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Cord Cutting Caused By 74 Percent TV Price Hikes Since 2000, Says Report (dslreports.com)
A new study by Kagan, S&P Global Market Intelligence finds that cord cutting is being caused primarily by a 74% increase in customer cable bills since 2000. From a report: That increase is even adjusted for inflation, and it should be noted that individual earnings have seen a modest decline during that same period, making soaring cable rates untenable for many. This affordability gap is "squeezing penetration rates, particularly among the more economically vulnerable households," the research company added. As their chart illustrates, prices for multichannel packages have steadily risen from just below $60 a month in 2000 to close to $100 in 2016. All while incomes remained largely stagnant. As customers grow increasingly angry at cable TV rate hikes and defect to streaming alternatives, most cable operators are simply raising the price of broadband (often via usage caps and overage fees) to try and make up for lost revenue. And because most parts of America still don't really see healthy broadband competition, they can consistently get away with it.
but also different services. Cable Internet was rare in 2001. Cable Internet + Netflix + over-the-air TV probably offer more choice of programming than normal cable did in 2001.
And that, kids, is how the free market works
Ditched Comcast for TDS as soon as I knew it was available. Last night I was installing from Steam at an actual speed of over 700 megabits/second. It was glorious.
A 74% inflation-adjusted increase since 2000 would be around a 150% raw increase.
That means the same service that cost you $100 in 2000 would cost you around $250 now.
If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida that would be perfect for you.
The cable companies would see an increase in sustainability if they literally cut their costs in half. Spending $100-200 for Cable and Internet is ridiculous. They have no one to blame but themselves. There is nothing stopping them from negotiating better fees from the failing cable networks they thrust upon us.
They've been telling us online piracy was the cause of it, not their price hikes.
by $20-$60 dollars in my area by imposing bandwidth caps. Their costs hadn't raised a dime, this was just a cash grab because the current (Republican) administration isn't likely to regulate them for abusing their duopoly (yeah, there's one other provider, who's exactly as bad).
I know it's not popular to call a political party out by name around here, but what else can I call it? I had 8 years of steady prices (going up a buck here, a buck there) and as soon as the Rs where in charge *blam*, $big raises. I've got biz class and the next time my contract's up It'll be $160/mo. Meanwhile Cox lobbies the Rs to prevent muni broadband and any competition whatsoever.
These are the same folks who killed Net Neutrality and just deregulated Wallstreet (albeit with the help of some Corporate Dems like that bitch Pelosi and that bastard Schumer). Enough already. There comes a time when you call a spade a spade. Vote Bernie's party. Listen to him and his and vote there. Or stop bitching about getting screwed by mega corps.
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Dumb-ass faux-capitalist/monopolists control entertainment delivery and content. Technology starts under-cutting their rent-seeking behavior. Rather than respond appropriately, ala carte pricing, etc., they double-down by raising prices and cutting "Customer Service" (a new oxymoron!) and are shocked - shocked! I say! - when customers bail.
Fuck 'em. Couldn't happen to a greater bunch of guys outside the music industry.
Well at least due to the agreement for the merger of Sharter TWC and BHN they won't be able to introduce any bandwidth caps or overage fees till at least the early 2020's by then we should be full swing into 5G cellular which will probably be the final nail in the coffin for the cable industry.
How much data do you use per month? Isn't the Cox data cap 300 GB, or 1 TB? The 50 GB for $10 is a rip off.
Look at the programming. Who want's 600 channels of Reality TV? Does anybody watch that stuff? It's crap.
Look at Netflix, something like Luke Cage or Altered Carbon. I just can't find content like that on cable, even with premium channels. And then there's the cable box rentals. It's over $200/month, and my local cable company kept dropping the sound out, or the video out, during climatic scenes.
At one point I realized I could drop cable, still have unlimited internet, and save enough money that I could BUY A NEW DVD every day of the month at a local store with change left over. Snip Snip. Goodby Cable. Goodby commercials & advertising. And good riddance!
doesn't mean you have it any better. Your quality of life is an _objective_ thing. It's not subjective.
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When I look at my Satellite channel lineup ( full package* except premium channels. Eg: No HBO, Showtime, etc ) a rather large percentage of channels are of material I will never watch.
Channels:
In languages I don't speak.
Religious channels.
Home Shopping style channels.
Infomercial channels.
When I actually took the time to cull out all the crap I didn't want to see, I was left with maybe twenty channels in all. Maybe.
So, perhaps the cord cutting isn't solely because of the price hike, rather the fact the typical user gets a really piss poor amount of content to watch and they have begun to question why they're spending so much on what is, in reality, so little.
*I only have a dish because I get it at a crazy discount. If I was paying full price for the available content, I would not have it at all.
