Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
It only works if businesses learn from it and act on what they learn. In the case of the lead article here, it is apparent that the greed of cable companies has now met the Law of Diminishing Returns. Whether or not they decide to be less greedy, and take prices back down to what they were roughly a decade ago, which should cause floods of customers to come back, remains to be seen.
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.
You're right, don't believe that inlation since 2000 has been 100% (doubling the 74% post-adjusted increase as you have).
And I'm right. From 2000 to 2018 it was 44.5%.
I also don't believe your base rate, because there were a number of stories in 2016 reporting that the average had just crossed $100/mo.
And I'm right. In 2000 the average was reported to be about $40/mo.
That means that your numbers are indeed swampland-sales quality.
What they're saying appears to be the average cable bill in 2000 was $40. If you adjust that for inflation in 2017 dollars, it's $57.
The average price in 2017 was $100. 57 -> 100 is a 75% increase.
You're right! 75% is nowhere near 74%
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.
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!
Just because someone has it worse than you, doesn't mean you have it any better
Er, what? By definition it does. Literally, in the literal sense of 'literally'.
Your quality of life is an _objective_ thing. It's not subjective.
Did you mean that the other way around?
Not your best post.
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/
Thanks for the clarification, Comcast Guy.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
You mean how people now pay for a dozen different premium add-ons now, when back in 2000 there weren't even a dozen to choose from?
Effectively meaning the servicing you were paying for in 2000 doesn't exist now without a bunch of "add-ons"
That is... unless the average person pays for more than internet, phone and tv on their cable bill now?
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.
by $20-$60 dollars in my area by imposing bandwidth caps
Yup, because all those people shouting "cut the cord!" from the rooftops somehow imagined that the big telco companies would just sit idly by, while their profits dropped. With less fools happily paying $100+/mo for 100s of channels of garbage, the costs of keeping the cable company in the black just gets passed on to the rest of us.
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).
At least with the option of another broadband provider, you can take advantage of any "new customer" promotional rates by switching between them. My neighborhood is served by a single land-based broadband provider (Spectrum). They literally have no competition.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
What used to cost us $60 cost over $150 when we dropped cable. We went from 20Mb to 100Mb, picked up Netflix, Hulu & Prime (commercial free, multi-viewer packages) and still came out at least $40 cheaper a month. We can't watch everything we might want, but we can always find things we actually want to watch.
Split the hair any way you like. Cable's been constantly rising in price and there's no added value for the added cost. Cable isn't worth the money any more.
Bernie only wants votes from people who can spell, mouth breathers like you should not vote.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
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!
No, I'm disagreeing with facts. You factually claimed an inflation rate that is incorrect to come up with a "150% raw increase" that is false -- it was 107%. You also alleged a service cost in 2000 of $100 despite a summary that expressly stated the packages were "below $60 per month," and came up with a current service cost of $250 today despite a summary that also expressly stated that service costs were $100/mo in 2016 -- but now act as if people reading your reply would not infer that the "service" that you were referring to was the same service being discussed in the summary. That was deceptive.
Your math may be perfectly accurate, but your model, basis, and conclusions are bullshit.
You try again.
That was 18 years ago. Per the summary (and other news), the average crept above $100/mo in 2016.
What I am hoping is that companies learn valuable lessons from this. Such as "you don't have a captive market", "customers can only take so much pain", "beware of raising prices without raising value", and so forth.
"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."
You need to improve your reading comprehension. That was an apples-to-apples comparison. TFA said nothing about "average bills" with additional services such as bundled telephone service or bundled internet service. You're the one being disingenuous.
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.
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!
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?
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
It's a slippery slope though. Once they start implementing leftist policies, they want to go further and further. It will never stop. Thing is though, there's a lot of ruin in a country. It takes decades to drive us off a cliff. But it'll happen as sure as it did in Venezuela.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
My evolution was:
- Paid about $60/mo and we only watched 4 channels
- Started watching less TV couldn't justify the expense, downgraded to $40/mo package which lost 2 of the channels we liked
- Picked up Netflix for $8.99/mo
- Realized we watched Netflix 5x more than cable, so cancelled cable
- shake our heads when we think how more much we used to pay for so much less value
Does your life improve the more people around you suffer? Your life isn't better than it was the more people around you suffer, and indeed, it puts you at higher risk of crime. Granted, you could be a sadistic person who enjoys watching other people suffer, in which case carry on and enjoy the show.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
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.
