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Continued Cord Cutting Hits the Pay TV Business Hard
An anonymous reader writes: Cord cutting is not a new concern for the pay TV business but a recent massive sell-off in media stocks has many in the industry worried. Cable, satellite and TV companies suffered their worst-ever quarterly subscriber declines losing more than half a million accounts, sending stocks tumbling. Researchers say this may be the beginning of the end for the pay TV business. According to analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson: "A year ago, the Pay TV sector was shrinking at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. A year later, the rate at which the Pay TV sector is declining has quickened to 0.7 percent year-over-year. That may not seem like a mass exodus, but it is a big change in a short period of time. And the rate of decline is still accelerating."
as soon as they can. They already talked about allowing cable companies to force you to buy TV service in order to get Internet access. For many people, like here in Seattle, cable is the only option for faster than 1.5 Mbps service.
To quote Blizzard's management when WoW lost three million subscribers in a single quarter: "Don't worry, it's cyclical."
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The companies that own both cable TV and cable internet will be fine. They'll raise internet prices and use their monopoly on cable lines to keep out competitors.
When I cut earlier this year, I was spending $100 a month for the privilege of having comedy central on in the background every month. I didn't even have any movie channels. Just their 1000 channels of HD that I didn't care to watch. When I can get Netflix for $8, Hulu for $8, and HBO for $15, why do I want to spend $100 for 1000 channels I don't watch. It's actually cheaper for me to go and just buy the box sets of the shows I want to watch each year instead of watching them first run. (AMC's Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, for example).
So, maybe cable can recoup their losses by offering something of commiserate value to what they are charging, or drastically drop their price to compete against other offerings in the field.
Good. Let's just hope they don't destroy too much of the internet on their way out.
How are Hulu and Netflix doing? Even better, how is HBO doing now that they've made HBO Go available without a cable subscription?
I'm currently paying for both Hulu and Netflix (and also Crunchyroll) and i'm thinking of picking up HBO Go. I have no problem paying for the content i want, it's the hassle of dealing with the cable company plus paying for a lot of crap that i don't want that's the problem.
My big gripe at the moment is SyFy. For the first time since they changed their name to something that sounds like a venereal disease they're producing content that i'm actually interested in. But i can't watch it because even though they're posting it to Hulu they're requiring that you have a cable subscription to view it. I don't know if this is stupidity on their part or some kind of legal tangle they just can't free themselves from, but i _want_ to watch their stuff and i'm willing to pay them, either directly or indirectly, but they just won't let me.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
If they spent their time keeping subscribers happier rather than cannibalizing subscribers of other types of service they wouldn't be losing so much.
The NUMBER ONE difference in cost between services comes from moving from one to another.
If my monthly bill didn't slowly creep up after a couple of years, I wouldn't be forced to move to something else. Instead of whoring out for "new bundles", just offer a lower price. 99% of the people moving service don't want to or have to because of coverage, but do because they can save $60 a month with a new "introductory" bundle somewhere else.
Also there is this strange resistance to allowing users to pick what they want to watch and pay for only that. Believe it or not, some people don't want four channels of QVC, and they'd rather pay the $8 for the weather channel (or whatever) instead of $22 for a bunch of shit along with the weather channel.
I still need Internet Access. I killed HD TV and all extended channels a couple of years ago and increased my bandwidth. Most recently I turned in the TV box itself and stuck with the tiny descrambler. I'm still charged about $100 a month for access to the 'net. I could go to $300 a month for fiber but I'm not really using the extra bandwidth I have now.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Well, clearly, the solution is to show more advertising to remaining customers. Go for 61 minutes of advertising per hour, 24/7 each channel. This should maximize the revenue stream.
Who'd have thought that treating your customers like scumbags and cash cows might eventually cause them to leave?
This is my surprised face.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Who watches TV anyway? Last time I checked it was all crap.
Not to mention that the cable boxes are about the worst experience in technology ever. And I'm not being hyperbolic.
fuck the cable companies. may they all die for being the abusive, government corrupting oligarchy they are
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, who wants to pay $50 for a basic package of basically nothing, or over $100 to actually get something worth watching...