The reason I'm not a cable TV subscriber is because those assholes won't just sell me what I want. I don't care about sportsball, I don't want a couple dozen shopping channels, and I don't want 90% of what's in their "packages". Just sell me the movie channels, my local network affiliates, and I'm pretty much done.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
that gave me cable, Internet & phone for $100 bucks a month back then. Same bundle is around $250 now. So you nailed it on the head. You can keep your swampland. I'm sure you paid a lot for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I sometimes talk about cord cutting with my elderly fixed income customers, but it's not a rewarding experience. They find the alternatives confusing, and I haven't figured out a good way to explain things to them. Even just clarifying that cancelling 'cable' is not the same thing as cancelling all services from their cable company involves more time than one would think. Then I find I have to start getting into:
Bandwidth caps: "I like to have the tv on in the background 16 hours a day"
Service confusion: "What channels do I watch? I don't know."
Lack of a familiar interface: "How do I surf channels?"
What usually breaks me is when they mention in passing that they have a "VIP" bundle. When I have to get into alternative voip services and devices on top of streaming services and devices, it's time for me to give up. At that point I've been clarifying stuff for fifteen minutes and have to help someone else google the right ink for their printer.
Get SlingTV. I pay $25 a month and get more programming then I had with Time Warner when I was paying $144
Been cable free since March 2016 saving almost $2,000
Buy a tv antenna and get many free channels. Check out http://www.tvguide.com/ and click on Whats On for what is available in your area.
I signed up for cable for an introductory $35/mo rising to $60/mo after a few months. That was about two years ago. When last I checked the internet only bill was $93/mo. It just goes up and up and they rely on you not checking.
So I figured I would see if it was cheaper to switch back to DSL. I was a DSL customer before I got cable, it was enough for me and they are advertising higher speeds since I last looked. So I call the DSL company, explain that I'm a returning customer, give them my address and ask what speeds they can offer. Turns out they need your social security number to be bothered to even tell you if they offer service in your area.
bastards
Nullius in verba
There is more to the story than the 74% cable/satellite TV price hikes. People in the US are seeing price hikes on everything else, especially so in the following categories: health care costs, housing costs, and student loan costs. Also, people are increasingly seeing that there are other options that are free or cheap: rabbit ear TV, Netflix, Hulu, etc.
So, short-sighted pursuit of profits is not a good strategy in the long term? Who knew!
in 2001 I got cable for $35 teaser price. A year later it went up to $45 or 50. Over the next 7 years in increase several times to around $90. During that period a lot of the shows I liked to watch were bumped up to higher tiers. In 2008 I moved. The old cable at $90 no longer had most of the shows I wanted to watch at the $90 tier. The new location started at $110 or something, and I bailed. ...
I figure I only want to watch TV a limited number of hours a week. I don't find any shows an absolute "must watch." Some shows, Homeland, I get free at the library about 9 months late.
Here is an idea: watching TV show has a barely recognized competition: NOT watching TV shows!
When I cut the cord I realized that:
1.free broadcast TV gave me more than enough TV to keep me busy
2. books
3. internet
4. exercise, cooking, housecleaning, cat petting,
Conclusion: I wish to thank the cable companies for helping me find that life exists outside of being a couch potato!
When I cut the cable 4 years ago, a big part of it was that there was nothing that I wanted to watch. The speciality channels that used to have interesting content were full of reality garbage. The networks were full of dreary CSI spinoffs and knockoffs. I didn't subscribe to the premium channels because cable was already expensive enough. Overall, cable just wasn't worth the money. The only thing I watched was the weather, and even that had gone from detailed forecasting to dogs playing in the snow. I'm willing to pay for quality content, but it just wasn't there. But there's always something to watch on Netflix or Crunchyroll.
------- Mark
for me price had hardly anything to do with the reason i don't have cable tv anymore.
1. there is nothing interesting on, reality rubbish, reruns after reruns of old stuff, soaps, idol contest type of things.
2. ads at the beginning, in the middle & at the end and then ads between the ads, and ads about ads... horrible, just like browsing the web without an adblocker.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
why would you pay for cable if most of what you want is local network affiliates?
If jcr is anything like one of my co-workers, they tried an antenna but could not receive a steady signal due to distance or obstructions.
You could redbox the movies for less than the cable bill
Redbox (new releases) is not a substitute for, say, TCM (curated older motion pictures).
I find more people, like myself, are cutting the cord because of cost, but it isn't only the cost. It paying high prices for 200 channels of garbage to get the five channels that we only watch.
It's not about price. The whole idea of watching a "channel" that streams some content only at a specific time that someone else chooses makes no sense to me when there are other options. Yes, you can do DVR, but that's just a crutch and you are SOL if your DVR wasn't set up for whatever specific content you want to watch. Cable is starting to offer more "on-demand" content, but the interface and breath is still usually a tiny fraction of what the major streaming services do.
At the end of the day, cable TV is just a lousy user experience compared to streaming. This is especially the case for people who only watch TV intentionally- not just to have something on in the background.
Dear cable TV providers: First and foremost, a big middle finger to you all, for you have shown that you are nothing but a bunch of abusive dicks. Second, you haven't got a single dime from me for over ten years now, and I am pretty sure that I have convinced quite a few people in the interim to stop giving any money to you. Third, if you want to ever get any money for me, allow me to select exactly what it is that I want to pay to watch. I might end up paying as much, or maybe even more, but that would be my decision, not yours. Fifth, stop insulting my intelligence by averring that packages are necessary to subsidize minority channels - nobody believes that your pseudo-altruistic claims. Sixth, please stick those said packages you know where. Thank you for your time.
