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Cable Companies Hate Cord-Cutting, but It's Not Going Away (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the parting-with-a-cable-company-is-such-sweet-sorrow dept.

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.

5 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. The videos are bad by ogar572 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:The videos are bad by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree with you 100%.

      Ever wonder *why* these videos are bad?

      It's because they don't use the medium properly. Videos of "people talking" adds nothing to the presentation of information.

      Add the fact that the viewer can read and scan text much faster than the video talks, and the fact that most people don't present well in the first place (vocal disfluencies such as "ahh... um... you know..." and so forth) and it makes for a lousy experience.

      For contrast, imagine an audio of the person talking while the video shows graphs and charts illustrating or bolstering the talking points, or showing the action being described (as in voiceover showing a 3-alarm fire in a datacenter), or showing an animation clarifying the speaker's voiced description.

      Use video in the right way and people will love you for it.

      ...or continue with what you currently do.

      (I need to point out that anyone can grab a camera and record someone talking for ten minutes. What makes Slashdot better than all the YouTube teenagers who do this for their HS project? You have the intent, time, and money to do this. Do it right, then learn to do it well.)

    2. Re: The videos are bad by mangamuscle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "You need to have the Adobe Flash Player to view this content." Really, even CNN has adopted html5 for showing their videos on their website and the site made supposedly for geeks still requires an outdated api, preposterous I say.

  2. Entitlement by Livius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. They will still get their cut by scamper_22 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.