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Cable Industry Finally Fights Cord Cutting With Fewer Ads (dslreports.com)
The cable industry is slowly realizing that more advertisements and higher prices aren't the solution to cord cutting. Karl Bode writes via DSLReports: AT&T and Dish have explored offering cheaper, more flexible streaming alternatives (DirecTV Now and Sling TV, respectively), both understanding that getting out ahead of the cord cutting trend is the right play, even if the net result is making less money from traditional television. And on the broadcasting front, several companies this month made it clear they'll be reducing the ad loads on their programming, since charging users a subscription fee and socking them with endless ads is becoming a dated concept in the cord cutting era. Fox, for example, told the Wall Street Journal this week that the company would be reducing TV ad time in its content to two minutes an hour by 2020. Comcast NBC Universal says it's also following suit, having cut advertising time in its own shows by 10%, and reduced the overall number of advertising during commercial breaks by 20%. Given there's 83 million households still subscribing to traditional cable TV, many cable executives are under the false impression they can keep doubling down on bad ideas without the check coming due. But the data indicates this head in the sand approach simply isn't sustainable. Pay TV providers saw a reduction of more than 500,000 traditional pay TV customers during the fourth quarter, a decline of 3.4% total pay TV customers from the year before. That 3.4% decline was up from the 2% rate during in the fourth quarter of 2016 and a 1% rate of decline one year before that.
I made the decision this week to cut the cord myself and I dropped all my TV equipment today.
In an industry where high price/low value is cited by 80% of the people dropping their TV service, I was told that I had to pay an extra $60 a month to get a "free" internet speed upgrade to switch from a grandfathered TWC plan to a new spectrum plan with no other benefits. $145->$205.
Instead I opted to drop tv, drop my bill to $65, and get the "still techncially supposed to be free" bump from 60x5 to 100x10.
I just don't know how they think people wil pay $140 for Cable TV when there are so many solid alternatives that are under $40 if not under $30 a month (Sling, Hulu, Netflix, Etc).
AT&T and Comcast can just fuck right off. Lower your goddamn prices and improve customer service and then maybe we can talk. And please stop trying to contact me. When I want to talk to you, I'll let you know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I want a 30 channel subscription that allows me to select all 30 stations from a lineup on a 30 day interval. A menu that allows me to checkbox what stations I want and then change them on a monthly basis. You pay a minimum for just basic connectivity, and then a tiered level that allows you to choose the stations YOU want, not some carefully constructed pack that is calculated to spread the popular channels through out 5 packs which in the end costs you the same or more as you would spend on a traditional tiered system. I want the program to be streamed to me at high speed so I can fast forward and reverse even if it is not on my DVR. I want enough memory in my set top box to store 30 minutes of HD video. I would even stomach a few ads, the more targeted the better, I hate watching ads for diapers or baby food, or feminine products. I hate watching an ad for the show I am currently watching...*cough* El Rey Network. I love hockey but what is the point of the NHL network in the offseason, or for that matter what is the point of OWN period ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I recall buying cable TV because it had NO ADs.
Now we get to pay to see ads.
They're cutting their own throats and I have no sympathy for cable companies.
I stopped watching in 2013 because the ads are just too in my face. I started playing a game of, flick the ad off before the message so that I got the art work but not the message until I realised the shows kind of sucked as well.
The shows that didn't suck I didn't watch because of the ads and waited until they were re-runs that I could binge watch without commercials.
I think it has had a positive impact on my mental health as well, I feel a lot less stressed since I stopped watching all that crap.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They're only about 10 years too late.
Yep. If they had done this 10 years ago, they might have had a fighting chance. As it is, their service got so bad that they overcame people's resistance to change and drove them to the experiment of dropping the service. Now, dropping service has gotten such a good reputation that the rate of doing so is increasing dramatically.
If cord cutting hasn't reached critical mass yet, it is so close as to be nearly unavoidable.