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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.
It certainly fits into the narrative I'd want to sell if I was a cable company. Cord cutters almost implies some sort of deviant behaviour where people are moving outside the bounds of normal, polite society. Don't be a 'cord cutter' - they are anarchists and communists.
(I know that's a bit hyperbolic, but it just seems strange to me that there is a label that defines people who don't pay for something - at best its just feels old fashioned. If I only shop online am I also a 'store smasher'? What's the label for people who don't pay for Netflix, etc? Stream poo-pooer?)
I don't agree at all. You can start and stop streaming services as needed. I wanted to watch a few shows on Hulu so I get it for a couple of months and then put it on hold. Same with Netflix. Same with HBO. I like baseball so I get the MLB.tv subscription and watch all I want. Fortunately I don't care about the local team anyway so I don't need cable. Playoffs I can watch at a local sports bar if I care enough or over the air if it's on a local channel.
Cable or satellite? Yeah you get a lot of garbage channels, although you're mostly paying for a few high flyers like ESPN. Which brings up the next point - ESPN has turned so disgustingly political and argumentative it's not worth watching anyway - who needs Faux News on a sports channel or some dumb bitch telling me about white supremacy. So unless you're desperate to watch some sporting event you'll need it, but in my case I can avoid them altogether (plus they are Disney, and I give zero dollars to Disney on principle.)
Streaming has saved me a ton of money and I don't have to purchase cable "news" and all the garbage shopping channels I don't watch.
You are probably right. I "cut the cord" over year ago and knocked my monthly entertainment bill down to $70 from $150. It was a tough at first. I've been a cable subscriber for over 20 years, always automatically subscribing to the service every time I moved without even thinking about the money. Once I considered the cost to the number of channels I actually watched ratio, it just didn't make any financial sense. So I decided to try cord cutting (a misnomer really). I also installed an antenna outdoors to get the local channels. I did miss a few channels at first, but it didn't take long to ween myself off. If I can't watch a particular show or can't get a particular channel, then it's not the that big of a deal. The media company just won't have me as a source of advertising dollars. Their loss, not mine.
And if what you say comes true with streaming services, then so be it. I'll just find other things to do. The big thing for me has been certain sports but I even found that I can live without that and just check the score and watch the highlights from a website. You ask why bother cutting cable; I ask why bother getting it in the first place.