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Cord-Cutting Spikes Fivefold In Cable TV's Worst Quarter Ever (fastcompany.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Fast Company: Cable's day of reckoning has come. With all the major cable and satellite companies having reported their quarterly numbers, analyst firm MoffettNathanson put together a new cord-cutting report, and things are bad. Pay-TV providers lost an estimated 762,000 pay-TV subscribers over the first three months of this year -- five times more than they lost during the same period last year. To make matters worse, Q1 has historically been a strong season for pay TV.
They don't need to change their business plans they just need more ads! And more forced bundling! No a la carte! People won't cancel their cable if it makes their internet cost more than having internet and cable! /s
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Dropping revenue means they need to squeeze the remaining schlubs by playing more ads, and increasing monthly fees. No dropping of revenue can be tolerated by these guys.
I know it will still be years off, but I still welcome their impending demise.
every single channel on cable is 90% reruns, we didnt have cable for a couple years, then we did cause it was just about free with our internet, you would think after a couple years, there was something new to watch
nope first thing I saw once it was hooked up was a show I had already seen, how the fuck do you manage that
No one actually cares about channels anymore.
Netflix and the likes has made people realise they watch programs, and, even worse for the advertising industry, they watch programs with no advert interruptions.
I go back to "linearTV" and it just annoys the hell out of me, so it back to Netflix we go.
What does direct comcox up your bum not know how many customers they have?
The estimate comes from the analyst, not from comcox.
But the number is meaningless anyway, because many people have cable but never watch it. I am a cable subscriber because it is actually cheaper to subscribe to Internet+TV than to subscribe to just Internet. But I haven't watched live TV in years. I think they give away the TV at less than zero cost so they can quote a higher subscriber number to advertisers.
Hopefully someone will automate the 'tv show licensing bureaucrats' out of a job, and replace reruns with Bollywood dramas and Japanese gameshows. There's plenty of stuff made around the world that never airs elsewhere that could be replacing the reruns.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I won't use a service that doesn't offer an ad-free experience. Happy to pay for it, but I won't be forced to watch ads.
Me too. My family went on a trip and my kids turned on the TV in the hotel room. When the first commercial came on, they thought the show was over, and were confused by the ending. I realized then that they had no idea what a "commercial" was.
I spent the next hour explaining my childhood, and how every kid knew all the jingles, like "Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs" , "I wish I was an Oscar-Meyer Weiner", and "Rice-a-Roni". I told them about Tony the Tiger, Mr Clean, and Cap'n Crunch, but they just rolled their eyes and started watching Youtube on their Chromebooks.
Most people hate their cable company. But they stick with it for ESPN.
To a large extent, the current exodus from Cable is really an exodus from ESPN. Why the sudden shift? ESPN became political. Most hardcore watchers of professional sports are conservative (something like a 65/35 split), so ESPNs decision to hit progressive talking points hard at every opportunity, fire commenters for offending progressives, and so on, was the sort of bone-headed decision only an MBA could make.
The conservative blog comment section and message boards I read have been growing in anger over this for more than a year now, to the point now I see a constant stream of "you know what, I stopped watching $SPORT and I found I didn't miss it. I went and threw the ball with my kid instead - should have been doing that more all along. Goodbye ESPN!"
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm not sure if I agree that it's all down to ESPN politics but I will agree that it could be a good percentage of the cause. I'm not much of a sport watcher except for local games so I don't know that demographic that well.
I haven't bought cable in 10 years because I don't like having to schedule my time around shows or pay for a DVR, and the main reason is commercials. When I travel for work and alone I hardly ever turn on the TV unless there is some breaking news or something that could directly effect me.
I did buy a nice Roko TV on Amazon for a steal and paid for Netflix. It's perfect for when I need some down time on the couch. One tenth the cost of cable and I can retire it when I wish. I have Amazon Prime too for the shipping and Kindle services so there is all that content too.
You're spot on with the last remark, get out and do something with the people you love. You're not going to be on your death bed saying I wish I could hang on for the next season of Doctor Who. (Okay, I might say that.) But really, live your life, not some writer's idea of one.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
OTA is terrible, so does Cable. Channels? Ad breaks? Not gonna fly...
The PC in the back records 3 shows at once, and MCE Buddy strips commercials, compresses to a VLC readable format, and nicely organizes them in folders. Long ago, when cable let me record, I had cable TV. When they wouldn't let me do that anymore, I got an antenna.
Used to have Netflix, but I canceled. They kept dropping the stuff I wanted to see, and I got bored watching the remains over and over.
There's still lots to record, and there's the library with years video on big hard drives. Used to have MythTV, but I'm just not into watching everything everywhere anymore. I watch too much TV anyway.
If a new business model offers a better deal, I might change my mind.
The killer difference between Netflix and Comcast/DirecTV/Dish Network (the only three I can get at my house) is honest advertising and billing. With Netflix, the price advertised is what you pay, end of story. With the others, the price advertised is a fancy and you have to check your bill carefully every month because they start playing games and introducing fees and package changes. And if you're not willing to call up sales and customer retention departments and chew out some hapless entry level representative every six months, they will keep jacking prices until you're paying $180 per month for something that said "$30 per month" on the original sales brochure.