Slashdot Mirror
Cable Providers Still Have No Answer For Netflix As Cord-cutting Accelerates (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from BGR about the rapidly shifting roles of cable companies and streaming media providers: While cable providers over the past few decades have grown fat off of exorbitant cable packages that overcharge and under-deliver, the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video are finally righting the ship and shifting the balance of power towards the consumer. Clearly, the cable industry is in the midst of a transition. Netflix in particular, with its ever-growing stable of original content, has proven to be a particularly painful thorn in the side of cable providers who are increasingly struggling to keep subscribers from cutting the cord. Now comes word via The Wall Street Journal that cord cutting isn't just on the rise, but is accelerating rapidly. Citing data recently compiled by eMarketer, the Journal relays that the number of households with cable 'will fall at an accelerating rate for at least the next four years, reaching a 1.4% decline in 2019, eMarketer estimates.'
You mean consumers aren't willing to keep paying more for an increasingly ad-laden pool of mostly forgettable reality programming?
Actually, they are willing. They love that stuff. Don't fall into the "people on slashdot represent the average US citizen" fallacy. Most Americans are content with the nanny state. Even the so called troublemakers are so passive, they hardly exist. Anonymous? Give me a break. Back in the 60's and 70's people BLED for what they believed in, and were willing to go against the government, and the status quo populous. Until you are willing to throw flaming gasoline bottles at police cars while be teargassed, then ain't nothing going to change.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
DOCSIS is a nice spec, and can run rings around two wire twisted pair protocols, with the only thing faster being last mile fiber.
With this in mind, cable companies can always look at going to on-demand providers. Since they are ISPs, adding CDN functionality is extremely easy. They can also add even more offerings, such as OpenStack, cloud storage, and many other niceties. But... they don't. If they add something it is ad servers.
The core issue is that younger people don't give a rat's ass about TV. The fact you have to meet an "appointment" for scheduled programming (barring a DVR, of course) was drilled into the heads of older people, but with YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, and many other content providers offering what you want to see, when you want to see it, any video provider, be it AT&T with U-Verse or Comcast with cable TV is on the ropes.
Couple this with mainstream TV programming being absolute shit, and it is no wonder why people "cut the cord".
Of course, realistically, the ISPs don't have to give a rat's ass. They just can add caps or charge by the gig, and there isn't anyone going to stop them. Well, only Google.
That's only 3 years, and the pace is accelerating. They'd be really worried if they weren't also the guys who sell you broadband internet.
The people who should be worried are the cable-only content providers. When all TV content is available for streaming, will anyone watch the Travel Channel, or the Food Network, or the Golf Channel, or Court TV, or TNT, or any other similar networks? Why aren't we already talking about these shutting down in 5 years?
Actually, they are willing. They love that stuff.
Come on, man. I know reading the article is hard work around here, but the entire point of this story is that people are increasingly getting annoyed enough to cut the cord and so cable companies are losing customers at an alarming rate (at least from the cable company's point of view). Even if they're only losing a net 1% of customers per year, say, that's still a huge amount of lost profit both in direct revenues from subscribers and in the long run through diminishing ad revenues as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.