Cord-Cutters Drive Cable TV Subscribers to a 17-Year Low (houstonchronicle.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: On Wednesday, AT&T told regulators that it expects to finish the quarter with about 90,000 fewer TV subscribers than it began with. AT&T blamed a number of issues, including hurricane damage to infrastructure, rising credit standards and competition from rivals. The report also shows AT&T lost more traditional TV customers than it gained back through its online video app, DirecTV Now. And analysts are suggesting that that's evidence that cord-cutting is the main culprit... "DirecTV, like all of its cable peers, is suffering from the ravages of cord-cutting," said industry analyst Craig Moffett in a research note this week. Moffett added that while nobody expected AT&T's pay-TV numbers to look good, hardly anyone could have predicted they would look "this bad."

The outlook doesn't look much healthier for the rest of the television industry. Over the past year, cable and satellite firms have collectively lost nearly 3 million customers, according to estimates by market analysts at SNL Kagan and New Street Research. The number of households with traditional TV service is hovering at about the level it was in 2000, according to New Street's Jonathan Chaplin, in a study last week. Other analysts predict that, after factoring in AT&T's newly disclosed losses, the industry will have lost 1 million traditional TV subscribers by the end of this quarter.

Comments

Spectrum (old TWC) straw vs. camel's back

[turkeydance]

last bill was 41% over last year's same month, same service, same channels. as i said, last bill.

HAHA

[XSportSeeker]

Well, I dunno how things are there in the US, but if it's anything like Brazil (and I think it is), people should be celebrating on the streets.

Cable TV companies are oligopolies, some of the biggest companies in the country, and they abused their position in every way possible. Price gouging, exploiting legal loopholes for shady tie-ins, bundling sales, chopping up consumer rights in every way possible, offering the worst costumer service imaginable, using aggressive marketing tactics and whatnot.

And they constantly keep trying to change the rules and force the costumers to either pay more, or receive less, on lame justifications that they don't have enough money to upgrade their infrastructure, all the while posting record profits every year.

A whole set of consumer laws in recent years were passed because of them, including anti spam/telemarketing call laws, the entire net neutrality debacle, a bunch of stuff regarding how call centers should work to attend their costumers, etc etc.

Every year they come up to threaten yet another restringent rule that will kill connection for a significant portion of their users. As if they could re-write the contracts we agreed upon when signing up for the service.

The more market share for cable TV shrinks, the better for everyone as I see it. It'll be better for people who likes their cable, as the companies will have to fight to keep them and give them better service, and more options for us who never cared about cable in the first place.

I went over a decade having to pay for cable just because there was some shady bundling crap that made it cheaper to pay for the entire package rather than paying for Internet alone. The majority of the country are still stuck on this deal because they have no other options. Like I said, oligopolies. They will price fix, they will close deals behind curtains to dominate certain areas, they will exploit people as much as they can.

Fortunately, I moved to a place where there's fiber Internet available... jumped at the opportunity as fast as I could, it's like I'm finally getting what I pay for. No more unexplained outages, a fair working connection for the price I pay (which is lower than if I had to pay for the cable TV/Internet bundle), good costumer service, and no lies on speed, throttling practices and data caps.

DirecTV used to beat cable in price. Not anymore.

[Tjp($)pjT]

I am not a sports fan. I pay a regional sports fee. Why? I get over 200 channels. Watch, tops, a couple dozen. Why pay for the others? Ala carte is suppressed by the cable and satellite providers, but it is how to save their industry and negotiate lower fees to the source owners. Why license CNN if only 5% view CNN? The single purpose channels are also a losing proposition. And then there are the nickel and dime fees, extra receiver, pay $7.99 a month. DVR ability, pay per month, HD pay per month, 4K WOW pay per month. Formerly you'd subscribe to a movie package and the next would cost less, then less for the third, etc. Now they not only cost more per package than Netflix and way more than Amazon (with Prime Video as a perk)... Video on demand? A great concept, except it also comes with commercials you can't fast forward through. And you're paying for it already. I used to get every channel except sports and it cost about $90 a month. Now my basic "total choice that is far from total" costs that, and it more than doubles with all the added fees. Add that to "buying" a DVR/Receiver that you are really leasing monthly after paying them more than the cost of manufacture for a device locked to their system... Wow. If they started reducing fees and negotiating cheaper costs, like put networks in a selectable package and see how fast the network stations dropped their ask for presence. Yes, You pay for the networks through higher fees, and the networks still get to count you for advertising rates. Everyone is asking a bit too much and the broadcast model is going to collapse. I really want to eliminate the high cost of carriage of sports channels etc. Watch their ad rates drop as people are no longer counted as potential viewers. Then watch as the cable providers demand cheaper fees. And then watch as they fail to pass them on and still fail.

Re:Dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally the only reason they want people to bundle is so they can tell investors that the cable and phone portions of their business isn't tanking. It's anti-consumer and dishonest. Fuck'em.

Three words...

[erp_consultant]

Get an antenna. I just bought a new house out in the boonies and it made me take a long hard look at cable. At the old house I was paying $220 a month for tv and internet. I never really paid attention to the bill and was a bit shocked to see how much it was. At most I was watching 10 channels. More and more I was watching Amazon.

I did a little research and ended up buying a Mohu Leaf antenna. $18 at WalMart. Damned if that thing isn't picking up about 40 channels. Now granted, some of them are shopping channels, some are religious, some are spanish but I'm getting all the local channels and the picture is fantastic. What my research also led me to understand is the the satellite and cable companies compress the signal so they can fit more data in their pipe. So 1080 doesn't really mean 1080. If you want to really see what 1080 resolution looks like get one of those antennas and you will immediately see how much sharper the picture is.

Then i have Amazon video, which I consider a freebee since I got Prime mainly for the shipping savings. That has plenty of stuff worth watching. I stumbled across something called Pluto tv. It's an app on Roku with free tv and movies. It has commercials but so does cable - and I'm not paying anything for Pluto.

I'm debating on getting Netflix again but probably won't. I have enough stuff to watch. And I'm saving about $150/month in the process. Life is good. The cable companies can go get stuffed.

Re:NFL might lead to an acceleration

[ChrisMaple]

That these officers were found not guilty by a jury indicates that the charges against them were false. Have any of these fool protesters ever served on a jury?
Many in professional sports fought in WWII, although the cases I'm familiar with are baseball, not football.