Netflix and others are great examples of how to do things. Either A-la-carte or all-you-can-eat type of business is better for the consumers these days.
We dropped Comcast and deployed Leaf antennas. We get a couple of dozen channels, including the four major networks and a number of sub-channels rented by movie and rerun networks (e.g., Cozi, Movies!, MeTV, Buzzr, Laff, Decades, Retro, Bounce, Escape, Grit, Get, etc.). If there's nothing on, or the reception is being interrupted by who-knows-what, we turn off the TV and do something else. Every month we enjoy not paying Comcast.
I'm not unconditionally hostile to the status quo media distribution business model. My problem with them is that they tend to make content X exclusive to service Y when I am most interested in using service Z.
You see this with lots of media outlets. You see it on consoles a lot in games. They pay publisher of X content lots of money to make the game exclusive to Y console when I use a Z PC. And here's the thing... while I'd love to play that game and would be happy to buy it... I am not buying Y console. It would give me hand herpes... and there is no cure.
And the same thing is true with the TV, sports, movies, etc.
I would love to get sports on my streaming service and I would pay more for that package. However... I am not going to get a cable subscription just for the sports. Because while I care... I don't "need". I'm very happy with a thousand other entertainment medias. And that assumes I even want to entertain myself that way. I have so many f'ing projects and hobbies that when all is said and done... you have to actually be interesting make me show up.
Anyway, glad the old business model is dying... not because I like to see them die but because they were too stubborn to port their content to platforms I wanted to use at a competitive rate.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It happens to all technologies. Someday the Internet will be replaced with something better, and people will begin to abandon that old fashioned technology.
Maybe they should do what we the customer's have been begging them to do for years!
Its simple its called à la carte. It means you sell us the channels we actually effing want! we don't care if you say the extra 30 home shopping channels are free we don't want them!
And maybe you could do something about the %50 advertising %50 show problem. I don't know how I ever put up with it now after using netflix for over a year.
No I don't care how much it costs for you to do this. You are either going to do this or you are going to be left behind kind of like att is with their landline POTS service.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Just a though but for you cord cutters where are you going to get you content if cable goes away. No ads??lol they are coming? paying for content you will never watch?your doing it now but it will be a ton more. whats your thoughts? Remember HBO and MTV both WERE ad free......
Jack of all trades,master of none
Now that the ATT buyout is complete I'm moving over to the Netflix/Hulu/HBO Now setup. I will just go to a bar if their is a sports event I want to watch.
and this is what you get.
I have zero sympathy, just contempt. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Sure the satellite companies suffer when customers quit. They don't sell much in the way of internet to replace those lost TV customers. But cable, now that's another story. Cable actually charges me more for broadband since I do not carry TV package too. In fact my next door neighbor just cancelled Comcast and went to a DSL provider just for the fact she wanted internet only broadband and Comcast told her she had to buy a basic channel package too. I pay for broadband only and have for years! The thing is, Comcast still makes money off broadband and in fact all Comcast really should care about is providing the services they offer. Together as packages or separate. But someone at Comcast is worried your using your broadband to buy other media services and that bugs Comcast.
Well that's too bad, and in fact many people in my area are ditching Comcast completely. I think I could get by with a DSL line providing a good 6mbps download speed. Not the greatest, but $29 vs $68 per month sounds pretty good.
The beginning was a while ago. When they started increasing commercials from two minutes two seconds up to three minutes, then three-and-a-half. I was trying to watch "Ray" on BET a few months ago, commercials were running past six minutes. A season of a TV series is 8-13 episodes now, not the 20-26 from decades past. There are no more real news programs. A few channels continue to pump out some good to excellent content, but you're paying a minimum of $100/month because you have to take the 80% of the bundle that you don't want.
