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Cord Cutting Accelerates as Pay TV Loses 1 Million Customers in Largest-Ever Quarterly Loss (usatoday.com)
Cable and satellite TV providers lost about 1.1 million subscribers during the July to September period, the largest quarterly loss ever -- and the first time the industry lost more than 1 million subscribers in a quarter, according to media and telecommunications research firm MoffettNathanson. From a report: After Dish Network reported its third-quarter earnings this week, the New York-headquartered research firm tallied up the publicly reported subscriber losses to arrive at the finding. Dish lost 341,000 subscribers in the third quarter, compared to adding 16,000 in the same period a year ago. Overall, Dish lost 367,000 satellite subscribers but added 26,000 Sling TV subscribers, the company said. Rich Greenfield, a media and technology analyst with financial services firm BTIG in New York, arrived at a similar conclusion and called it "the third-worst quarter in industry history and worst since Q2 2016."
After decades of being a cable and satellite TV subscriber -- most recently Dish -- I finally dumped Dish this summer, when their bill reached almost a hundred bucks a month, and I watched, at most, two or three channels every once in a while.
I would've happily paid $20-$30 a month for channels I occasionally watch. And although I could still afford the franklin every month, I really hate wasting money for nothing.
So now I effectively pay three bucks a month for a VPN, and can find acceptable substitutes from, ...err, slightly shady parts of the Internet, any time I want. I even have pretty good luck watching my favorite sports team after a five year break when Dish dropped my regional sports network. I was already paying for my DSL, and although it's not as speedy as cable, it's ...not cable. And I'm saving a grand a year.
Cable and satellite providers are in a death spiral. They keep raising rates, because of the shrinking customer base. Which only forces more customers to flee.
And let's not forget the unexpected results from the cutover to digital OTA TV. I believe that the cable companies really screwed the pooch by not realizing the impact of digital TV will have on their business. One thing I did was pick up a cheap HDTV antenna from Wally World, and 30 miles from the city it can pick up all but two local channels (that was mostly an academic purchase, out of curiosity, since there's not really much to watch anyway). Both of my neighbors also have an HD antenna stuck to their windows. Many of my acquaintances in the city also dropped cable, and simply attached an HD antenna, and get their local channels in crystal clear HD OTA, and resort to Kodi+VPN for the rest.
Reading books. Mostly, paper ones.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Cable sucks. At one point, you could mindlessly flip through channels till you found something that sparked your interest. That no longer works since each channel take so long to load. Channels also got greedy. They applied for and received layers of subchannels which were subsequently filled with inane crap nobody wanted but were forced to purchase because the desirable content keeps being locked away further and further up the chain. End result: Hundreds of channels that are utter crap blocking you from the few shows of interest.
For anyone out there who hasn't got the newsflash: OTA digital works great. You get your local channels for free and there's a good chance that the picture quality is better than cable. You can build your own OTA antenna, (instructions all over the internet) or just buy one from the dollar store. If you're feeling particularly rich, Best Buy has them for anywhere from $20-$100. Even if you have no intention of cancelling cable, you should still get one for those times the cable is out.
Alwin was endorsing government ownership. That's far from deregulation.