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.

Comments

Cut the cord? What cord?

[whoever57]

I doubt that my kids will ever have a cable-tv cord to cut. They are part of the cable-never generation.

Re:Cut the cord? What cord?

[networkBoy]

I have never paid for cable. I've enjoyed it sometimes when others have footed the bill for various reasons and it's free to me. Price for what I want is the overwhelming reason. I want a small number of channels that are only available in the highest tier packages, and have no desire to pay that much for really only a couple shows.

Re:Cut the cord? What cord?

[Ol Olsoc]

I doubt that my kids will ever have a cable-tv cord to cut. They are part of the cable-never generation.

Any gain will be temporary, as Ajit Pai and his owners and handlers turn the internet into Cable TV mod two, with multi tier service, yearly double digit price inflation, and if you want the fast speeds, we have the ultra Patriotic rate of 500 dollars a month, with hundresd of high quality entertainment channels as part of the package. Featuring the Honey Boo-Boo network.

There will be a basic rate of 75 dollars a month that will be at 56K modem speed, and a 100 Megabyte cap.

Shame if your streaming service stopped working

[JoeyRox]

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.

Re:Shame if your streaming service stopped working

[Berkyjay]

Meh, if they do try this extortion BS I'll just stop watching TV and movies altogether and go play more video games and go out hiking more often. It'll probably be the best thing to ever happen to me.

I predict AI will cut it for you in yr flying car

[Tablizer]

Predictions are like assholes: everyone has one and they all stink.

The joke is on us, really.

[Picodon]

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.

Re:The joke is on us, really.

[NeumannCons]

Actually, cable is rapidly becoming more and more designed for high-speed data (more accurately bi-directional high speed data).

Cable companies (MSOs - or Multi Systems Operators) have been upgrading their infrastructure (HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coaxial) for years now by replacing main trunks with fiber, re-allocating frequency ranges from TV to data, and developing new standards for equipment in the home (DOCSIS). While the original equipment was not really designed to support bi-directional data, the last decades improvements are all about making sure they cater to their current customers which more and more just want high-speed data. While I'm not a fan of cable companies, I think they see the direction things are headed in and are making sure they position themselves to survive the loss of TV subscribers.

Docsis 1.0 (1997) supported 10Mb/s. DOCSIS3 3.1 (2017) supports 10Gb/s transfer speeds. FTTH (Fiber to the home) is likely the next "big thing" (or possibly wi-max or its successor). Cable companies already have huge amounts of fiber on poles to to aggregate customers data. At this point, they're looking at ways of expanding that reach for the last mile.

Re:Only 40%

[AvitarX]

I had to strong arm them into not giving me basic cable.

It was $10/month less to take it. I told them they'd have to give me a bigger discount to store their box in my basement, as I'd inevitably lose it and owe money when I moved.

I don't want to waste TV stand space, and I don't want to waste an HDMI hole on their stupid box that has a terrible remote, terrible TV guide, and terrible lag when interacting.

They eventually gave me internet alone for the cheaper price.

Good Riddance

[DatbeDank]

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

You know it costs you $9/mo

[rsilvergun]

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.

Compulsory License for Video

[crow]

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.