I assume these numbers are from before the news about AT&T and DirecTV. I would expect the numbers to take a pretty significant dip right now, with people like me that just say fuck to AT&T. I would expect another series of significant dips after AT&T begins to truly work their magic on DirecTV customers. I can get most of the channels I want with the HBO package from Sling TV for $35/month, 25% of what I'm paying right now. And thanks to some helpful advice from a fellow slashdotter, any channel I can't get that has a series I like, I can buy an episode or season at a time from iTunes. So long, suckers.
...and nothing of value was lost. As many have said here already: overpriced, no customer service, lack of desirable content, and inability to compete with other cheaper options. As the record industry, and film industry they can go hang out with the dial up modem techs, horse and buggy whip manufacturers, and all the other industries that have been replaced.
Why not recycle the cords, guys?!
...too expensive. People are voting with their wallets. Time for the time honored appropriate response to a shift in the demand curve where the amount demanded at every price is less: time for price cuts.
Everybody in the industry has gotten fat: producers, actors, athletes, sports leagues, coaches, college athletic programs, on air talent, etc. (I'm mostly interested in ESPN, I almost never watch anything on HBO etc, but the same logic applies). You can't pay billions to televise a single college football conference, raise your prices to astronomical levels to cover same and expect your customers to keep shelling out.
There will be a blood bath, especially in the college sports world. The days of $5mm/year coaches, $1mm/year AD's and $750mm stadiums with lavish locker rooms, indoor training facilities, etc, are going to quickly come to an end.
The NFL will feel the pinch as well.
sports sports sports SPORTS sports sports sports SPORTS
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YOU BETTER KEEP SUBSIDIZING ESPN IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU POINTDEXTERS!
sports sports sports SPORTS sports sports sports SPORTS
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sports sports sports SPORTS sports sports sports SPORTS
The last time I used Pay-TV was WrestleMania III with Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant
This will force them to dump all the pointless channels that nobody watches and give us cheaper packages with content that the users actually want.
1) Ditched Time Warner Cable
2) Ditched Time Warner Phone.
3) Kept Cell Phone only
4) Kept Time Warner Internet
5) Got Netflix
6) Got Amazon Prime
7) Downloaded Fox Sports app for cell phone
8) Downloaded CBS Sport app for cell phone
9) Downloaded ESPN app for cell phone
10) Downloaded NBC Sports Live App for cell phone
11) Got Chromecast to watch anything on my Android cell phone on the TV. Youtube etc...
12) Started using Redbox more...$1.99 per movie...
13) Bought amplified Mohu Leaf Indoor antenna. Watch HD over the air broadcasting free.
Happy... Saved $145 per month by lowering my Time Warner Bill from $210 to $66...
In my area, I get free OTA TV. Subscribing to the bare minimum cable package, which is *JUST* the same channels as OTA provides, is $18/mo. The only advantage I would have is a more reliable signal, as with bad weather the OTA sometimes drops in and out a bit. A "standard" cable package, the next tier up, starts at $53/mo. Now, let's compare this to Netflix, which starts at only $8/mo.
So, why is cord cutting huge? Because we all want to save a buck or two... or $40! Really, look at the difference there. It is $18/mo for the same service that is already free, only slightly more reliable. Or $8/mo for unlimited streaming. Or the getting an actual cable package at $58/mo!? Seriously, what would you choose in this scenario?
I'd rather pay for just the shows I watch, rather than picking an entire channel. For channels like SyFi (which is about 25% science fiction), I'd be buying 10 shows per week. For channels like The Documentary Channel, it would be more like 2.
The Learning Channel? hahahahahahahaha what learning? Honey Boo Boo taught me nothing.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
If cable wants my bucks they better put out more and better at a vastly reduced rate. They charge too much and provide too little and charge a fortune. On the other hand Net Flix gives quite a bit and some of it is great entertainment and they hardly charge at all. My cable costs me $226. a month. I do get numerous services but still it is only worth about $50. a month in my opinion.
