Verizon Loses 18,000 Pay TV Subscribers, Signals Delay For Live TV Streaming Service (hollywoodreporter.com)

Verizon announced on Thursday that its FiOS video service lost 18,000 net pay TV subscribers in the third quarter, compared with the addition of 36,000 subscribers in the year-ago period and 15,000 subscriber drop in the second quarter. Hollywood Reporter reports: The company said the drop in the latest quarter was "reflecting the ongoing shift from traditional linear video to over-the-top offerings." Verizon, led by chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam, ended the third quarter with a total of 4.6 million subscribers to its FiOS video service, which competes with cable and satellite TV companies. Asked about a planned over-the-top (OTT) TV service from Verizon, Ellis said that the company continues to feel that "there's an opportunity for us to play," but signaling a delay, he emphasized that the company "doesn't want to launch a me-too product." He didn't provide any guidance on when the OTT service would launch, saying that was still "TBD" (to be determined), or what content it could offer beyond saying it was likely to be built "around live programming." Verizon also reported Thursday that it added 66,000 net new FiOS broadband connections in the third quarter to end it with 5.8 million.

Comments

normally

[Anonymous Coward]

when a company loses business, they lower the damn prices.... but NOOOOOO not pay television services. they gouge the remaining subscribers to try to "make up" the lost profits instead.

captcha: ignorant

Re:normally

[deviated_prevert]

when a company loses business, they lower the damn prices.... but NOOOOOO not pay television services. they gouge the remaining subscribers to try to "make up" the lost profits instead.

captcha: ignorant

Here in Canada the CRTC tried to force the providers to unbundle the channel package choices. In areas where you cannot possibly get OTA signals the cable companies know that they have you by the shorts to say the least and it made no difference. I have had cable for far too long and been gouged by the assholes it seems forever! If it were not for the fact that my wife would leave I would cut the friggin' cord once and for all and just listen to what little is left of good radio, like the CBC and some American public radio we can still somewhat get where I live.

The greedy cable assholes seem to regularly find a way to increase the costs without providing value for dollar and get away with it because there is no choice. Because they also own and dominate the satellite industry you get hosed even worse if you switch to satellite. They are your ISP, telephone regardless of whether or not you chose them or the TELCO they dominate all incoming and outgoing communications. Their prices are currently greater than the costs for essential services of heating, water, sewer and taxes combined and they manage to get away with it because you have no alternative. The telco(s) even own all the cellular communication towers and gouge the hell out of you if you try to do anything other than make phone calls with cellular.

In the end we are stuck paying to watch mish mash rehashes of the same shows and then paying for their advertising slot time. The truth is the "network TV" supported by advertising is completely dying, cable is killing it and very slowly stealing all of their add revenue streams. What cable has done to replace network tv is to make up garbage rehashes of content put together to create a smoke and mirrors illusion of their advertising ridden ridiculous "1000 channel universe". The reality is that they do this to avoid content production costs and continue to suck on the teats of what little is left of the old networks.

The Real Shift

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its just a shift in consumers finally being able to say "FUCK YOU" to $50-200 cable subscription fees for 200+ channels that we don't really want. That we really only want two or three of them, and those channels are either offering direct streaming packages of their own for a good price, or are offering their content on Netflix/Hulu, also for a good price. Its about $$$$, not just stream. It just so happens that the streaming people figured out the economics of not fucking over a consumer is a great way to get and keep consumers!

boo hoo. cry me a river

[darthsilun]

Verizon, Comcast, TimeWarner, you name it. Twenty years ago when I was willing to pay for a la carte they said no.

I have an antenna, but even so I barely watch any OTA even. There's a few things I watch on streaming sites; I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I use the family share from my daughter's Hulu. I miss the days when "free" Hulu actually had good content. I get a lot of reading done. I work on other hobbies. I don't miss it.

Streaming FTW.

trust busters

[PopeRatzo]

Here's a thought: If a company sells bandwidth, it should not be allowed to sell content.

Re:trust busters

[Gilgaron]

Isn't that how broadcast TV used to work? I think that's why CBS made Star Trek: TNG but it aired on Fox and so on. The rule change was, if I recall correctly, partly responsible for a lot of the media consolidation that has happened since. I doubt that you'd see any movement politically to go back to the way things were.

Verizon's streaming matches pirated content

[turkeydance]

with buffering. etc...in my experience, Verizon offers nothing worth paying for.

Re:Verizon's streaming matches pirated content

[MoarSauce123]

It is on par with Spectrum....except that Spectrum has slower lines and charges more.

