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."

Comments

They raised my bill to $80/mo

[rsilvergun]

metered. I managed to get a deal on "business" class for $100/mo to go unmetered, but eventually they'll get wise to that and I'll have to pay $140+/mo.

They're well aware we're cutting the cords. If anything they like it. Right now they have to pay each and every channel to run them. With cord cutters I pay $100+/mo for the line and then $70/mo for all my services. Worst case they break even and best case best case they come out ahead. Internet is cheap to provide.

Re:What's a TV?

[Mr D from 63]

I have never heard of this device. Someone explain?

Its like a really large tablet you hang on your wall. Multiple people can use it simultaneously.

Re:Still about the last mile

[Alwin Henseler]

Then vote politicians in office that put that last mile under state or municipal control. So that people can be wired up @ reasonable prices. Then make the commercial competition a thing of what happens on the other end, on those wires. Infrastructure under people's control, content provided over that infrastructure = competition among commercial parties.

Oh US... politics crazy, you're fucked LOL

Nobody but themselves to blame

[mrsam]

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.

Re:Content Owner Suicide

[DickBreath]

Advertising is partly to blame.

Advertising kills every medium that it has ever come into contact with. And now the web too.

Just think about Cable TV. It's partly the cable channel's fault, and partly advertising.

Originally the premise of cable was that you wouldn't get ads because you were paying. Yeah, right.

But the ads weren't too long or too bad. Those were the daze.

By the 1990s at least the ads paid for good cable content. Good documentaries. Good entertainment. Etc.

Then came: Reality TV.

Reality TV is cheap to make. Entertaining, at first, purely because of shock value. But it gets old quick. If you don't watch Reality TV then your alternative is reruns of old cable TV content, and "marathons" of reruns.

Then the content got shorter and the ads got longer. Oh, and remember when the volume level of ads was twice that of the content?

Now you get all ads, punctuated by some content that is probably not worth watching, and then when the long string of ads are over, there are bugs, and animated characters crawling and walking out right over the top of the content you're trying to watch!

Gee, and they wonder why people are cutting the cable TV cord?

Re:Still about the last mile

[jeff4747]

Ya might wanna google "Natural Monopoly" before thinking you can deregulate your way out of the last mile problem.