The only thing that prevents me from cutting the cord is the godd***n Hallmark channel and what my wife would do to me if she couldn't get it. Those bastards refuse to offer any streaming alternative that doesn't require a cable provider account. I would gladly pay them $30+/month if it meant I could ditch cable.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
In my state, we've been forced to buy auto liability insurance since, well...forever.
I don't buy car liability insurance. Here's why not.
When I can get Netflix for $8, Hulu for $8, and HBO for $15, why do I want to spend $100 for 1000 channels I don't watch.
Two reasons. One is that they're bundled with live sports or politics channels that you do want. Sport leagues' online streaming services tend to black out games shown on national or regional pay TV. The other is that the discount on Internet service for also having TV through the same company is sometimes larger than the price of TV.
What are their customers going to do? Go to one of their competitors when they want to watch Game Of Downton Abbey?
Worse comes to worst, they'll watch a show that isn't Game of Thrones or a show that isn't Downton Abbey. Sometimes substitutes are not exact.
[DVRs] feel like 15 year old tech, and they constantly break. They're big and bulky, and make a lot of heat and noise for something that seems slower and less powerful than my mobile phone.
I wonder how much of this is caused by two things: skimping on hardware in order to pay incumbent DVR patent holders such as TiVo, and continuing to use obsolete hardware because it happens to have been certified by the DRM division of CableLabs.
I'd much rather wait for it to come out on DVD or arrive on netflix than suffer through all the advertising.
Does the College Football Playoff ever get to DVD or Netflix?
Last time I checked, cows said EAT MOR CHIKIN.
"but I like to play on the couch"... then get a gaming laptop and plug it into your tv when you want to do that. You can plug game pads into a PC as easily as anything.
But will the average PC-native co-op game necessarily support gamepads, plural? A lot of PC games require a separate PC per player so that they can sell two to four copies of a game to a single household instead of one copy that works in shared-screen mode.
What is more, the cost of a gaming PC is not the cost of the entire machine. Because you're going to have a PC regardless. Who has a console but doesn't have a PC at all?
People who get by with a console and phone, or people who live in a household where another member routinely hogs the only PC.
So the cost of the gaming PC is not the cost of the machine but rather the cost of turning the PC you're going to buy anyway into a gaming PC.
In other words, wait three to five years until you would have already replaced your existing compact or office-spec laptop with a gaming laptop.
Then you'll hear someone say "but PCs are hard"... well... ten year olds can figure it out.
I've had ten-year-olds get a PC infected with fake antivirus. The only good thing about that is at least it isn't encrypting ransomware.
And then you'll hear "but none of the exclusive games I want are on the PC"... well, you're a victim of advertising because name the genre and there is probably lots of PC games that are every bit as good if not better.
What are better PC counterparts to these games?
emulators
Once you've bought game cartridges or GameCube or Wii discs, how do you dump them so you can run them in an emulator?
I will just go to a bar if their is a sports event I want to watch.
People under 21 are forbidden to enter bars. So what should people do if they want to watch the game with their kids, such as the parent of a high school student whose older brother's school is in the ESPN-exclusive College Football Playoff?
7) Downloaded Fox Sports app for cell phone
Now what happens when the networks you mentioned in 7-10 start saying "Please log in with the username and password issued to you by your participating cable or satellite television provider"?
Saved $145 per month by lowering my Time Warner Bill from $210 to $66
How much of that was absorbed by the upgrade from a flip phone to an Android phone? Major cellular carriers tend to charge more for service on smartphones than on dumbphones.
It is $18/mo for the same service that is already free, only slightly more reliable.
If you were to cancel that $18 per month service, the cable company would likely hike your Internet rate by $20 per month because you no longer qualify for the bundle discount.
Having local CDNs would also be a huge investment
An investment that Netflix is already making. It provides an OpenConnect Appliance without charge to any qualifying ISP willing to give it colo space. Comcast didn't want to take the offer.
If movies/TV shows are sent through the internet and played on some sort of computer, there is a greater chance of piracy
Even in modern Windows operating systems that have "Protected Video Path" DRM? I'm told Netflix downgrades your stream to SD if it can't successfully establish a Protected Video Path.
