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You're Paying 40% More For TV Than You Were 5 Years Ago (businessinsider.com)
According to data from Leichtman Research's annual study, pay TV subscriptions keep going up and up. So much so that in the last five years, they have gone up by 40 percent. In 2011, subscribers were paying an average of $73.63 for cable or satellite, but now that average stands at roughly $103. From a BusinessInsider report: And it's not helping subscriber growth. "About 82% of households that use a TV currently subscribe to a pay-TV service," Bruce Leichtman said in a statement. "This is down from where it was five years ago, and similar to the penetration level eleven years ago." The pay-TV industry lost 800,000 last quarter subscribers last quarter, according to the research firm SNL Kagan. Putting that on a personal level, NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke recently said his own kids don't even pay for TV. Burke has five "millennial" children, ages 19 to 28, and exactly "none" subscribe to cable or satellite, he said at a conference last week.
are for losers.
Cut the cord!
Other than a few favorite shows, I haven't missed a damn thing.
I have Netflix and an Amazon account if I want to watch something.
Since I'm the "techie" in the family, if I HAVE to watch something NOW, I can log into my parents' account and stream, as they haven't divorced themselves from TV.
But, for the most part, I simply don't miss it.
And somewhere in the past, my child TV addict self screams in horror.
With the equipment costs, and the push towards a "$100 minimum" bill and all these fucking channels you don't give a shit about...
Seriously, who the fuck needs 8-10 distinct ESPN channels both in SD and HD?
Plus "insert network" Sports Channels, etc?
I'm not a goddamn sports nut. Bundle all that crap into an optional package
I want a package for Scifi/Fantasy, maybe home improvement and science/technology.
And "news" channels can go DIAF.
The thing is, the cable companies want that "$100 minimium" no matter what.
So even if we get "a la carte", they're likely to screw with us no matter what.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I cut cable a long time ago. I pay 40 for Internet, and I pirate, so for 40 bucks a month I can watch whatever I want, and the good stuff I can hoard and watch forever.
That's great and all, but you can't talk about the benefits of pirating like it's a true cost savings. Many people could say things like, yeah I only spend 20.00 on groceries, and I steal, so for 20.00 a month I'm eating steak and lobster every night with high dollar wine.
It's still stealing, even if you don't agree with the costs.
Cable networks, partially out of necessity, sells in packages. These packages come because networks sell their channels in sets in order to maximize profits for their shareholders (more channels mean more advertising slots to sell). I would imagine that cable companies have a hard to negotiate against larger networks so those channel groups in packages represent an (almost) fixed overhead. As cable companies get few customers, they raise prices to keep their own margins up. Unfortunately (for them), this only accelerates the number of subscribers lost. In the meantime, streaming services, in spite of decreasing the breadth of their selection, are still providing more individual programs which is better satisfies the busyness in everyday life without requiring an extra fee for a DVR. If networks were able to sell individual channels to people rather than packages, I would assume that more subscriptions would occur. That said, cable companies might be better off ditching the idea of selling video services directly and spin off new companies from themselves that does video subscriptions separately leaving all of that bandwidth to compete with fiber.
So you have no ethical issues pirating content? Please no BS about sticking it to the media corporations--that is just rationalizing the fact you are just a cheap jerk with no morals.
If you steal food, they no longer have the food. If you "steal" content, they still have the content. It took a lot of work to twist the English language around copying be "theft." It may still be a crime, and it may have some disproportionately stiff penalties, but it is not stealing.
So you have no ethical issues pirating content? Please no BS about sticking it to the media corporations--that is just rationalizing the fact you are just a cheap jerk with no morals.
Is it ethical to give your money to an organization that will do this sort of skullduggery with it?
I'm being serious.
It's theft if you download content and view it for free, sure, but you're not exactly morally in the clear if you do pay. Your money is lining the pockets of famously and spectacularly corrupt middle men, with only pennies on the dollar going to the artists you love.
The correct thing to do isn't as clear as you might suppose. Morally, it may be more correct to pirate their content then buy a t-shirt or something from them, because they'll see most of that money. Most notably George Lucas is wealthy because of merchandise, not movies.
I'm not saying what to do, what not to do, or what I do - I just want you to think about it a bit before tossing out moral absolutes.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There are many in the older generations who are anti-Internet and are seemingly afraid that if they even sign up for Internet access their bank balance will disappear and their grandchildren will get kidnapped. Others have Internet access but barely use it; you know the ones, they check email or Facebook and maybe one or two other sites and that's it; they don't do web searches or visit new sites regularly.
These are the people who will, most likely, NEVER sign up (on their own) for Netflix or cut the cord, no matter how expensive their cable/satellite bill gets, because as far as they're concerned, there's no alternative. They wouldn't know how to get Netflix on their TV and have no idea how to find out.
So, the pay TV companies are raising rates in order to milk these older generations as much as possible before they die off or figure out how to connect a Roku to their TV (or someone else shows them); or before they buy a smart TV that puts all these cord-cutting options on the screen they're looking at, accessible with the remote they're holding.
The older generations are also set in the "watching what's on" paradigm; while the newer generations have had access to on-demand, home video, and file sharing, allowing for "watching what you want". With Netflix, there is no mindless "watching what's on", you have to choose what to put on, at least a series to autoplay. If you don't like it, you can't claim lack of responsibility a la "these networks air nothing but crap nowadays. yep", it's all on you for putting that show on.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.