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Netflix Has More American Subscribers Than Cable TV (engadget.com)
According to Leichtman Research estimates from the first quarter of 2017, there are more Netflix subscribers in the U.S. (50.85 million) than there are customers for major cable TV networks (48.61 million). While it doesn't mean Netflix is bigger than TV because it doesn't account for the 33.19 million satellite viewers, it represents a huge milestone for a streaming service that had half as many users just 5 years ago. Engadget reports: The shift in power comes in part through Netflix's ever-greater reliance on originals. There's enough high-quality material that it can compete with more established networks. However, it's also getting a boost from the decline of conventional TV. Those traditional sources lost 760,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year versus 120,000 a year earlier. Leichtman believes a combination of cord cutters and reduced marketing toward cost-conscious viewers is to blame. Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they're clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet.
>"Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they're clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet."
"Focusing on"? How? By holding on to more and more useless channels? By raising prices continuously? By offering only deceptive "introductory" pricing models? By constantly fighting and making life difficult for TiVo and other third-party box owners? If this is their "focus", they are doing to be in dire straits before they know it.
They don't necessarily have to stream to compete (because DVRs can provide an excellent experience), but one thing they need to do soon is to offer a pay-for-each-channel-wanted model and allow customers to customize what they want to watch. I am BEYOND SICK of paying for crap I don't want and subsidizing others' channels. Sports is perfect example. I bet a HUGE portion of my cable TV bill is poured into sports, something I have ZERO interest in, but yet comprises probably 30 or more channels. Now throw out all religious channels, infomercial channels, game show channels, non-English channels, and reality TV channels. I bet I am now up to about 85%.
Oh, and when they do offer streaming, it is just the same crap content on their existing channels, but with the bonus of being only in stereo not Dolby 5.1, with a crappy low-bandwidth picture, and often forced commercials. All with silly time limits, a poor interface, and sometimes flaky as hell.
Focus, indeed.
They're not a monopoly on content providing anymore though, their monopoly lies in the providing of data last mile.
I expect cable to get cheaper, and internet to get more expensive. Heck, they already offer a stripped down package for free (I actually had to beg them for give me internet alone for the price of internet + 5 channels).
My prediction, internet will creep to $100/month, a serious cable package will be $30 (with more content than the dish, Sony, or google options), and if you get those two, you can tack on premium channels for less than if you don't have the $30 package.
They'll keep their $100-150/household.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Amazing how the cable companies screwed it up, huh?
They were perfectly placed to profit from the dotcom boom and later; everyone was obsessed with Yahoo-esque approaches of "being the portal to the interwebz" and/or the browser "wars", (something that continues to this day, except that Google has pretty much won everywhere in search, with Chrome(ium) and on mobile with Android etc.)
Yet all this time the cable (and phone) guys owned the last mile into your house, with TV and Internet along with it.
With a bit of vision but - above all - accepting that they would have to cannibalize their existing offer, they could have used the massive subsidies they received to build out a great network, with good, fast service and compelling original content.
What did they do? Sit on their fat-ass, rent-seeking business model, ripping people off with poor, expensive service and bundles of advert-laden crap channels. Good riddance.