Now that Jon Stewart is gone cable TV can go pound sand.
I'm posting on slashdot, do I seem like the kind of person who cares about sportsball?
Even if you don't, a Slashdot user might live with someone who does care about sportsball or something else that isn't on Netflix.
Though sarcasm aside, can't you pick those games up with an antenna if you really want to watch them?
You're probably thinking of the Super Bowl (NFL championship game) or the NBA Finals, which are shown OTA. The College Football Playoff is not; it's on ESPN. Nor are some games of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals; they're on NBCSN (formerly Versus).
What? The performance is covered by a copyright and I'll get DMCAed? Fuck.
Here is NOT a performance of a cat playing the world's smallest violin for the cable companies.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. The ripples haven't yet begun to be felt. It'll be interesting to see how the advertisers react. They're the top of the food chain.
Righteous! Die cable company, die!
As to people getting by without a PC but having a console... I've never seen that and I frankly suspect you're talking about unicorns.
If people who don't own a PC and do most of their "computing" on a phone are unicorns, then my cousin is a unicorn, as is a former co-worker.
As to your comment about malware... I don't know what you're talking about. Clarify your position.
Get on a PC and try to watch a video that you found through a search engine, and if it happens to be on a sufficiently shady site, the site will require you to install what it calls a "codec update" or "Flash update". Except this purported update is actually a malware dropper.
As to cockfighting RPGs... there are literally pokemon games... same IP on the PC:
I can't publicly recommend use of blatant infringements lest I be accused of "inducing copyright infringement" per MGM v. Grokster.
there are zillions of the fucking things
Therein lies the problem: finding which of the "zillions of the fucking things" is any good and/or has any community around it. Unlike with consoles, I'm not aware of any review sites that aim to cover 100% of Steam releases. It's called the paradox of choice: with too many choices, the brain gives up and chooses "none of the above".
As to whether I want to dump a game cube for an emulator if I bought a game cube... yes. For the same reason I'd rather listen to an MP3 or a FLAC file than I would a CD or an LP.
By "dump" I mean take a disc and make an image of the data on the disc for use with an emulator, like ripping a CD to FLAC. How do you do that with Neo Geo AES cartridges or with GameCube discs?
Ever played NeoGeo on the android? Its great.
I tried playing NES on an Android tablet. I kept "whiffing", my term for accidentally pressing outside the range of the on-screen buttons. The same thing happened when I tried the free subset of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure, a Mario clone on Google Play Store. I didn't get very far until I paired my Bluetooth keyboard. Because a flat sheet of glass has no tactile position cues, it's worse than playing on a Turbo Touch 360, and that's saying something. At least a Turbo Touch has physical trigger buttons, edges on the D-pad, and ridges inside the D-pad. True, emulators tend to support external gamepads, but a PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS is far easier to carry than an Android tablet and a Dual Shock 3. If things like the Xperia Play (phone with slide-out gamepad) were still manufactured, or if JXD gaming tablets were sold in brick-and-mortar stores, it'd be different.
Seriously play around on the steam store for a minute and realize that the PC game market has about 10 times as many titles. Are all of them great? Obviously not. Lots of them are shit. But then lots of games on the console are shit as well.
I think the peasants' argument is that for any generation after the second, a random sample of 10 PC games will have noticeably more shit than a random sample of console games.
I think the amount of cable cutters depends on how it's measured. Some, if not most, cable companies have an Internet plan that is cheaper if one buys a package that includes a very basic channel selection which may include only the local broadcast channels. People who got rid of all higher level packages and just wanted Internet but took the less expensive package with some TV may not be considered cable cutters because they get cable provided Pay TV. What really needs to be counted are the changes in the numbers of subs to content providers as ESPN, CNN/MSNBC/CNBC/Fox News/ which are generally included in the next higher level Pay TV package. Loss in those subscribers would be a better measure of cable cutting. Oh, and many of those getting the local broadcast channel and Internet package may not even be watching the Pay TV content. Disney, owner of ESPN, seems to have some cash flow problems seen by the dismissal/loss of some of their expensive on air "talent". They've paid huge sums to some sports leagues, notably to the NBA, and may have trouble paying for that. Sports leagues could be in trouble.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
People may be cutting the cord, but they are still paying for TV. Now they are just paying Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Sling, instead of Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter. Oh, wait, they still are paying Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter for the Internet service so they can also pay for streaming services. I'm not sure the total bill will be going down much.
