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While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting (investors.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Investor's Business Daily:
Shares in Charter Communications plunged after the cable TV firm reported first quarter earnings and lost more video subscribers than expected, also sparking a sell-off in Comcast and Altice USA... Charter said it lost 122,000 video subscribers, nearly triple analyst predictions for a fall of 43,000. Comcast on Wednesday said it lost 96,000 video subscribers, exceeding estimates for a drop of 75,000.... With Friday's sell-off, Comcast stock is down 20% in 2018, with Charter falling more than 24%...
Cable TV firms aren't the only losers. AT&T this week said it lost 187,000 pay-TV customers, including satellite TV subscribers and its U-verse landline business. AT&T's DirecTV Now internet streaming service added 312,000 customers. But AT&T garners much lower profit margins from video streaming.
Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.
MarketWatch notes that Charter also lost 100,000 customers in the same three-month period in 2017, calling the ongoing trend "a fundamental shift in consumer behavior."
Cable TV firms aren't the only losers. AT&T this week said it lost 187,000 pay-TV customers, including satellite TV subscribers and its U-verse landline business. AT&T's DirecTV Now internet streaming service added 312,000 customers. But AT&T garners much lower profit margins from video streaming.
Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.
MarketWatch notes that Charter also lost 100,000 customers in the same three-month period in 2017, calling the ongoing trend "a fundamental shift in consumer behavior."
A good time to buy in. There's too much money at play for these companies to simply fold up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Due to the Trump tax breaks and repeal of net neutrality, the communications cabal is racking in record profits:
Comcast Q1 2018 profit beats expectation:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/2...
Verizon : Q1 2018 MASSIVE profit boost of 32%
https://www.highgeekly.com/bus...
These companies are carving up the internet (Comcast is "bundling Netflix", oh, and if you don't pay the higher Comcast rate, your traffic 'flix gets punished aka: deprioritized) and monetizing user data just EXACTLY as the NN supporters claimed would happen. The result is massive profits... which drive stock prices, higher consumer costs, and poorer user experience...
When I left the US a decade ago, I was paying about $100 a month to Comcast for internet service and basic cable (no premium channels, no HD, not that it mattered since I didn't have an HDTV). Today in France, I pay €39.99 a month for basic cable, internet service, VOIP including free international phone calls, and all the mobile phone calls and text messages I can make (within France, international texts typically run me about €0.20 a month). My parents in the US, for that same bundle of services, are paying more than $200 a month.
I can't really see myself doing anything but streaming TV if I ever move back to the US. I enjoy TV, but I don't need it. Why should I spend a bunch of money supporting a business model that doesn't really serve me?
I am being charged an extra fee for only having internet. Seriously, they have a $10 fee on my bill every month for NOT having a service.
Bullshit, if in a 3rd world country I can get Gigabit fiber + TV + unlimited data 3G stick + mobile subscription with unlimited data plan, all for 25 bucks a month, then clearly something's very fishy in the USA.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Unless there is a real competitor to the cable broadband pipeline to the homes, the cable companies will settle into a new revenue pattern.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
COMCAST is trending back to $20/share where it will be a good buy. With the repeal of Net Neutrality, they will be back with a vengeance. Nothing stopped them before from overcharging and nothing will stop them from making us pay to be in the Internet fast lane, even though we the taxpayers paid to build their networks and rural America is still dark.
So you might as well buy their stock at $20 and make some money on the comeback since that is all you will ever get out of them, other than a high monthly Internet service bill.
If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.
Instead they created the perfect conditions for streaming providers to experiment with how to deliver good quality video over the internet and totally bypass the ISP as an issue, or like Netflix work out how to get hosted elements inside a provider...
As cable companies become nothing more than very bad ISP's, I will just pity them for what could have been.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's the other way around, actually.
Now that no one wants cableTV any more, cable companies are left with massive infrastructure for a smaller customer base. For example, equipment to distribute TV signals over the wire, to replace TV commercials (cable companies do that in Canada, at least), and to pay for the product itself.
Compliance with FCC regs for TV rebroadcasting, blackouts for specific areas, endless TV-only 'things to manage, support, and do'. Heck, even 'public access channels'.
With a constant reduction in sales on that side, there's going to be overcapacity in manpower and tech/infrastructure for quite some time.
Thing is, bandwidth is cheap, cheap, CHEAP! So is providing it. Just acting as a pipe though, doesn't allow for them to gouge you on 100 other things. It doesn't provide the same profit. Realistically, they could provide gigabit speeds for $20 per month, and STILL make a profit -- but, that profit would be very slim compared to all those packages and the rape that comes with them.
In a competitive world, you'd (supposedly) have companies competing... but that doesn't happen most of the time with TV or Internet in most markets.
So, I suspect internet is now subsudizing TV. And these complaints are just more blather and bullshit. They've probably also signed poorly crafted deals, where they perhaps pay $x per month for each channel, with a minor change per subscriber. A plus in the old days, a minus now.
And of course most of these clowns are ALSO content providers. Which means they have to support all their specialty channels, but now with fewer and fewer people.
Here's the amusing thing though.
They think "HEEEY, they don't buy what we're selling.. well, we'll MAKE them buy it, but charging them more for something COMPLETELY UNRELATED!"
Internet != TV. Yet they think raising the price on Internet is the way to go.
No!
Raise the price on TV/CABLE if it is more expensive. Then people paying for a failing service, will leave.. oh wait.
So I guess they decided to tax others to support their failing TV business.
We haven't owned a TV nor "watched TV" in a decade (was a 15" blue night special, at that). Same with streaming.
We simply fail to see what is good, interesting, necessary or attractive about TV (or cable, or most other online shows and things you can watch).
All of us read, think, and talk instead. A bit like Fahrenheit 451 ...
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
> If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or
> Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning
> us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.
It's the content-owners' fault. E.g. Disney owns ABC, multiple ESPN channels, and multiple Disney channels. They offer *ALL-OR-NOTHING*. I.e. if a cableco wants ABC and Disney channels, they *MUST* put ESPN on basic on 80% of their subscribers. A cable company would love to go "ESPN-free". But Disney knows that a cable service without ABC and Disney channels won't fly. Disney is the worst, but there are other groups that use the same forced-bundling tactics. See PDF file https://pmcvariety.files.wordp... for a display of who charges how much for what in 2016 and 2017.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
If they hadn't been so greedy in the past, maybe fewer people would have cut the cord.
The main companies are still seeing high profits. Their CEOs are still making 10's of millions of dollars per year.
When the going gets tough, they just charge customers more to protect their profits knowing the customer is screwed since the market lacks true competition.
I cut the cord in April, 2009. I paid $46.95/month for internet. Now I pay $80.70/month. Service hasn't gotten any better during that time.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."