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Cable TV Price Increases Have Beaten Inflation Every Single Year For 20 Years (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The pay TV industry is losing customers, but prices continue to climb. In fact, for U.S. cable TV in particular, price increases have outpaced inflation for every single one of the past 20 years, according to a recent FCC report surfaced by CordCutting.com. Every one! In 1995, cable cost $22.35 per month, on average. In 2015, it was $69.03. Now, it does makes sense for prices to go up for goods like cable as long as there is inflation. But cable's increases are more than double that of inflation. On average, cable prices went up 5.8% yearly for the past 20 years. Inflation clocked in at 2.2% per year, on average. Though there has been grumbling about the high prices of cable for quite some time, it has lately taken on a more serious air. That's because there is evidence that the pay-TV industry is experiencing a hiccup -- or the start of a long-term decline. The pay-TV industry lost 800,000 subscribers last quarter, according to the research firm SNL Kagan. "About 82% of households that use a TV currently subscribe to a pay-TV service," Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research said in a statement last month. "This is down from where it was five years ago, and similar to the penetration level eleven years ago."
>"Cable TV Price Increases Have Beaten Inflation Every Single Year For 20 Years"
I don't think any of us needed a study to tell us this. Although my Interenet speed has gotten better, and I now have HDTV channels, the *quality* of the content and the selection of quality channels has NOT improved. If anything, it has gotten worse and worse.
This is unsustainable and why you are seeing people jump ship with other options just as soon as they could, and most of those options are only available due to Internet streaming (which is consuming TONS and TONS of bandwidth and increasing exponentially).
Cable monopolies are far too used to being the only game in town and raking in tons of cash doing so. They need to start offering lower-priced a-la-cart channel options and soon or their slide will continue. But don't think for a moment they will just suffer alone. Since they are still monopolies for Internet in most regions, they will start to try and make up for their lost profits by raising the prices of their Internet services. It is already happening.
Prices have gone up and the quality of the programming has gotten worse (which I didn't think was possible). The only thing keeping them in business at this point is that in many markets the cable companies are the only source of broadband internet. I would kick Comcast to the curb tomorrow if there was a broadband alternative in my town. The INSTANT there is one, I'm gone.
Pass laws that force cable companies to sell internet separate at capped pricing where they can not punish you for not getting cable packages.
recently moved to florida from the midwest and I get 4X the bandwidth for 1/2 the price and they cant charge me extra for not getting cable tv. a cheap antenna gets me about 18 channels if I really think I need to watch some stupid live sports event. or live news.
$39 a month for 100mbps/10mbps Comcast was raping me at $70 for 15Mbps/1.5mbps in Michigan
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
More like the army of accountants need paid.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I haven't paid for TV in over a decade. I do pay for FTTH, I could get tv for "only" another $20 - no.
Pound sand, Netflix will crush you all.
Eventually the packets will get delegated a utility; the tremendous markup from content funds the inefficient monster that are the tier-1 broadband providers.
Governments should own the infrastructure (fibers on poles). Companies should provide the service. That's the long term fix.
It might not even matter if LTE gets fast and dense enough.. Will kids care?
..don't panic
Frankly, the reason TV is being taken over by Netflix et al. has everything to do with getting rid of ads.
True but they have to make it attractive to get people to take the plunge and switch. Wait another few years until Netflix starts to reach subscriber saturation and their revenues are no longer increasing due to growth. Then they will then try to start adding in the ads to increase their revenue and/or have over the rate of inflation price increases until the next technology comes along to make them obsolete and the cycle can begin again.