Actually, Republicans have always been for market forces. There are no market forces here, what with monopolies everywhere. If Republicans had any power this would already be gone, and you'd have multiple cable lines going into your home with multiple companies competing for your dollar.
The current system reeks of monopolies, crony "capitalism" and other anti-capitalist ideas, which is usually the domain of the Democrats and left leaning Republicans. Why should anyone be prohibited by law from running wires to my property? It's my property. Why should anyone get to tell me which company I must use, or get to tell me how many wires I can have on my land? That's clearly an anti-capitalist position. But it is a classically Democrat position, because they don't mind government controlled monopolies and they love to keep copper mining and other manufacturing as low as possible to protect the environment.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
In extremis, I can easily do without it. I don't need to watch programming, but without someone to pay to watch it, the programme makers have no job, and the TV Cablecos have no business.
Yes, I have missed some good things. I have missed a shit-ton of really crap things too. And without having to pay through the nose for the crap I don't need to work as hard and still enjoy a safe and happy life.
So "What will you do if the cable content goes away"? Not watch it. Not a problem.
"sports fee" of $6 per month, No sports channels...don't do sports on tv $72 per year ? SNIP
The difference is that in practice, if you're not increasing profitability, you are dying according to the capitalism we are actually having.
Stalinism doesn't get a pass because communism doesn't say that the state gets to confiscate all your stuff you produce and throw you in a Ukranian prison. But that's what it did, and it helped kill communist Russia.
So why should capitalism get the special treatment of looking at what is written and ignoring what happens?
If your profits are steady, then your shareholders will sell your stock,reducing your money and making it harder to make the money to keep going, putting you out of business unless you can reduce the hemorrhaging to lower than the rate you can restructure. Nobody is looking up "Capitalism", reading that a profit doesn't have to increase, and then deciding "Oh, well, I guess I shall keep my shares, then".
It is a legal thang. Remember, Comcast owns SyFy, so they want you to pay for your tv, preferably pay till it hurts, then pay some more.
Assuming that the rating of subscriber loss continues to accelerate at this rate, cable will lose 25% of its subscribers in 8 years. That is a big number but still not a majority and well beyond the window of most executive visions. It also assumes that the cable companies will do nothing to stop the change. The cable companies have already begun taking such steps, which include bundling large numbers of channels together (maybe they will find something worthwhile if we give them 100s of channels), on-demand programming (many major primetime shows are available a day or two later for free), high quality 1080p HD, DVR service, exclusive channels (such as a dedicated local news/weather channel) and various other features. Some of these features currently incur additional charges, but others are part of the bundle.
Cable companies will find that reasonable pricing and reasonable customer service can viably compete with most streaming services. There is also a big market for live sports and current news. Those things might be available over-the-air on free broadcast TV, but not always.
As an aside, there are currently more people who identify as independent voters than Republican voters in America. Clearly many people recognize the difference between Republican and Democrat and other.
CATV companies - stop being assholes.
a) I am not a "consumer". I am a "customer" - learn that first.
b) Treat all of your customers like you would want your mother treated.
c) provide real value for the money, which is competitive with other offers.
For example, I dumped CATV 3+ yrs ago. At first, I just had OTA broadcast stations - about 70 of them (35 useful). Costs were $40 for 2 homemade DB4 antennas and $65 for an HDHR network tuner and $10 for coax. Those are 1-time costs.
About 6 months later, I added Amazon Prime for $80/yr (now $100/yr). Had to buy a Roku to watch this - my Ubuntu-based XBMC didn't work and I wasn't going to give Amazon another dime for their HW after they screwed me over.