I'm interested in your swampland.
Though I don't have the 2000-vs-2018 figures, I do know that my cable TV bill went from about $32 in 1998, to a little over $50 (don't remember exactly how much) in 2006 when I canceled it. Some people who still pay for TV say their bill is around a hundred dollars, and I don't think they're lying.
Perhaps your point is that everyone is understating the percentage it has increased, since it has actually tripled?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Seriously. I'm in a major metro area. My choices are Comcast and Comcast. And they have bundled their services such that I'd be strictly prohibited from getting the same internet access without cable, at *any* price. I could step my service down and pay *more*.
These fuckers are shameless.
I have Spectrum cable internet only. They sent me a few mailers offering to give me TV for free after being on their internet for a while. I refused.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
....and the US government has been promoting consolidation for a long time. I think every president since Carter has actively deregulated to allow consolidation (the elimination of competition).
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I have talked to cable customers getting bills for $200+. They often switch to Dish.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Exactly right except the part you left out where they get exclusive license in the majority of towns and cities. I thinking of a term of what they call that and it's not capitalism....
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Which could lead to the share holders forcing the CXXs and board to step down or be thrown out because they aren't doing what's in the best interest of the company, increasing share value, revenue, etc. The genie is out of the bottle and they are going to fight tooth and nail to stop this, see the current NN fight.I know this is about BB not internet but similar situation just a different battlefield.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
"and gangsters don't hang dudes that cause problems" What? What is that about?
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
"a sadistic person who enjoys watching other people suffer" There's a word for that: schadenfreude.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
it only matters if you're talking about necessities. No one NEEDS cable TV. They're raising the price to compensate for people leaving, so what's going to wind up happening is even more people are going to leave, and they're going to make even less. I find it very amusing.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Telecommunications are a natural monopoly and always will be. When it costs $2 Billion to wire a small city the very nature of the business would prevent another provider from spending the same capital expenditure. This has nothing to do with regulation, nothing at all.
The only reason we even have 2 providers in some areas is because the FCC deliberately prevented cable companies and telephone companies from entering the others business. A decade later when the FCC allowed this rule to collapse and the cable and teleco's entered each others business you saw a decline in the price of internet but not in cable TV because most of the teleco's didn't enter the cable TV market. This created a doupoly where the two providers in the market would segregate the market segment and control prices to prevent pricing wars to keep profits maximized.
But even getting 2 competitors in a market wasn't successful in all but the most urban areas, almost all rural areas still only have a single provider with what most people consider ridiculous prices and services. This is because these companies will not invest in capital upgrades.
So you'd be perfectly happy having the option of buying precisely one type of car or none at all? One type of TV? One type of table?
None of these are necessities, so if you'd rather have a choice of, say, backyard grills, it does matter.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except that shareholders in large corporations tend to be other large corporations, executives and board members in large corporations, and mutual funds, all of which are likely to rubberstamp board recommendations.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It is, when I first got married, the best cable packages were around $100 / month. They are now north of $200, probably close to $250. This would be everything with Starz, HBO, Cinnemax, etc. It wouldn't be that difficult to spend $250 on cable today.
Cheap storage VM.
Of course it is capitalism, they used their capital to buy a monopoly, classic capitalism. What it is not is a free market.
Don't get confused and think that free market equals capitalism as capitalism strives to get rid of the free market so the capitalist can rake in the profits without the effort of actually competing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
Wanna see my bills?!
My rates went from ~$50/mo for basic service to over $100 for the same pkg.
And, there is LESS to watch! Most everything is a repeat - MANY MANY times a month, then again in a few months!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
It matters at every level of commerce
A lack of effective competition means an end to contract rights (think about it)
When you can't choose, you can't be held for refusing the terms of the contract
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"
Does your life improve the more people around you suffer?
No, nor did I state that. Did you read the post that started this? It was comparative standards of living based on country.
In a static comparison, if someone is worse than I am, then I am - by definition - better.
If they become worse, relatively, then I am better, relatively.
If they were the only ones that changed, then my life is unchanged, but my relationship to them has changed.
There's no causal link, nor was it implied.
you could be a sadistic person who enjoys watching other people suffer
You are reading _way_ more into this than was there.