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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.
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.
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!
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.
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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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