About 18 months later, I added 3 disc Netflix DVD plan for $17/month.
I never intend to get hulu plus - commercials - seriously? No fracking way. Hulu - pull your head out already.
So - for about $40/month, I have all the content I can stand and usually ZERO commercials. 1-time costs of less than $150. Back i 2007, I was paying Comcast $160/month. I was not pleased and their customer support sucked.
There is a new option for current sports - ESPN/2/3 and others for $20/month. SlingTV. No contract. I hear it sucks on Apple hardware, but works great on Roku. I'll drop/pause Netflix if I switch for any live sports desired.
So - Cox, Comcast, Quest, AT&T, Verizon, .... $40 month. No commercials and be nice to your "customers."
Read http://www.darkhorizons.com/ne... ... :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Where I live, the bundle is cheaper -- for the first 12 months. Then the price goes up so now those live sports and politics are worth an extra $100
First move to a city that has both a cable company and a viable competitor such as FiOS. Then follow sheetsda's procedure every year. This may keep you on the bundle pricing.
I literally took a pair of snips and cut the cord, but then my internet stopped working almost immediately. I think Comcast did this as a putative measure, but I'm not sure how to prove it.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I'm easily to the left of Jeremiah Wright, but I certainly don't harbor the bitter venom he has for the US.
As for leftist views, Individual liberty exists as long as individuals are equal. Once one group amasses more power, they tend to overrule the weaker side. I'm not sure if that makes me a leftist or a libertarian though. But Atheist and against the death penalty probably makes me more aligned with the Left than the Christian Right or Neo-Conservatives.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The big issues for them, if I understand the press releases, is partly to get access to more and better content than U-Verse can afford with its market alone, partly to get access to a lot more subscribers (who might be willing to buy other services), particularly in Verizon and CenturyLink parts of the US, and partly to get more access to the Mexican market.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't mind paying for quality content. I do mind paying for quality content packaged in with tons of junk. I cut back the package that I used to have even if that meant losing a few channels I liked. There were just too many craptastic channels in that bigger package that I no longer wanted to pay for. I understand that service providers buy the content in packages. So if they want channels A and B they also have to carry the right-wing propaganda news channel and the three shopping channels. I wouldn't mind that if I could block those channels effectively and if the packages were not so ridiculously expensive. Technically it is not a problem to have a pick and choose option, but that would be the end to shopping channels. The other issue are the ridiculous fees. There I like to see government to step in and end this. I pay a 'local sports fee' that supposedly pays for a channel that shows one or two high school basketball games per month. Seriously? And then all the other fees that even the provider cannot explain. It should further be allowed to buy your own equipment. Most cable boxes are between 40 to 60 bucks street price...so why do we have to pay rental fees? Likewise with sat companies, they insist on providing the equipment which is of dismal quality. In Europe you can buy your own sat equipment and receive hundreds of channels in top quality for free. Too bad that model was not introduced in the US, we would be watching in entirely different ways.
The internet is just a pipe, a way to send and recieve bits which makes it about as generic as possible. The bits could be anything (text, sound, pictures, videos, and more). I doubt it's going to go away anytime soon, as anything that can be described as bits can be sent over the internet. So our 3D digital holovision goggles will work just fine with the internet. Television on the other hand is just a way to send video. That makes television more analogous to services and technologies used on the internet, many of which have already gone away and replaced with something better, like Gopher, or are on the way out, like Flash.
That is the correct analogy with respect to cable companies and customers. They send more flies to bite more often (higher fees), is it any wonder we are restive in our cages and when we break out of the cage, how reluctant we are to enter the cage again.
Cable companies only thought is how to make a stronger cage (restricted competition via continuation of retransmission fees).
Now we have the ability to have a cloud of DDT suppressing the flies ( diverse wide band internet suppliers, that will allow the netflix etc to completely replace broadcasters)
It is any wonder that more and more of us yearn to escape the flies.....?