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There Will Be 22 Million Cord Cutters By 2018, Says Report (dslreports.com)
A new report by eMarketer predicts that 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service by the end of 2017, which is up 33% over 2016. It also notes that ad investment will expand just 0.5% to $71.65 billion this year, down from the $72.72 billion predicted in the company's original first quarter forecast for 2017. From a report via DSLReports: This year, there will be 22.2 million cord-cutters ages 18 and older, a figure up 33.2% over 2016. That's notably higher than the 15.4 million eMarketer previously estimated. The total number of U.S. adult cord-nevers (users that have never signed up for a traditional cable TV connection) will grow 5.8% this year to 34.4 million. Note that eMarketer's numbers don't include streaming options from the likes of Dish (Sling TV) or AT&T (DirecTV Now), though so far gains in subscribers for these services haven't offset the decline in traditional cable TV subscribers anyway.
At one point, in my area, Comcast Internet-Only was priced at $78 / month. They priced a Basic-cable + Internet bundle at $72 / month. I signed up for the $6 / month savings, but never hooked up a cable TV.
When Comcast Broke my equipment with Encrypted QAM, I dropped their service.
They broke 3 "cable ready" TVs.
They broke 4 "cable ready" VCR.
They broke 4 "Clear QAM" network TV tuners.
They broke 1 life-time TiVo.
So, I dropped their service, put up a $30 antenna in the attic, connected it to the network TV tuners, which also support ATSC. Getting 70 channels "for free". Sure, 45 of those are wacko religious and shopping channels. About 20 are entertaining enough to watch a little.
We read more books now.
The TVs are all gone. I kept 1 VCR (very high end). The tivo is long gone, useless.
We don't really care about sports in the USA. Our favorite sport has extremely bad coverage here and NBC geo-blocks our access to purchase the world-wide (except USA) web streaming service offered with their exclusive license for the USA of that content - which they don't show. Assholes.
We had basic cable. It was analog, and OK. Over time, it carried internet. We dumped the DSL line (remember copper ?) and went with cable internet...where we've been save a brief and very expensive two years with FiOs. Lovely service, but all the telco taxes apply, which they don't with cable. Cable then went digital QAM, which was OK, until they decided to scramble ALL signals and force you to pay $8 per month per box. I was able to avoid this due to cablecards in TiVos. One month my bill goes up $7...."Sports Fee". Now, I don't watch sports, don't care, and don't subscribe. Snip. I'm happy to report that my $75 antenna gets all the local stations clearly. The OTA signal looks better than the CATV signal. My Tivo and ChannelMaster boxes record easily, and were amortized years ago. Cable has way too many commercials. The few times I'm subjected to such a feed, in hotels, etc, make me turn it off....indeed, I avoid watching anything in real-time. How many drug commercials for horrible conditions can a person watch ? The only thing left is to scam my in-laws password for a few streaming options that demand you subscribe to classic cable, which strikes me as having to buy a Steamer ticket to fly to London from New York. My kids already have a list of shared passwords for HBO and everything else. I will be pirating CBS new Star Trek, cause that one is just an F-U.