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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.
Did you miss the last sentence that said most of America doesn't have healthy broadband competition? That means it's not a free market.
Have a look at a list of countries ordered by standard of living. There's different ways of measuring that, but most shake out about the same.
Now take a look at the common factor among them. Strong social policies. No, not communist, nor entirely socialist, but a mix of socialist (*gasp*) policies and regulated capitalism. It's almost like using limited socialism in some areas and limited capitalism in others works better than either alone.
Maybe the answer to the problems in the US is more capitalism, less regulation and an 'I've got mine' attitude. But probably not.
Now, you're probably either a troll or a pot stirrer, so this isn't really aimed at you. I'm hoping that chipping away at the reflexive socialist=bad that crops up might make room for some reasoned discussion on actual change and not just another round of more-of-the-same.
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!
There is no way you're a real person
And that, kids, is how the free market works
No, cable TV pricing and service is pretty much the poster-child for what happens when we don't have enough competition in the market. The new internet streaming services you get at $10-15 per month are more indicative of the free market. Netflix and Hulu can't arbitrarily raise prices at will because they're competing with each other for market share.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
You forget that this so called "free market" is exactly what happened here. Without any regulation (thus "free market"), the biggest providers push the smaller ones aside and gain an monopoly. After that it's raising prices and raising prices, because there is no competition left.
Yep - Isn't "free market" great?
This seems to be a common misconception. The "free market" doesn't preclude regulation. It relies on it. Without regulation, you simply have anarchy, and a free market can't function correctly - or at least, as efficiently. From ancient times, the most prosperous free markets have co-habited with a strong government to provide oversight and regulation, which offers a safe haven that in turn provides for a greater focus on economic development.
Also, a lot of the monopolistic tendencies of cable companies are due to regulation of the WRONG kind, preventing competitors from even entering the market in certain areas, or preventing local co-ops from forming to offer an alternative option. Like almost anything else, regulation can be a double-edged sword depending how it's used, either helping or harming consumers.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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