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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."
I did this for a long time. I actually ended up buying the "season passes" for shows on iTunes and "multi passes" of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. All told, i'd spend about $400 a year buying the HD versions of the shows on iTunes. The show's would be available to me the day after they aired on Cable. But I would own them, be able to watch them anytime, and they'd be commercial free. All for about half of what I was paying for cable each year.
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.
thats funny being only one time in history have we been forced to buy anything, and its been done under obama, a democrat
I watched Jon Stewart on Plex for free. Although, I think he was also available on Hulu.