Fight the wrong fight

[markdavis]

> or what content it could offer beyond saying it was likely to be built "around live programming."

To me that is code speak for content that contains unskippable commercials. Exactly what consumers do not want. "Live" also implies no time shifting and no storage. Exactly what consumers do not want.

Wow, what wonderful way to fight declining video customers!

Re:Fight the wrong fight

[rtb61]

Reality is, interactive content is slowly but surely strangling them out of business. The idiot box can not compete with online gaming and the cheaper online gaming becomes and the greater the choice, the worse it will become, especially with growing US poverty, the majority no longer able to afford that service and of course the Luddites, the majority technophobe elderly dying off. Add in social media and much broader video distribution, canned content stuffed full of commercials screaming at you, is just awful, I find it un-watch able. I can just barely tolerate a video commercial as long as it is socially informative, aligns with the content, does not scream at me and remains polite in it's content and request for screening (break those rules, not only will I be unwilling to watch the content, I will most emphatically remember not to buy it, specifically not to buy it).

Re:Fight the wrong fight

[markdavis]

I agree with most of what you said except that US poverty is not growing. That is a "left myth". The poverty rate is just about the same as it has been since 1965.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

Re:Fight the wrong fight

[Cro Magnon]

I can just barely tolerate a video commercial as long as it is socially informative, aligns with the content, does not scream at me and remains polite in it's content and request for screening (break those rules, not only will I be unwilling to watch the content, I will most emphatically remember not to buy it, specifically not to buy it).

I would agree with that, if I ever found such a commercial.

Hardly Surprising

[nwf]

I have FiOS and I can see why they are losing customers. Their prices have been constantly increasing. We crossed $250/mo and I decided to drop equipment and go back to a contract. That's still $177/mo. Their pricing for equipment is aggravating. More so than Comcast. CableCards are $4/mo. That's outrageous. Their most basic cable box (no DVR, no guide) is $5/mo. I tried to drop some channels to save money, but was told my price wouldn't change with fewer channels unless I gave up almost all HD channels. Once I'm done with this contract, I'm leaning toward dropping the TV portion. Plus their DVRs are pathetic. My ReplayTV from the late 1990s remains better than anything they offer. Even so, I'll likely have to jump to Comcast since FiOS won't offer decent rates on internet only for existing customers.

Re:Hardly Surprising

[imidan]

I'll likely have to jump to Comcast

I visited some relatives who have Comcast Xfinity a while back. It wasn't working right, which meant we had to keep resetting the cable box. That thing takes longer to boot up than my desktop PC. It took *minutes* after we turned it on to be able to watch TV. And then, the interface lag between pushing a button on the remote and seeing the results on the screen is so long, it made me think I hadn't successfully pushed the button. I realize there's some delay there for decoding the digital stream, but I still can't help but recall when I was younger, changing channels was pretty much instantaneous. It was a much better user experience.

Inevitable

[wyattstorch516]

The only content that needs to be broadcast are sports and news. Maybe the first run showing of big shows like Game of Thrones but everything else can be consumed via streaming. The cable companies had better find a way to pare down these bundles or they won't have any video customers yet.

Re:Inevitable

[nealric]

No reason why you can't stream sports too. Stream becomes available when the event starts, and available anytime after. They already offer streaming news stations-.

Re:Inevitable

[rmullig2]

You can't do streams on something like the Super Bowl or the World Series. There is not enough server bandwidth to provide each user with an individual stream. They tried this with the Oscars and it crashed and that was with it also being available in broadcast.

Re:Inevitable

[nealric]

Why not? They just didn't provide enough server bandwidth for that stream. In the future, they will.

I'd welcome a me too product

[MoarSauce123]

I'd be quite happy if Verizon offered a me too, mainly having a means to watch ALL subscribed channels via a web player. TimeWarnerSpectrum had this for years and it worked very well even over their unreliable and patheticly slow connections. Another welcome me too would be a properly working 3rd party ID service. When using Fox2Go on mobile the login via Verizon typically does not work. This wouldn't be "copying what others do", but considered catching up. For what they charge their service and devices should be significantly better, crash less often, and have reasonable hardware replacements included. I think after 7 years they can give me a new remote for free having paid for it at least ten times over already.

Re:They Must Respect the Flag!!

[Gilgaron]

But how will you feel the right jingoistic feelings while standing in line to buy a $13 beer?

"Over-the-top"

[Bohnanza]

Just what the world needs, another meaningless and arcane term for something that could be explained in just as many words.

Re:They Must Respect the Flag!!

[laurencetux]

well if you are old school you will know to "Entwine the Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine^HGrain"