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.

Comments

I am?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: I am?

[lgw]

So you have no ethical issues pirating content?

I have 0 ethical issues pirating content when the company won't take my money. Give me a (practical) way to pay for that thing I want to watch, either directly or through my Netflix sub, and I do. Companies are (finally) wising up to this, and beginning the fight against the legacy of region-specific distribution deals, culture of delaying release in some formats, and so on.