDs. And you notice that you don't need them. You have games, hobbies, old movies and music and no need of the "cord".
With more money left over not spent on "Well, I'm bored" and with more time not channel surfing, new hobbies can be entertained.
TVs never break down, never get "new features" or any of that, right, so all those 238 million TVs are for new people buying a TV for the first time, right?
Or is that bollocks and your figure demonstrates nothing wrt the popularity wane of TV?
my 86 YO father decides he doesn't need the cable company for anything but internet access.
Just this week my father told me he wants to put antennas on two TVs, switch to prepaid cell phone only, and shut off the TV and phone service he gets from the cable company.
First 'video' I've ever even bothered to open, because I knew there was a transcript. I don't have 4 minutes to pick up 30 seconds of information. A well written report would be even better.
Four minutes of video or 200 lines of transcript to get across a concept that I'm sure could have been explained in a single paragraph. Sorry, my time is worth more than this. I'll pass. What a waste of bandwidth.
Nice improvement adding the transcript, please to keep.
I'm going to be a total asshole and say that this entire interview could have been put into a transcript format and done away with the video. I do not want to watch two doddering geezers make puntastic quips while one drones on through his dentures and the other is nasaling his way through the topic with the occasional grainy video.
I will be glad to pay for cable when they offer value greater than the value I receive from my perspective.
Keister. The word you were looking for is keister.
You're an asshole, Ami. Go fuck off.
Yeah a lot of folks don't know about the retention department. You can get them to give you damned near anything (I got giraffes and balloons n shit, smartasses). You don't even need to fuck around with the frontline script monkey. Just call in and tell them you were on the phone with retention and you got disconnected. No sitting there listening to Habib asking you to unplug and replug your receiver or none of that useless crap.