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AT&T, Dish, Comcast All Raising Cable TV Rates To Counter Cord-Cutting (dallasnews.com)
AT&T's DirecTV, Dish, and Comcast are all planning to raise their rates again in the new year, "a move that could boost revenue but risks alienating subscribers who have been ditching their traditional TV subscriptions in record numbers," reports Dallas News. From the report: Cable and satellite providers are hoping to squeeze more money from consumers who remain loyal to their packages with hundreds of channels, Philip Cusick, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst, said in a note this week, even though "this strategy could accelerate video sub declines." The latest price increases come as cord-cutting accelerates. In the third quarter, the TV industry saw its largest ever rate of decline, with subscribers shrinking by 3.7 percent, according to MoffettNathanson LLC. Consumers are dropping traditional TV for lower-cost online options like Netflix Inc. and slimmer TV options from Hulu and YouTube.
DirecTV is raising rates on all English-language video packages by $3 to $8 a month while hiking fees for regional sports networks by $1 to $1.90 in most markets. Dish said it's increasing prices for English-language video packages by $3 to $5 a month. Altice USA, the fourth-largest cable operator, recently raised rates by 3 percent on Optimum subscribers. Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company, is raising its fee for regional sports networks by $1.50 on average and its fee for broadcast channels by $2 a month, according to Cusick. Charter Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. cable provider, recently boosted its monthly fee for a set-top box by about 50 cents and its broadcast channel fee by about $1. Charter operates as Spectrum in Dallas-Fort Worth.
DirecTV is raising rates on all English-language video packages by $3 to $8 a month while hiking fees for regional sports networks by $1 to $1.90 in most markets. Dish said it's increasing prices for English-language video packages by $3 to $5 a month. Altice USA, the fourth-largest cable operator, recently raised rates by 3 percent on Optimum subscribers. Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company, is raising its fee for regional sports networks by $1.50 on average and its fee for broadcast channels by $2 a month, according to Cusick. Charter Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. cable provider, recently boosted its monthly fee for a set-top box by about 50 cents and its broadcast channel fee by about $1. Charter operates as Spectrum in Dallas-Fort Worth.
A shame, but if they jack up my costs, I'll just pull the plug and get free HDTV from my HDTV antenna at 1080p resolution.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Great, this is excellent for short-term revenue, which is all that matters.
Next, more commercials should be added.
Selling more commercials will increase revenue
Revenue will be increased with more commercials
Increasing commercials will increase revenue.
the ratio is too small.
5 mins of content, should require 2 min of commercials.
And the same commercial should be repeated at least twice.
the rental fees should also be increased.
also , pay per view fees should be increased.
people should be required to rent the cable box, the cable card, and the remote control, and the batteries for the remote. only authorized batteries should be able to be used.
heck, the tv should be rented as well, and should have a camera installed to ensure only authorized people watch, to prevent sharing.
Gotch ur buggy whips, Get your buggy whips here
You can buy a nice antenna.
If you want more content, you can get the slingtv app for way less than probably basic cable in your area.
You can toss in Netfltx and Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
The break even point is about 2 months of cable for all of the above.
I shudder to think what the last person on cable tv will be getting charged to mae up for all the cord-cutters.
Shouldn't they be raising Internet rates instead, since Internet service is needed by cord-cutters too? The other fees are avoided by cancelling cable.
Goddamnit man... lol
[($)]
My U-Verse TV series gives me the benefit of unlimited Internet data usage. If I cancel the cable, I will have a data cap. Weasley shits.
As amusing as I find it that they're giving the middle finger to the basic laws of "supply and demand", by raising the price of services which are seeing diminishing demand, it will cease to be amusing once they start jacking up internet service costs.
I'm already paying $50/mo for crappy internet-only service, which barely works most of the time. There's no other choice of land line ISP where I live, either. Yay capitalism, I suppose.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
We have switched to YouTube TV. Not all of the channels, but enough. Local channels, bunch of news. Unlimited cloud based program storage (9 months). Sports channels (not a big concern but I watch some football, US and the rest of the world's definition, no Fox Sports for hockey though, dab-nab-it!).