My guess is that the vendors probably are ripping off the customers, but there is a phenomenon that could explain this without the malicious intent. Economies of scale.
It may be the case that it's becoming more expensive because fewer people are buying in, creating a feedback loop. Less people buy in, cost goes up. Less people buy in, cost goes up. If you have 100 million households with TV service, you can price things very differently than if you've got 10 million households with TV service. Part of it is costs but it's also value-adds and things like that. Advertising also affects those numbers too, I think. Maybe customers are footing more of the bill now because advertisers have less interest because the audience isn't as there as it was 20 years ago.
Oh yes, I see the logic, we have a bloated overpriced service that so many people don't want because they seek their entertainment in a fashion they have more control over. We have a network we can also sell , but make less profit on then the service. So logically we are going to expand the offerings of the service and require people to pay more for it. Or better yet, we will charge less for cable and internet bundled together then for internet stand alone.
How about, ask people what they want, and sell it to them at a prices that competes with their other options, rather then trying every kind of mind game possible to squeeze every last penny from the consumer.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Do you have cable?
Do you watch cable only on demand?
Would you pay for cable if it didn't make your internet cheaper?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
If they are just now figuring this out, it explains a lot.
Hogwash. This is the first time I've ever read anyone likening "free market" to a "properly regulated market".
Your blatant ignorance does not mean that someone else is wrong, WOW are you stupid
Lets get some things straight here. I spent many years working for a tv provider and have a lot of insight to how all of this works. Typically people are pointing fingers in the wrong direction.
TV networks are not giving free broadcast to providers, that shit is really expensive. The profit margin for tv providers is at an all time low on a per customer basis. Yes they can still have increased profits but this is from adding in new customers in mass and often other services (internet, phone, streaming etc).
These price increases are due to the networks jacking up their rates every 2-3 years when they have to renegotiate their contract with the provider. What option does the provider have, not pay and lose the channels? Then no one would subscribe. These price hikes we're talking about here are not 5% more than what was paid two years ago, most networks are looking in the range of 50% increases yet they provide the same content and typically more commercials. They don't just request more money but often other absurd requests. There is a particular sport network in California that has a hard time making deals with providers but is highly sought after. The problem with coming to a deal with them is that they are demanding that every single customer that provider has, needs to be paying for their station. Did you pick a package that has no sports because you don't like them? Sorry you have to pay for this one because they are dicks.
The worst offender here is local tv networks that broadcast over the air. They are the worst by far and have a lot of leverage due to things like the 1992 Cable Act that forces providers to have no choice in which local channels a customer receives. Do you live closer to major city A? Well the FCC has put you into the local channel market for major city B even though its 3x the distance from you, sorry about your luck. You can open a claim with the FCC and if there are enough complaints something may happen in the distant future. But because there is no choice for providers, local networks can hold their programming hostage. Their typical price increase every few years is 400% and when there are over 100 local channel markets across the country this adds up real fast when most markets have a dozen or more channels.
Last thing I want to point out here since I saw someone complaining about it is the religious and shopping channels. Their sole purpose is to make money from their broadcast, you are not paying for them unless you are buying from them or 'donating'. They actually pay tv providers for their air space and in turn help offset the cost of the shitty things other networks are doing.
Is this a shitty situation? Yep. Should we be mad about it? Absolutely, but lets make sure we're angry at the people that are actually responsible for it.
Guess you should switch to another cable company... Oh, wait... we're it, aren't we?
*Rips open nipple flaps*
That's too bad! Guess you'll have to deal with our prices, then.
I've dropped my wired Internet with the local AT&T monopoly and switched entirely to mobile Internet. It's expensive as fuck, but at least my dollars are no longer propping up the monopolistic cable/DSL/fiber regimes. And it keeps getting cheaper. By the time 5g hits, we'll all be able to do the same thing and we can finally bury the corpses of Comcast et al.
78% over 18 years isn't too far off the inflation rate (okay, maybe). We hacked the cord for one reason, it wasn't the cable companies fault, it was the TV shows they were showing. Comedy shows are not comedy if all they are doing it tossing insults of the day. The series don't seem to have a plot whatsoever, it just seems to be Kardashian behavior. I know, I'm a touch dated... I can design logic gates with tubes, but give me a break, no mystery shows other than who fucked Tina, how many times, and who else did her? Bring back Road Runner... Wyle coyote is my mentor!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
My ISP accidentally left cable TV coming to my house. I connected a TV to it to see and there it was, something like 80 channels. Then I disconnected it as I don't want that commercially ridden crap.
So, with "customers" like me, what the heck future does cable TV have, probably a terrible one as not only will the "me's" leave, but I suspect that TV will migrate more and more of its content to complete dumbasses which will drive more people away, not just not appeal to them, but people with half a brain won't want their kids or themselves exposed to endless breathless reporting on the Kardashians and the thoughts of Chairman Kanye West.
"Ow My Balls"