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40 Percent of America Will Cut the Cord By 2030, New Report Predicts (vice.com)
bumblebaetuna shares a report from Motherboard: By 2030, as many as 40 percent of Americans will have cut the cord, according to predictions in a new report by market analyst TDG Research. The percent of U.S. households still shelling out for cable has dropped every year since 2012. If the trend continues on the current path, TDG predicts the percent of U.S. households subscribing to pay TV will drop to 60 percent in the next 13 years. Cost is a major driver of this shift: the cost of bundling a few favorite streaming services together still pales in comparison to the average cable bill. TDG found that two thirds of cord cutters and "cord nevers" (people who have never paid for cable) said service expense was the key reason they do not use legacy pay TV services. There's also a generational shift: 61 percent of adults aged 18-29 say online streaming services are the primary way they watch TV.
I doubt that my kids will ever have a cable-tv cord to cut. They are part of the cable-never generation.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
But we will know where we are at in 5 years
Should you decide to cancel our fine cable TV package. Once the repeal of net neutrality is complete you might letters like this from your favorite cable-based internet provider.
Predictions are like assholes: everyone has one and they all stink.
Table-ized A.I.
What I would do is build our own streaming service on top of the Comcast network and combine the best of YouTube and NetFlix. Key features:
1. Open speech platform; all legal speech in the US is uncensored.
2. All content from day one must be accurately labeled in an ESRB-style system with a lot of flexibility.
3. Built in monetization for all content creators.
4. Merge it with the groups that handle the existing VoD so it has access to all of that streaming content up front.
Who needs net neutrality? Why we have the most open platform in the US and it is built-in, nearly ad-free for Comcast customers.
Took me a while to drop it (like two months ago) but I haven't even replaced it with OTA or Hulu. Just gone, buh bye.
I come here for the love
we'll still be corded in paying for internet. And thanks to the death of Net Neutrality we'll be paying more than ever for the exact same (or less) content.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Think it will be 80% or more.
The irony is that, while “cutting the cord” of cable television, we subscribe to service that uses the very same cable, except in a way for which it was not designed (unicast vs. broadcast) and is ill-suited. We thus end up obtaining even worse quality of service for about the same price, from the exact same people, who are preparing to screw us even further by changing the rules of service back to... those of cable television. Checkmate. Happy future, everyone.
Aside from my retired parents, I don't even know anybody who pays for cable, everybody Netflixes or Hulus or whatever. I wonder what the number would be if it didn't include people who get basic cable thrown in with the Internet?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's time for Hollywood's free cash cow to dry up. There's absolutely no reason cable TV should cost $100+.
I remember a time when cable cost $30 a month for about 60-70ish channels. Maybe their overpaid actors and production staff will take a pay cut if they want to survive /sarcasm
to provide you with internet. Comcast admitted that in their SEC filing. They can lie to you, they can lie to congress, they can lie to their priest for Christ's sake. But they can not and will not lie to their investors.
As for that wire, you and me already paid for it in the form of massive subsidies and tax breaks. They didn't spend a dime of their own money. You don't get rich spending your own money. That's for chumps & working stiffs like me and you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I have one way to get internet (aside from dialup or sat). Here's what happens if I "cut the cord". My bill goes from $70 for cable+internet, to $70 for internet.
What we (as consumers) really need is compulsory licensing for video. Let the various streaming services compete based on their new material, but require that after some time (say three years from the the first streaming or ten years if it was never streamed), all video must be licensed for streaming on a per-minute basis. I might set the rate at $10/month divided by the average number of hours a typical household streams, with the rate decreasing based on the age of the video.
So say the average household streams 100 hours/month, so the base rate is $0.10/hour (measured in full minutes). A Netflix original show would be available at that rate on Amazon after three years. Every year the rate would drop by $0.002/hour, so five years later it's $0.09/hour.
Consumers would be able to subscribe to only one service and have access to every video ever made, excluding new releases. You might choose to subscribe to a premium service with awesome new shows, or you might choose to subscribe to a discount service that only has older shows. You might subscribe to a service where you prepay for a number of hours of TV instead of an all-you-can-watch model.
With no net neutrality, the balance of power has shifted. I'm going to guess the trend the slows down as OTT services have to pay a big premium to deliver content.