$40 per month. We have cable internet through Charter (supposedly unlimited, hasn't been an issue)..
Combined with Netlfix (Bandersnatch!!!! we have 2 endings left and will cheat to find them) and Amazon Prime (already paid for), everything from the Roku, it works.
Going to get HBO Go for a short time to watch Game of Thrones.
BlameBillCosby.com
Exec: Customers are leaving... why?
Marketing: They don't see the value in our service!
Exec: Let's raise the prices!
Marketing: What???
Exec: It ain't cheap if it's valuable! Double the price, double the valuable!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Networks tried to have things like sportsball and hockey, only on exclusive networks.
there is only so much money people will pay to see sportsball, and even hockey.
not everyone watches sportsball, or hockey.
and I can get news from anywhere.
with the money I save cutting cable, I can even watch a sportsball or hockey game live, and even have a few beers to make it watchable.
Oh look profits are down and customers are down, so lets increase prices!!!
Result: even more customers leave.
Nothing better for retaining your customers when they are already leaving in trove for cheaper alternatives, than raising prices.
I recently discovered this site and it makes wading through all the choices so much easier.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Has any industry ever pulled out of a dip in demand by raising costs?
Then I can cut the last cord.
Come to think of it, I can probably make do with 4G.
Raising rates won't help the churn in customers, it most likely will increase it and those customers left will pay the price.
Great plan.
In order to keep prices down, we force everybody to subscribe. Our subsidy program involves about 8 hours of paperwork, and three more standing in line, but hey, that's how we do things!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Uhm, what? USPS First Class mail prices are regulated by the government. They cannot raise prices without regulatory approval. And last time I checked, most Post Offices are falling apart, yet you make it sound like they're a bunch of fat cats living the sweet postage life.
Falling demand? HA! We'll raise prices to fix that. With that mindset I suppose the last ICE-powered car will cost around 800 billion dollars. (From a new Tesla owner)
Heck you can get a good idea antenna for the price of a *single month* of cable. TV antennas are simple things, inexpensive to build. Especially if you're in the city, do you need a unidirectional antenna (a pole).. Basically what matters is that they are exactly the right size.
That, and if you're in the city, get a simple unidirectional antenna; if you're far from the city get one that you can point toward the city.
Now I get why my Comcast bill (back in the days when I still used cable) kept increasing every months - it's all those cord cutters reducing the num_of_subscribers in the formula!
I wonder how long before they hit Division By Zero exception?
It really surprised me how many channels you can get with an antenna. Something like 40-60 here in Dallas. Growing up, there were four.
How many of those cable providers have a stake in Hulu, CBS All Access, etc already? This will further drive more consumers into the online streaming only services, which will get you fewer channels, and fewer choice in how to consume content. At least Star Trek: Discovery got released on DVD/Bluray now.
Here's the thing: In the United States, cable companies are regulated federally. The cable box they rent out to you is *federally mandated* to use the same crypto card (cable card) that other devices like TiVos and some TVs have built in.
Basically right now you can pay $160/month for phone+cable TV+internet and get an asston of TV channels, maybe 5% of which you watch religiously, and maybe an additional 20% that you watch infrequently. You benefit from this _some_ because the cable companies are merely distributors of premium content (e.g. HBO, Showtime, etc) and "extended digital basic" content (e.g. Discovery, History, Cartoon Network, ABC Family); and up until Netflix was streaming more content than shipping discs around everyone was clamoring for Cable TV a-la-carte.
The reality is, we've got it now with CBS All Access, NetFlix, Hulu Originals, YouTube Originals, but ... the negotiation power of having 2.1M subscribers as a distribution company is lost, and consumers will (or already are) paying more for content a-la-carte.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Executive A: A lot of our customers are cancelling their subscriptions. What should we do?
Executive B: Raise the price on the remaining customers!
All: Great idea! Yeah!
How does this compute in any way shape or form?
Well, a pole does point in one direction. It points up, typically.
[runs off, cackling]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Other people don't want our service, so we'll charge you more. That will definitely make you want to stay with us...
Is this from Retard Marketing 101, or the new book How To Drive Away Customers?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Prices will increase until the cord cutting stops!
The lowest cost for a letter from the USPS is under $.50 while UPS/Fedex is over $1.00.
You're most likely a Conservative/Libertard. You have no legitimate criticism, you just trash the government because you can. You hate it when the government works. Hating the government is a stand in for hating the US. You're anti-American.
Why is Snark Required?
Nobody cares.
I would think it would do just the opposite.
before they "counter cord-cutting" themselves right out of business?
It's just another example of the lack of a "free market" in the US. Our economic life is dominated by entrenched special interests.
Why is Snark Required?
Wow. We're only 1 week into 2019 and cable providers are already gunning for the "Stupidest Business Move of the Year" award. The most common-sense response to when you're losing paying customers in droves would be to either reduce prices or to increase value to current customers and have more enticing offers for first-time customers. But nope, they're going to shoot themselves in the foot instead and *raise* prices. Keep this up guys, and your shareholders will be the next ones looking for the exit door.
So people are cord cutting, for stated reasons of high cost, lack of choice, and terrible customer service, and vendors are responding by *raising* rates. Do they really think this is a solution? Or just a temporary reprieve while they start shutting down branch offices?
Or maybe they think this cord cutting is just a fad, and viewers will come back with tails between legs later?
Or maybe vendors have something up their odious sleeves -- the next step being, to stop providing internet-only options? If you want internet, you *must* also subscribe to cable?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The cable companies are well and truly screwed. Caught up in a wave of cord cutting they are at the very same time beholden to shareholders that can't see past the next quarterly earnings report. If they drop prices to try and attract new customers (or stop the bleeding of those leaving) their revenue will drop in the short term and the shareholders are pissed. Not to mention that senior executives hold a lot of stock and will also feel the pain.
So the easiest thing to do in the short term is raise prices to increase revenue. The danger, of course, is that they will piss off even more customers and further accelerate the cord cutting. They are banking on the fact that some people are simply addicted to cable and won't leave no matter how much they charge. The number of people in this group is probably vastly overestimated by the cable companies. I suspect it's in the 10-20% range. A perhaps equal number of people are on the fence and a price increase will force their hand.
What is really working against the cable companies is that not only are there viable alternatives - those alternates are cheaper and better than the slop they are serving up currently. Couple that with the traditional horrendous customer service that the cables companies have, um, earned and you have a recipe for disaster.
Mail volumes haven't dropped because of the raise in prices. They've dropped because of technology. The drop in mail volume and requirements for the pensions is driving the rise in stamp prices.
> [...] Raising Cable TV Rates To Counter Cord-Cutting
Wow. Clearly they have no idea *why* cord-cutting is even taking place.
Well, they can take that cord and hang themselves with it. Hopefully the price increase will accelerate the cord-cutting further. Their demise can't come soon enough.
Other channels have done similar idiotic things. Viewership is down so they just add more commercial time into programs. I've seen half hour shows that now take 36 minutes. They were already running 21 minutes of show to 9 minutes of commercials. Now add six minutes onto that.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
But then again you haven't a clue what any of the terms mean. Just what Fox told you.
Since when does raising their rates discourage cord cutting? That only makes people more likely to cut the cord. Real smart move. They must have the intelligence of slugs.
Cable companies are increasing prices to maintain revenue growth, not to counter cord-cutting (the title is illogical), and they can do it because TV is mostly price inelastic. Consider the markets Cable companies are in:
TV - Mature, saturated, declining
Landline Internet - Mature, saturated (as far as they are concerned), declining slightly (and possibly declining significantly if 5G can provide 20-100 Mbps fixed Internet for good prices)
Landline Phone - Mature, saturated, declining
Mobile Phone - Mature, mostly saturated
No real competition; in some cases single companies have monopolies over local territory like counties; elsewhere there's a choice of just 2 companies, so an oligopoly situation where 2 choices have 100% of the market.
All those declining markets means one thing: cable companies have a hard time keeping revenue positive and keeping shareholders happy. Their solution? Increase prices on their services; in Canada in particular, they increase the price of TV and Internet every single year. They have wireless "sub brands" that charge $45 for a plan that the "premium brand" service charges $85/mo for. In short: the cable companies want to keep increasing revenue and 2% per quarter isn't good enough, so they are gouging people who won't abandon these services, and they have so little competition they can get away with it. If people want to solve this issue, I recommend making the jump to competitive services, such as online streaming, smaller Internet providers, and also writing to their elected representatives. Big Cable and Phone has a stranglehold on communication services and is doing everything to keep them priced at ridiculously high levels relative to many other markets (Europe being a perfect example). We get much less value from these companies than we should be. And without government intervention and active, vocal consumers the price of cable will continue to rise.
Cord cutting will increase until price increases stop
WTF, So the cable companies are too stupid to understand that we DO NOT want to pay so much for TV with a 1000 commercials! The commercials have gotten out of control, and on top of that now they play the beginning of the TV show with the end of the last show together in boxes, just so they can show more commercials. On top of that you get these nearly 1/4 screen bottom banners with even more commercials and if the show you are watch has subtitles you are screwed! NetFlix and others have found that a fair price to have content on demand is very popular without commercials, but the cable companies want to price themselves out of business. What kind of stupid company thinks "Hey if we raise the prices we will get more subscribers!" " We will just keep raising the rates and ram TV down their throats." All they are doing is forcing hold outs to be cord-cutters! Cable companies need to be very careful in their safe markets where they are the only game in town for Internet, 5G is coming and these new companies that are running their own fiber are now going to take away the $150 a month for internet ONLY customers. I had a door hanger the other day saying 1GB fiber to your door 4K streaming ready: $500 install $75 a month no data caps. Hummmm that is sounding very good!
It is clear satellite and cable companies know they are in a very short term environment. They know they have no or at least very much less profitable futures ahead. Internet delivery can make video delivery into a competitive buisness.
The greed of the pay television industry will be its undoing. Mark my words .... they should be reducing prices to try to attract and retain customers, not raising prices. It will be funny when they all start bleeding money like a stuck pig.
Yeah my brain was ahead of my typing. I was going to say in the city get omnidirectional, if you're further out get a unidirectional such as a log-periodic (often combined with a yagi).
Then point being you don't need to spend a ton of money.
Obviously exceptional circumstances exist - being very far from a city, or halfway between broadcast markets, where you might use an antenna rotator.
When I was a kid, if my brother and I were fighting over the TV station, I'd switch check it to Univision and hide the knob. I would pretend to be enjoying it.
I'm not sure why my brother never questioned the fact that I *only* claimed to know Spanish when watching TV. He never hears me speak any Spanish when we were kids. These days I know enough to have a conversation, and to order fried dads because I confuse papas and papa`s. (Best I can write it without UTF16 support).
They'll badger you by letter and eternally send out "Will you be in on Wednesday? We have authorised a checkup" but never bother to come. And if they do, you can just tell them to come back with a warrant.
With the three remaining subscribers who forgot they have cable.
just wait for internet to come forced with ESPN / Disney fees.
Seeing how must of the big ISP's also have TV this can happen and who will want to be first TV system with no Disney, No ABC, No ESPN?
canada has Pick-and-pay TV system with basic max price and is most cases YOU CAN BUY THE BOX with outwith outlet or mirroring fees.
Will you pay $70/mo for internet + $50/mo unlimited with out an cable tv sub?
Or pay $299/mo + $1000 install for 2G/2G + $15-20/mo forced hardware rent (no caps) with out an tv plan limed areas can get this.
..until morale improves!
I used to have DirecTV back in the 2000s. I actually liked their service. I paid a lot of money each month for HDTV service since that was the new thing back then.
But then in 2007 when I sold my house and could not get satellite service at the apartment I moved into because it faced north, I dropped DirecTV. But then for more than a year, DirecTV kept harassing me with paper advertisements addressed to me through the postal mail. I called DirecTV repeatedly to ask them to stop. They kept refusing. At one point, a DirecTV moron even told me it was the post office's fault and that DirecTV could not stop sending their own advertisements even if they wanted to! Bullshit.
After my apartment lease was up, I moved out of state. DirecTV ads to me finally stopped. I never bought DirecTV service again. Now I tell people to avoid DirecTV at all costs.
And I actually *liked* their service.
The very first class you take in Economics in school will explain, very simply, that increasing the price will reduce demand.
If they are trying to fight against cord cutters, then surely the correct way is to increase demand on their own services. This can be done in a number of ways, one of which is REDUCING the price. The other is to pump some money into improving the product at the current price (i.e. give people what they want, not what you want to give them).
They are basically just slitting their own throats here, and will cause more people to cord cut. Those people who can't or won't (probably the elderly) are left to suffer with crippling rates that they struggle to pay.
I suppose, however, this sort of behaviour will just lead to the company ultimately failing and going bankrupt. And for some of these companies, that can only be a good thing...
Maybe it is time to cut down on the ridiculous salaries for actors and athletes?
Unless of course, the remaining subscribers think that it is still a good deal.
L'Idiot
I have successfully converted 6 people to Firestick 4K w/ Netflix, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Pluto.TV, and Mobdro. Customers are very happy. And I plan to buy more sticks and give them away to even more people locally soon.
Opposition to the government is what made USA. Founding fathers, revolutionaries, did not like British king and associated governance. This is what made America. Sorry to say, you are not correct. Criticizing the government is as American as American apple pie.
Aren't the cable companies the same ones who also provide internet? You probably get them in a bundle, TV + Internet. (don't know, i'm not based in US, but it's how it works where i live)
Anyway, perhaps they actually want everybody to 'cut the cable', and have all the people on Internet instead. I recon it would be better for them.
And since you don't have net neutrality anymore, well, you can connect the dots, but let's just say this can end up being way more costly for you if you want to watch TV over internet compared to cable now ($8/month is nothing!).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Raising fees will increase the number of cord cutters and will reduce the number of subscribers. Because of the reduced number of subscribers they will raise cable prices again, which will further reduce the number of subscribers. It is not simple, but Comcast knows what will happen when their prices, guaranteed. They simply ride the wave of squeezing most of the revenues from the people who would not cut the cord and switching to other revenue sources at that time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
monopolies are illegal too. As is copyright abuse. Those are done, however, so will piracy.
I get what you're saying, but there's nothing immoral about piracy given both the current pre-existing illegality of copyright cartels' abuse and the abuse of a market that copyright is. Better you can pirate something then just delete it when you've done watching. Treat "piracy" like a rental service or streaming service, where you get the item for a limited time.
It's the only method the market has to give a protest to the price offered in a monopoly of copyrights.
Opposition to the government is what made USA. Founding fathers, revolutionaries, did not like British king and associated governance.
That's not hating the government, that's hating a government. specifically one where they felt they were no longer represented. The colonies, and the founding fathers, would have been perfectly content simply having representation in the UK government(the US would still eventually have gotten independence, just as every other British colony did). It was only when every available recourse failed that revolution became an option.
So, the US was built on trying to go to every length possible to try and preserve government. To use reason, civil discourse, and legal means to redress grievances and maintain peace. For as the Declaration of Independence says, "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Cable is best regulated at the local level, by small towns and townships, with elected officials who actually live and work in your community rather than career politicians who are owned by lobbyists. Since its a natural monopoly or duopoly, the market really does not work on it which is why we see these kinds of behaviours. Markets work, but you need many market participants to ensure that it works, and with that, it will work better than any monopoly or state run system ever would. There are only a few areas of the economy where there is a public utility or a natural monopoly where markets do not work well, markets clearly work the best for most things, so cut out the socialist nonsense that Cable TV is a market because the cable TV does not work like a market is unlike most of the economy due to it being a natural monopoly. A lot of this is discussed in older pre 2000s non-marxist Economics textbook such as Samuelson.
Since its a natural monopoly, I think the idea of a municipal owned broadband service is a fine idea, this could then provide 'bare internet IP service' and completely exclude a TV bundle. People could then purchase their TV programming from the IPtv services. the internet connectivity would be superfast because the entire broadband capacity could be dedicated to IP. One way it can be done is through community owned co-ops.
Because of the way that FCC does spectrum auctions, its really the same kind of a situation because huge blocks of spectrum are controlled by a small number of companies so basically its a federally created multiopoly.
5G should be devastating for cable TV companies and actually could make things quite a big worse for these reasons, Wireless will nickle and dime people in same way as Cable TV the same way because that they are nearly immune to market pressure, they are a few large players and the large players with a wink and a nod sort of know they dont want to price war with each other. Even worse, they are completely outside the franchise authority of local communities which is the best way to keep Cable TV in check.
5G will also be devastating for your health and should not be allowed at all, due to the intense radiation this will entail and the environmental damage. Elon Musk wishes to launch thousands of 5G satellites, each launch results in damage to the ozone layer. The 5G satellites will beam intense radiation targeting users of 5G devices. While not ionizing, scientific data has shown that the notion that non-ionizing radiation is always safe to be an egregious myth peddled by the industry. For example, UV is not ionizing, so why do you hear it often said to avoif excessive sun? Because thermal damage also is damaging so the damage from 5G can come from thermal effects, and also it could induce electrical currents as well. In my view 5G technology should be banned so further safety longitudinal studies can be done on the safety of this technology by disinterested parties out of the precautionary principle.
"Additionally the USPS is required by federal law to provide service to everyone in the United States. The can't withhold service except for specific reasons, such as dog attacks."
You'd better tell the postal service about that, then. They don't deliver to my address, or several other addresses where I live at the end of my 7.57 mile road, even though they are literally at the other end of it. I don't think you know what you're talking about. They literally won't even come out as far as the pavement.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The article is just plain wrong as to the reason. Cable companies can't raise rates but one time a year. The reason it goes up every year is that every time contracts have to be renegotiated with the content providers they raise their rates. It funny how no one bothers to really find out why they go up. The company I work for is considering dropping video completely. The local TV stations are the worst. They charge us to carry their stations that we have no choice but to carry them. At the same time we do that they still have ads on their stations. We drop video and we will actually save money in the long run. No more theft of service means we have fewer problems with ingress noise on our plant. Reduced RF flowing through our plant further eliminates noise that causes problems with the plant. Increased channel space means we can use that part of the spectrum for increasing speeds. When that happens get ready to pay more for content since we will just be transport and you will be dealing with multiple content providers eager to make up the loss of revenue.
Neither Sling Blue nor Sling Orange nor the News add-on appears to offer either of the two channels that my roommate actually watches: MSNBC and C-SPAN. The Rachel Maddow Show and Washington Journal respectively are her two biggest excuses to keep cable TV.
Also, the only reason that the USPS is experiencing financial difficulty is that it is forced to finance pensions far further out than anyone else. This was done by Republicans to intentionally sabotage the USPS and make UPS/FedEx look like viable alternatives.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Until they jack up the Internet access costs to cover people getting just internet and subscribing to streaming services...
And these days, most content makes it to DVD eventually.
Except sports and political talk shows. Or do only addicts ever watch those in the first place?
You don't know much about the history of the USPS.
Ditched DishTV over 5 years ago, haven't regretted it. OTA antenna isn't an option, TV stations too far away and hills in between. But what can you really watch on those OTA channels ? Reruns ?
Now, I watch any show, movie w/o commercials off the internet whenever I want, including any live sports ! My one extra cost is Netflix @ $10/ month.
Its not like this has been happening every year for the past 20 years. Oh wait...it has. People need to learn how this shit works before making garbage stories like this. The profit for TV re-broadcasters has been slimming down every single year, the people raising the rates are the networks every year.
I used to have cable. I was spending something like $300/month. The set-top boxes, the premium channels (because the regular channels were all "reality tv"), all the fees...
Internet alone, on FIOS, is $40/month + fees. Netflix is $8.55/month. Something like an OBi202 2-Line Voice-over-IP Phone Adapter was just on sale for $44. (Now $70.) That's a one time fee, with free (no monthly fee) incoming & outgoing phone calls via Google Voice. (Setup video.)
I mean we're talking about a price difference that lets me buy a brand new top of the line MacBook every year, with change left over.
All I can figure is that must be one hell of an expensive antenna you're talking about! Does it come with land & a 1000 foot tower?
I picked up an RCA ANT3038XR for under $130 inc. shipping, took an hour to assemble, is enormous... and gets 80 channels.
Yup, most OTA is not of interest, but sometimes it's fun to observe the selective opinion masquesrading as news.
Also... the Channelmaster DVR is not free to buy, but there's no program guide subscription, and it's easy enough to set up to record half an hour on news every day that you can watch anytime or ignore at your convenience.
It is also what made America have the highest poverty rates in the developed world.
Additionally the USPS is required by federal law to provide service to everyone in the United States. The can't withhold service except for specific reasons, such as dog attacks. UPS/Fedex/etc have no requirements to provide service to any location. If you're too far off the beaten track they can ignore you or charge as much as they want. It's not a level playing field.
I would totally support regulations to level the playing field. The USPS yearly revenue is usually between $60-70 billion. Simply require any delivery company competing with the USPS (accounting for any related subsidiaries/contractors to avoid stupid games) making 80% or more of the USPS's yearly revenue to deliver to any address that the USPS does, with rates defined by package size/weight instead of delivery location.
(UPS and FedEx are currently around $75B and $65B respectively, so they have no excuses for not being able to provide similar service/pricing to USPS, other than wanting more profit)
Ugh . I see your retarded semantic counter argument and raise you one:
The post office does not withhold service for dog attacks (or even personal attacks) nor living down a 7.57 mile road. The USPS still serves you. There is a physical post office you can go to in both cases and retrieve your mail. That's not true with FedEx.
Yes, they have FedEx business centers where that can occur, but like their delivery service they cherry pick where those places go and put them in profitable locations. The USPS doesn't have that option.
I was with you up to libertard/conservative, which I am myself.
People might find it informative that unlike every other business - and the government itself - the post office pension fund must be fully funded at all times, which is a huge cost most others defer while hoping for the best.
Of course, by the time I'm proved right, you'll have forgotten an AC who told you a very important message about nearly every pension fund in the US and elsewhere being about to go utterly broke, ask for federal handouts of fresh printed money that will render the money itself worthless...and bring on the hard times. Look Calpers, Illinois, and a few other states...some are bankrupt now on paper, and when the future obligations kick in they'll swamp the entire state budget if they are honored. Check for yourself.
That's what a true conservative does (not the new right wing nut redefinition). Don't believe me, find out on your own. Real conservatives spend less than they make, look before they leap - and aren't pro war always and everywhere.
Remember Lemonade Stand game in elementary school?
"People are leaving because your price is too high"
*raise prices*
*business fail hard*
"Wha happen?"
There is a physical post office you can go to in both cases and retrieve your mail.
Yes, I have to go get it, and then I have to pay for the privilege (on a monthly basis.) How wonderful! Even more wonderful, they photograph flats but not packages, so I never know when I really want to go in!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
so, in effect, they are accelerating cord cutting through their own actions. What fucking morons.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
Before the economic meltdown circa-2008, were making decisions that were just as boneheaded.
"Sales numbers are slipping. Why not try something new like one of the concepts we've had on the shelf for years?"
"Oh sweet summer child. We're going to give the world what it really needs: Another front-wheel-drive, V6, four-door sedan."
"What the fuck? That's what we've been doing for the past ten years."
"You're not paid to think. Our focus groups consisting of boring soccer moms and cubicle droids know what they want."
"Why not cater to customers who aren't boring?"
"Good idea! We'll change the body panels a bit, slap on some chrome, sell it under our premium brand, and double the price."
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Customers are leaving in droves, so punish those who stay.
If they were ever going to figure this out, they'd have done it by now. A five-year-old could have told them that.
You hit on the key, and fear, of cable tv providers: They're petrified of becoming just data pipe providers.
To get any kind of incremental, or additional/up-sell/usage-based income, they'd have to impose data caps that aren't otherwise in place or needed today. People will see it for exactly what it is - monopolies taking direct advantage of their position to price fix in order to generate additional profit. Hopefully that will equally get their hand slapped or the monopolies broken somehow.
The other risk, with net neutrality dead, is they start charging data fees specific to applications. Which, while also scummy and obviously a revenue generation scam, more aligns with the actions of the politicians that the telecom industry bought lately.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Every company that has pension liability should be paying into its employee pension funds in a manner that will not cause them to default. Congress has a particular interest in entities like the USPS because in the case of default it is reasonable to suppose they will be pressured to use taxpayer money to make up for that pension money the USPS didn't properly put aside.
This is the reason private companies have dumped pension plans for matching contributions to employee funded pensions. Since the USPS is prevented from doing that by law and union contracts it is only reasonable that they be forced to meet their pension liabilities by contributing to the pension plan of their employees.
The fact that other entities are badly managed is not a reason that USPS should be allowed to offload that liability on the taxpayers.
Have you thought it might be your personal hygiene? What kind of soap do you use?
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
This is what they believe will solve their problems? "People are unsubscribing in droves! Quick let's jack up the pricing so people will come back!" Even small discounts would save them more subscribers than this. They're playing the drums in their own death march.
Once read about three paragraphs of Portuguese before I realized i wasn't reading a dialect of Spanish. If you already know Portuguese reasonably well, you can pick up Spanish easily.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more viewers will slip through your fingers."
Canada tried this in some markets and then people mailed HDD's. :P
Maybe mschaffer was looking the prices from the perspective of a company making a mass posting or delivery contract with USPS. Assuming the USPS is allowed to compete in that market.
Maybe the cable companies figure they offer a Veblen Good or a Giffen Good.
That's interesting. I've only read Portuguese (getting the gist of what is written); I wasn't aware the pronunciation is so different.
So now rising cable & satellite TV bills are "News for nerds, Stuff that matters"?
What's next - rising gas prices?
Ken
No fucker. We are bitching because you want to keep using that busted ass clock instead of throwing the piece of shit in the garbage where it belongs. We want to know the time, but can't because it's wrong, but you just say "use the clock we have, it's right over there". Again, no fucker, buy/build a new fucking clock. I even tried to build a new one myself, and you wouldn't let me. You WANT that broken clock there.
Fuck yo clock, nigga!
Reminds me of this one time I put cyanide on the pizza and pretended like I loved being starved of oxygen so that nobody else would eat it. Unfortunately Little Joe thought I was bluffing, so his last meal came with a healthy dose of crow.
Perhaps you were missing an ingredient. Did you try putting both cyanide and happiness on the pizza?
When was the last time they were denied a rate request? Besides, the approval comes from a quasi-government agency, the Postal Regulatory Commission. It exists outside the federal executive departments. As such, they are independent and have little accountability (similar to the Federal Reserve).
Incidentally, they just approved the largest-ever price increase for the cost of a stamp: 10 percent. Rates are supposed to be below inflation rates, yet, after the last rate increase in January of 2018 the average inflation rate was around 2.44% (based on the CPI).
Your argument is that the government is perfect because it exists, and any criticism is unacceptable. That kind of parochial bullshit is why the Church is able to get away with buggering boys. Using logic similar to your own would be to express the idea that supporting the government is tacit acceptance of anything Donald Trump does or will do while he is president. Therefore you must be one of those MAGA morons.