-Dave
No one will be "cutting the cord" since the same cord that provides paid TV also provides the internet required for the alternative paid TV. Media/Internet providers will adjust accordingly and no one will be saving any money.
Yes without Net Neutrality legal protections the telcom syndicate will have free reign to perform deep packet inspection and toll video and voice with whatever fee they can legally extort. One way or another they will find a way to abuse their privileged government status to enact artificial scarcity and charge premiums.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
You should find more people that think like you and start a club. Might want to invite VHS enthusiasts as well to increase membership.
Only I can judge you.
Getting rid of cable TV is pretty much going to become a national pasttime. Things like sports have been shooting themselves in the face and they are one of the few reasons to even have cable for some people.
I live in Seattle. We don't need hockey. We have bum fights.
Have gnu, will travel.
The cable companies usually provide a free personal video recorder (PVR) within the cable box. You can set the timer to record programs from up to three different channels simultaneously. Then you can choose where and when you want to watch programming.
That's really the difference between the 1980's and present day. Back then, *everyone* had to watch the same program at the same time if they wanted to be cool and hip with their friends. Sometimes, teachers would recommend that you watch a particular science documentary. Now you can usually find any particular video on Youtube
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
broadcast is good for live content and steaming needs to have off line download / being able to que and buffer shows say nearing the end of one episode let you start buffering the next one. or even say let some buffer 4K on a slow link that can just stream HP live.
I've reached the destination you are pondering, years ago already. I don't subscribe to cable TV, satellite, "on demand" anything, or "streaming services". Very rarely even do I torrent such entertainment these days. There ARE totally other things to do to fill up any empty hours you might find in your day.
But this funny business with net neutrality is designed exactly for people like you and me. We say we don't want it, and we won't pay... the cable company says "Yes you will, unless you also want us to cut off Facebook and YouTube." (Or meter your internet back to the 90s, or whatever other schemes they can come up with to keep it palatable while maintaining the illusion of choice and a free market.) Crapcast never envisioned half or more of the population going without TV, any more than the power companies expect people to start deciding they don't need electricity in 2018. In today's corporate welfare state, your right to choose how to spend your money is secondary to the special interests' "right to profit".
The term does not make sense anymore when you are just diverting your money to streaming subscriptions, and you need a bunch of those to get the shows you want.
And now they are starting to bundle streaming subscriptions with your internet connection or cell phone plan.
The good part right now is that I can still choose not to get Netflix, HBO etc with my internet connection, and I can choose to only have 1 or no subscription to any streaming service.
Since I am not really into TV series or movies at the moment, I have no subscriptions, but I might get Netflix,HBO or Amazon and cycle between them on a yearly basis.
L'Idiot
About time Google or Netfix brought the Cell towers, as if 5G is as fast as predicted it will mean Telecos and cable cos have lost the lot.
One generations cable bill is another generations unlimited smartphone bill. This isn't about cost. It's about priorities.
And as online streaming services continue to fracture content and offer exclusive content, I have a feeling consumers are going to be shelling out essentially a cable bills worth of money to get what they want. The laughable irony here is watching the cable-cutting generation pay for 400,000 channels of streaming shit they'll never watch in order to get the 100 channels they want, which was essentially the entire fucking argument against bundled cable service.
If I could only get CBC over the air on my HDTV antenna, which receives higher quality signals (1080p) than my cable provider (1080i), I would cancel my cable entirely.
98 percent of the channels could disappear, because it turns out most of the ones I want are already over the air.
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No, dude, we're getting both hockey (NHL) and basketball (NBA) teams this year, don't you read the dead tree paper? Seriously, at Key Arena.
Bum fights are in Kent, not Seattle.
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Bum fights are in Kent, not Seattle.
[Sigh] Seattle loses another sports franchise.
Have gnu, will travel.
Where are the stats? I'm willing to bet way less than 15% of the population had cable in the US in the mid 1980s. We all should cut the cord, it's crap. The problem is the net neutrality rules they are quickly getting in their favor so that even after you cut the cord, they still have you where they want you.
Somebody mod this post up, made me laugh. :)
Before 2030. They are well on their way NOW. FU Spectrum!
...the future looks like siloed streaming services. Channel-surfing looks a lot better when the alternative is 15-20 streaming services (offering exclusive content that the producer refuses to offer elsewhere), each costing $10-20/month.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman