Another 1.2 Million Consumers Ditched Traditional Cable TV Last Quarter
from the evolutionary-inevitability dept
Surprising nobody, the traditional cable TV industry lost another 1.2 million paying subscribers last quarter as users flee to other alternatives. Largely those alternatives consist of streaming video services that are cheaper, more flexible, and feature better customer service. Many others are rediscovering free over the air broadcasts. Others have simply shifted away from TV entirely, choosing to embrace YouTube or TikTok.
According to Leichtman Research, the top cable companies lost 587,649 customers in just the last quarter, compared to 698,000 for telco and satellite providers. Over the last year, traditional pay TV providers saw a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,460,000 over the year prior (impressive for a trend that the industry spent years pretending wasn’t actually happening). Fortunately for the industry, the cord cutting revolution appears to be slowing somewhat:
“Pay-TV net losses of 1,230,000 in 2Q 2021 were about 275,000 fewer than in 2Q 2020 on a pro forma basis,? said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. ?Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,460,000 over the prior year.”
While the rate of decline is slowing there’s still a lot of room to fall. The top traditional pay TV providers still serve roughly 77.6 million subscribers in the US, many of which stick around thanks to sports programming. As sports increasingly shifts away from traditional cable providers and toward streaming alternatives you can expect subscriber counts to follow suit.
Users continue to flee traditional cable for the usual reasons: high prices, terrible customer service, and bloated and inflexible cable channel bundles. There continues to be some headway in these arena by entrenched cable TV providers, but there’s a contingent of execs that simply refuse to seriously compete on price. In large part because many of these companies (Comcast) enjoy regional monopolies over broadband access, allowing them to squeeze those subscribers tighter than ever with bizarre fees and broadband usage caps and surcharges.
Meanwhile increased competition in the streaming TV space has also made things a bit rougher on sector leader Netflix as well, which has been bleeding subscribers in both the US and Canada thanks to growing new entrants like Disney Plus. All in all the shift away from dominant cable TV providers toward more flexible, cheaper alternatives and actual competition (instead of the “wink wink, nod nod” non-price competition we saw between satellite TV and traditional cable TV for years) continues to be a great thing.
Filed Under: cable, cable tv, cord cutting, internet, pay tv, streaming
Comments on “Another 1.2 Million Consumers Ditched Traditional Cable TV Last Quarter”
Any accompanying data on whether people are actually saving money or just getting fucked over by new companies and spending just as much if not more?
The type of competition that has been created is not competition around providing the best service. It’s about tightening their grip on their IP and spitefully starting their own streaming service so no one else can potentially make a single penny by providing access to their content under a licensing agreement.
And while you’re praising Disney’s streaming, you’re ignoring the fact they own ESPN. This is the single channel most responsible for driving up the cost of cable. Real heroic to profit off shitty cable business practices and also offer the alternative product.
Re: Re:
So in this short sentence fragment you’ve hit two separate problems. pretty impressive if you ask me.
First: I don’t see anything in the article that’s even remotely praising Disney’s streaming. I mean I guess you could consider acknowledging their existence to be praise. But I don’t. And I doubt most reasonable people do either.
Second: Even if such praise was in the article… is totally possible to praise someone for doing something correct, while still disapproving of other actions of theirs.
In summery: there appears to be no praise of Disney in the article, and even if there were, the thing you take issue with isn’t being address (and the article isn’t even about Disney). Maybe that is your real complaint? "Article not about company I want thrashed"?
Re: Re: Re:
Specifically pointing out a product and saying it is improving the marketplace would amount to praise in my book. I do not think ruining one marketplace and then making an additional product to capitalize on the people leaving that broken system has improved anything for consumers; the author seems to disagree.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
projection too strong, can’t see.
Re: Re:
"Any accompanying data on whether people are actually saving money"
Probably not, since that’s irrelevant and something the consumer has more power over. While saving money is a driving factor, it’s more about power and flexibility. You don’t have to pay a full cable package to support a bunch of channels you never watch, and if you need to subscribe to something for a specific show you can cancel it without penalty, and not be tied into anything past the current month.
There are people who pay as much or more than they did with a standard cable package, but that’s their choice, not because someone decided that if they want to watch their favourite programming, they have to pay for 80 religious and sports channels they will never look at.
"The type of competition that has been created is not competition around providing the best service"
Neither was cable.
"Real heroic"
Nobody except you has claimed they were.
Re: saving money
Had been on DirecTV for a few years as a cheaper alternative to the Comcast pricing at the time. That was before the AT&T acquisition and unending price increases. When the two-year ‘commitment’ expired last fall, jumped to the Disney bundle (toddler grandkids) and upgraded the Hulu service to their Live tier. Hulu Live is about 40% of what we were paying for satellite with the same channel lineup. We also get a discount on the Disney+.
We already had Netflix and we’re Amazon Prime customers, so we have no lack of available content.
Re: I happen to live in an area with actual ISP competition
Like millions of people, I work from home now so internet access is more of a work-related expense (and subsidized by my employer) than entertainment. Still, there should be more competition.
And my internet cost is well below what cable was when I dumped it, oh, about 10 years ago.
Re: Re:
Strawman argument is man made of straw. Red herring is smelly fish. Please start over and try again.
What is cable?
Wait, cable TV, was that AOL or Yahoo?
tv ditching...
just shows how big impact bible belt has on ordinary consumers….
Re: tv ditching...
Um, the South/Bible Belt is not the only region in the US that’s ditching cable. I live in NYC and people are ditching cable and satellite up here too (especially since a month’s rent up here will cost two arms and two legs). Saving money is popular throughout the entirety of the US; it’s practically the only thing all of us could ever agree upon.
Re: Re: tv ditching...
Did you expect Tero Pulkinnen to have any idea what he’s talking about, considering that he thinks copyright strength is based on the cost of development?
Re: Re: Re: tv ditching...
Touché.
Re: Re: Re: tv ditching...
Do you have better idea why companies like Oracle can ask for 2 billions damage awards, when small developers cannot get 10k awards pass the gate?
We haven’t heard your theory of why large companies are dreaming of billions while the rest of us can’t get thousands of dollars awards…
There must be some important reason for the difference. Otherwise everyone who created poems would be rich bastards.
Re: Re: Re:2 tv ditching...
You see, the problem here is that your dense mind has yet again looked at facts and come up with a fantasy explanation that doesn’t exist in the real world.
Oracle earn a lot more money than you do, therefore when trying to prove actual damages, they can get more money. Failures like yourself don’t get to claim billions, because you didn’t earn billions. However, the copyright that allows both of you to demand what you’re worth is the same, the only difference is your relative worthlessness.
"Otherwise everyone who created poems would be rich bastards."
Yes, and if poems generated the same amount of revenue as a massive global corporation that underpins a vast amount of industry, they could ask for the same amount of money as Oracle. The market for poetry is much smaller, though, so they can request less money. Assuming they get it, of course – something your oppressive fantasy version of copyright misses is that asking for money and getting it are not the same thing. You, Oracle or a poet could ask for billions, but a court would have to decide whether any of you actually get it. You making the request would not result in money paid, it would presumably result in a fit of laughter followed by the judge admonishing your lawyers for wasting his time, then you having to pay all the legal fees for the time you wasted.
Re: Re: Re:3 tv ditching...
If you’re asking for 2 billion bucks, there is implicit assumption that few thousand dollars of lawyer fees are not a significant problem and they can demand more accuracy from your lawyers, i.e. make them work overtime.
Re: Re: Re:4 tv ditching...
"If you’re asking for 2 billion bucks, there is implicit assumption that few thousand dollars of lawyer fees are not a significant problem"
Or, it’s an indication that your lawyers are intending to fleece you for every penny you have in the promise of riches, but knowing that you have to pay them even if you lose. You can ask for whatever you want, that doesn’t mean you get it. Your parents should have taught you this many years ago.
Re: Re: Re:5 tv ditching...
I get the feeling Pulkinnen’s parents have taught him anything many years ago. The way he acts, it’s like he’s desperately hoping for the RIAA/Oracle/copyright troll method of making money to trickle down to scale, and he’s confused, hurt and angry why it hasn’t worked out with him raking in the money he feels he’s entitled to.
Re: Re: Re:3 tv ditching...
I have received all the money that I have asked. I don’t ask too often, but there are instances where some idiots broke my bicycle and I had to buy new one. I could have asked for millions of emotional stress based compensation, but better way to actually get the money is via asking just the price of the new bicycle. The judges will immediately detect when the pattern is asking for the moon, or whether the plaintiff wants reasonable costs related to the damage suffered.
Also it seems that getting the money from the criminals is more difficult than expected. The lawyers and courts can just give recommendations for the criminals that they should pay these money amounts, but collecting the money with hound dogs is left to victim’s responsibility. I.e. the govt legal organisations are not helping with the money collection but the victims that are already scared of criminal’s knife-wielding buddies need to go beg for his money back from the scumbacks. These operations are often opposed by the crims and there wont be any money returned even after courts have decided the issue.
This is what you don’t understand. These sky-high damage awards are generally never paid because the victim’s hound dog isn’t mean enough to scare criminals into giving control of their valuable money.
Re: Re: Re:4 tv ditching...
"I have received all the money that I have asked"
Good for you. I assume in that case you weren’t stupid enough to ask for what you were actually worth.
" I could have asked for millions of emotional stress based compensation"
You could. Nobody would have given that to you, but you could have asked for it.
"These sky-high damage awards are generally never paid because the victim’s hound dog isn’t mean enough to scare criminals into giving control of their valuable money."
Or, because they don’t actually have the money in the first place. Despite the fantasies of people like you, you "losing" money through infringement doesn’t mean that the "pirates" made any money themselves. This is why intelligent people spend their time building business models that can weather some inevitable infringement, as every successful business model of the last few hundred years has done, instead of whining on the internet (using the free software you claim should be illegal) that incompetent unusable software doesn’t make the government buying you a mansion.
Re: Re: Re:5 tv ditching...
Well, the same principle works when dealing with government. If you ask for too much compensation, after the beancounters have calculated the real situation, you actually need to pay back the money they accidentally gave to you. This is why tapping to government’s money flow needs to be done very carefully. You wouldn’t want to be in situation where government is wanting millions of their tax money back after you spent it on marketing your creation.
This is why I’m only asking for reasonable sums of money. I.e. that government uses their resources to try the builder tool and create plans for the mansions. I don’t even ask for fully finished mansion, or president’s palace with all the expensive artworks. Instead I just ask that government is involved in creation of the mansion plans. Is this too much to ask?
Re: Re: Re:6 tv ditching...
The delusions certainly run strong…
"government uses their resources to try the builder tool and create plans for the mansions"
So, you’re saying that governments need to…. test random software and randomly hand out money to people who failed to sell to private customers, even if the reason they can’t sell their product is because they have made a demonstrably worse product than any competitor?
Sorry, I prefer the current system, where laughable failures don’t get free handouts for their incompetence. Tax money is better spent on things the public needs, not failures who come last place in their chosen marketplace because they are not good at their jobs.
Re: Re: Re:7 tv ditching...
Well, the alternative to this is that the product doesn’t exist at all. I think it’s big archiement that people can get a product done and available to customers. If customers reject it, then the quality needs to be improved — not throw the people who created it under the bus.
Everyone who created a web page has the same problem — there are already billions of web sites available on the internet, and another one has difficult time getting noticed from the flood of pages.
That isn’t the current system. When markets are rejecting a finished product, then government needs to step in and fix the onslaught. This means passing handouts to the people involved and possibly forwarding them to more profitable occupations.
Well, the system needs to handle failure statuses properly, given that over 90% of new startups are bankcrupt after 5 years of operation. meshpage has survived the first test because I rejected the loan money and invested my own money to get the product done. Now that the product is finished, markets are handling the product in inefficient way when there are no customers paying for the investments. Basically it’s waste of time when markets are working too slowly and are providing return on investment very inefficiently.
Re: Re: Re:8 tv ditching...
This would indeed be a big achievement if that’s what you actually did. What you did do is make a vanity project and remove the abilities to publish and make circles, citing the potential of copyright infringement as why you didn’t make the product usable by any stretch of the imagination. Your product is the equivalent of a toilet that doesn’t flush.
You get thrown under the bus because you constantly think the world owes you money for the most threadbare reasons, and express your anger when demanding that people compensate ridiculous copyright claims for equally ridiculous amounts. If you don’t want to be thrown under the bus, stop being such an unpleasant asshole.
You’re the one who chose to complain about your situation on Techdirt. On a website where copyright enforcement fans regularly claim is a small website that doesn’t get attention. Why the hell aren’t you promoting yourself on Reddit? A Google search shows that you did attempt this three to four years ago. Why didn’t you follow up there? Why continue harassing people here?
Actually, the point is that is the current system. If that wasn’t the current system, you wouldn’t be here bitching about it.
No, they don’t. Just because you dug a hole to bedrock in Minecraft and call that an elevator, the government isn’t going to give you money for it no matter how much you rage.
Not all business plans are successful. It’s not the government’s responsibility to make up for failed investments.
What first test? The fact that you chose to not rely on help from others isn’t a sign of legitimacy.
People aren’t paying for your software because no modeler, animator or game developer will pay for graphics software that doesn’t let them publish. Your "teleporting animations to the Internet" tech was nothing more than fanciful gloating because Tero Pulkinnen has no idea how the English language works.
You chose to advertise your "kid-friendly software" on one bus in London instead of marketing your tech to actual kids, and now you expect the government to give you money for your idiotic mistake. Screw that.
Re: Re: Re:9 tv ditching...
I didn’t remove ability to publish. It never existed. For simple reason that I don’t own a platform that has millions of end users like facebook or youtube or twitter. Basically this lack of ownership prevents me from providing good enough publishing platform. Hell, even Trump can’t get it to work, so what chance do some troll from finland have? Basically competing against popular publishing platforms is too big task for one person.
Yes, the torrentfreak is full of articles where some guy from brazil managed to get his site visited by millions of users. His income is hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, with expensive cars and helicopters available to him.. It’s just that the story always ends when they are sued by entertainment companies for large scale copyright infringement.
I figured I could do the same thing, but without the copyright infringement -part. Are you claiming that legal businesses are unable to do it?
well, I’m still working on the piping… Internet is built from pipes.
I didn’t even sue anyone yet.
Well, techdirt seems best place to complain for the following reasons:
1) techdirt people have significant copyright problems
2) all the dirt needs to be collected to a central place
3) because techdirt have seen all the dirt, they can dig out all the
failures and suggest improvements
I didn’t figure out how their system works. Basically my first post didn’t get any responses, and if they don’t respond (or even see the post), it’s worthless to post any more material to them. When they failed to respond to a first-post, they lost ability to use meshpage and the related technologies.
The govt already did give me tons of money. So your premise is wrong. But I just spent it on food stamps and it did only small contribution to the meshpage -project.
This means that one-person teams are completely unable to build graphics software. Basically the alternative would be to create automated scripts that posted spam to twitter and facebook, but unfortunately this would be illegal practise, violating laws against automated spamming operations. My position is that this automated spamming operations are only allowed if you own the platform. This means that one-person teams who are not owners of twitter, cannot allow customers the feature "let them publish"… It’s just illegal to provide that feature. And I obviously try to avoid such features.
They’re doing it all the time.
Re: Re: Re:10 tv ditching...
"Basically my first post didn’t get any responses, and if they don’t respond (or even see the post), it’s worthless to post any more material to them"
What’s really sad is that you recognise this, yet have come to the conclusion that the entire platform is worthless, not that your original post was worthless (in ways I’ve already detailed to you before).
This is your problem – you do things in the most hilarious wrong way possible, then instead of learning your mistakes you whine for years that your incompetence didn’t magically make money appear in your bank account.
Re: Re: Re:11 tv ditching.
When the community doesn’t notice when first-time posters try to get discussion ongoing, people will reject the platform. If that happens often, eventually their platform and community will suffer, when for example they don’t have access to technologies that those authors developed. In this recards, techdirt have been better platform than reddit, since they immediately recognized first-time posters and gave critique… bashing the newbies is simply better pattern than ignoring them completely.
There are better platforms available too, like stackexchange, where there is clear rules for how first-time posters need to be treated in the platform. The system marks first-time posters or newbies as such and recommends correct ways to communicate with them to keep them engaged and interested in the platform.
Re: Re: Re:12 tv ditch
"When the community doesn’t notice when first-time posters try to get discussion ongoing, people will reject the platform."
No, the platform will continue as one of the world’s most popular websites. What they will reject is your failed attempt at spamming a community you have not bothered to communicate with before or after your failed spam post.
Your laughable claims here about Reddit failing as a platform (430 million active users) would be more realistic if your proof was not that you tried a single post and failed to gain any interest, even if it wasn’t blatant commercial spam.
"for example they don’t have access to technologies that those authors developed"
https://github.com/reddit
Re: Re: Re:8 tv ditching...
"Well, the alternative to this is that the product doesn’t exist at all"
Indeed. History is full of failed products that no longer exist in the market. You have provided no reason as to why yours shouldn’t join them.
"Everyone who created a web page has the same problem — there are already billions of web sites available on the internet, and another one has difficult time getting noticed from the flood of pages."
Yes. Everybody has the right to publish, nobody has the right to an audience. You have to work at that part, and not everybody makes it. This is what the adult world is like.
"When markets are rejecting a finished product, then government needs to step in and fix the onslaught"
If the reason for that rejection is antitrust monopoly behaviour or illegal activity. Not because you tried to push a product for which there is no market.
"I rejected the loan money"
Why do I get the idea that you were rejected for not having a real business model, not that you were offered money and refused? I suspect that even if that claim is true, you rejected it because investors wanted to apply some kind of reasonable guarantee they’re get a return.
"no customers paying for the investments"
Investment doesn’t guarantee returns. The fact that your insane tiny mind doesn’t understand that does not mean you deserve a cent of taxpayer money.
Re: Re: Re:9 tv ditching...
Well, the situation is that the whole market is skewed. Basically the areas where the products like in the product state space is determined by the competence areas which they teach at universities. When the whole market is working without a penny of money, there’s systematic market failures, and significant problems for everyone who entered that market. Sadly this problem can only be seen once the product is ready, and there’s requirement to collect money from the market. Large scale market failures are causing significant problems. Once there’s such large problems, suing the parties that caused the market failure seems to be the only alternative.
Re: Re: Re:10 tv ditching...
"Basically the areas where the products like in the product state space is determined by the competence areas which they teach at universities."
So you agree – the reason you fail is because you’re incompetent.
Re: Re: Re:8 tv ditching...
"Well, the alternative to this is that the product doesn’t exist at all."
That’s also acceptable.
"When markets are rejecting a finished product, then government needs to step in and fix the onslaught"
No, they don’t. I’m sorry that you failed as a business, but when you decided to open your all bacon diner in the Jewish Quarter in an attempt to compete with popular existing franchises, the government doesn’t owe you anything for your bad business sense.
"Well, the system needs to handle failure statuses properly, given that over 90% of new startups are bankcrupt after 5 years of operation"
Which has been true since the concept of business was invented. It sucks to be one of the failures, but that is how life works.
Re: Re: Re:9 tv ditching...
Somehow macdonalds, burger king and wayne’s coffee are all avoiding the jewish quarter, and there is significant market opportunity in serving that part of the population.
Re: Re: Re:2 tv ditching...
Operating word being they ask for it. Copyright plaintiffs ask for two billion because 1) they’re assholes and 2) they think it looks good on their resume.
If you think your work with zero users and zero adoption rate by animation studios deserves two billion dollars, you’re more than welcome to hire lawyers and find a defendant capable of paying you that much money.
Go on. I dare you. Just be aware that you might not get what you asked for. Like Oracle.
Companies don’t need to dream anything. The fact that companies comprise hundreds, thousands of people means that they have the clout to ask for more money. Larger companies regularly deal with billions of dollars. Most individuals don’t. That’s a problem with the distribution of wealth, not copyright law.
Some are. A number of those "rich bastards" like Linda Ellis are also very aggressive when it comes to copyright law – which they also often don’t get enforced to the maximalist position you prefer. But again, if you want to sue someone claiming they damaged Meshpage for two billion dollars you’re more than welcome to try.
Re: Re: Re:3 tv ditching...
When I get older and teeth fall off, I can sue coca cola for their product. But this wouldn’t be based on copyright infringements.
Oracle is still in better position than meshpage for the following reasons:
1) google actually copied their code
2) oracle bought sun’s java technology, so they can claim ownership
3) both java and android are large scale software operations
4) google’s fair use arguments are completely crazy bullshit
When meshpage tried the same thing, the result would be:
1) noone copied the code since there’s no users
2) I can claim ownership of 95% of the codebase
3) there’s no users
4) the opponent’s fair use arguments still exists even though they’ve always been crazy bullshit
There are some theories that might work:
a) suing google’s youtube for unfair competition because it’s popular and contains large collection of copyrighted works
b) suing google’s adverticements for breaking the internet in such way that asking for money directly from users have not been developed properly, denying profit from indie authors
c) suing facebook for privacy (this would be classic)
d) suing facebook for leaking our phone numbers and email addresses to the spammers
e) suing coca cola for the sugar in the fizzy drinks, since teeth fall off too early
f) suing macdonalds for making people fat
g) suing sport vendors for forcing us to watch olympics from tv
h) suing Nike for cloned shoe models
Basically, the rest of the companies simply don’t have the cool billion bucks that I need.
Re: Re: Re:4 tv ditching...
"1) noone copied the code since there’s no users"
Irrelevant. Copyright infringement is infringement no matter how many users you have. The number of users would affect actual damages, but not whether infringement occurred. The fact that you hallucinated otherwise does not mean that the rest of the world needs to do anything else but laugh at you.
"a) suing google’s youtube for unfair competition because it’s popular and contains large collection of copyrighted works"
YouTube was launched in 2005 and bought by YouTube in 2006. According to your own copyright notice, meshpage was launched in 2013. If anyone can be sued just because they have a similar product as competition, you would be the defendant.
"b) suing google’s adverticements for breaking the internet in such way that asking for money directly from users have not been developed properly,"
The defence presents Patreon among the hundreds of other options that disprove this claim.
"Basically, the rest of the companies simply don’t have the cool billion bucks that I need."
Want. You have no need for the money, your greedy ass has just decided that you want it because other people who are not defined by their failure have made such profits.
Re: Re: Re:5 tv ditching...
unfair competition claim isn’t based on "similar product". It’s based on practices that makes youtube look like pirate site for ordinary users, since anyone can push pirated content to the site and they wont delete it before publishing it to wider world. Youtube originally was groundbreaking because it stretched the legal framework to areas which were considered illegal before DMCA. I.e. it’s a pirate site that adverticed itself as "platform for home videos"…
Re: Re: Re:6 tv ditching...
"Youtube originally was groundbreaking"
…nearly a full decade before you released your diseased mess to the world. Why did you do that if you couldn’t compete with them (or their many competitors, or the hundreds of other competitors you have depending on which market you’re claiming your atrocious mess belongs in today – is it game design, icon display, software for children? It’s hard to keep track with your claims. Maybe that’s why you fail – you can’t explain what that ugly shit you have on your webpage is supposed to achieve to begin with?).
Re: Re: Re:7 tv ditching...
I think it’s understandable failure if one person working alone cannot beat large company like google and the community of independent authors who created youtube.
On the other hand, google had to stop developing poly.google.com, which is direct competitor to my meshpage. So basically I’ve won large company like google, it just didn’t happen on their most popular youtube platform, but less well known poly.google platform.
Re: tv ditching...
I’d be interested to find out which specific hallucination is causing to you come up with your specific claims in this case, given that there’s nothing in the article that supports what you just decided was true.
Re: Re: tv ditching...
Well, the religious groups have been against televisions already in 1980s, so when you talk about cable cutting, the religious groups that want everyone to drop all technology and move to 1700s are the only people with consistent opinion that televisions need to be dropped. So I figured out that the cable cutting phenomenon is caused by too many religious nuts where you live…
Re: Re: Re: tv ditching...
You’re confused. The Pennsylvania Dutch, a.k.a. the Amish, are ideologically opposed to technology past the 1700’s. That being said, they keep to themselves and don’t impose their beliefs on others, so I have no problem with them.
There were also Televangelists, or TV preachers, in the 1980’s, but they were not so much anti-technology as using technology to get rich tax-free. See here.
I realize The US isn’t as advanced as Finland, but you can easily look this information up, thanks to Finns such as Linus Torvalds.
Re: Re: Re: tv ditching...
"So I figured out"
No, you didn’t. You made something up that’s not supported by any evidence in this article or the hundreds of others on this subject, and which makes zero sense compared to the actual reason s already discussed.
Par for the course with you, but dealing with documented reality is something you’re be better off dealing with occasionally. In the reality the rest of us are living in, there’s no indication that this is anything other than a combination of competition, flexibility, price and value, which are not things that only appeal to consumers in one area.
Revenuers
Meanwhile, Big Data digs into everyone’s DNS requests and network streams for marketable information, encryption-be-damned, just so they can sell that info too.
For many, what’s keeping them tied to cable is the fact that they don’t have good alternatives for internet access. If they’re buying their internet from the cable company already, and they want to watch TV of some kind, it makes sense to get the cable package and get a bundle discount rather than buy over the top TV and internet separately.
Re: Re:
The question is do you build your life round the TV schedule, or build you TV watching around your schedule. Streaming services, including YouTube and friends, allow you to decide when to watch, pause and rewind.
Re: Re:
I’m stuck in a monopoly situation, so I have a single choice of ISP. That being said, their TV bundles are expensive, steaming piles of crap. I am quite happy to keep my existing streaming (Netflix/Amazon Plus) and will subscribe for a single month to Disney+ whenever they have something good that I can binge within that time.
Now if only they weren’t the only option for internet in some areas they might actually start to panic.
Meanwhile they will just keep making up fees to make up for their losses on cable packages.
zzzz...
and still paying the same cable companies ever increasing fees to stream…OOOOOH
zzzz…
Wake me up when we have both:
Re: zzzz...
you have viable cryo-stasis tech?
Re: zzzz...
Guess I’m just lucky here. We have four big companies:
At$t, xFinity, RCN, and WOW. There’s also multiple small companies offering just internet.
And of course satellite internet and tv.
I stuck with Comcast because they answer the phone quickly, and jumping to anyone else with the same speed net is the same or more. Most are 100MBps or lower. But Gb is around $80-$100 from all of them.
Any faster and there’s a major price jump: if multi-gif comes down, ever, I may change my minds. But right now xfinity has been reliable.
Re: Re: zzzz...
I’d hazard to guess that Comcast is offering you great value and service because of all that competition. Without it, they’d have no incentive to do so.
Re: Re: Re: zzzz...
Could be: why I asked below about what people are actually paying.
For me the decision to ditch cable TV was originally about the cost, but these days it’s more about the convenience of streaming versus cable scheduling. Why on Earth would I pay someone a ton of money to tell me when I can watch something when I have a cheaper alternative that lets me play, pause, or rewatch anything in it’s catalog?
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Lower prices and watching at your own schedule are definitely pluses, but when the streaming prices rise to the same point that they were before dropping cable, there is no advantage. The cable companies are just hoping that customers won’t remember the price they were paying before streaming. I also don’t like paying twice for entertainment: 1 ISP (formerly known as cable) bill plus 1 Netflix bill – both of these bills are gradually increasing also. I’m just not a fan of subscriptions, but to each his own.
What’s that about slowly boiling a frog so that it doesn’t jump out of the pot…?
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Keep in mind that there are also free ad-driven streaming services such as Tubi, the Roku channel, Peacock’s free tier, and PlutoTV. There are even more which I haven’t even joined.
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True…true
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"when the streaming prices rise to the same point that they were before dropping cable, there is no advantage."
False. Streaming moves the power to you as a consumer to decide what you pay for, and you are not locked into long-term contracts or forced to pay for things you don’t want in order to access what you do want, as is the case with cable bundles.
Now, you may choose to pay the same, or even more, than you did with cable to access the content you want, and the system might even be gamed to some degree to force you to do so if you want to access exactly what you did before (although then, you can just decide to switch services regularly or opt for less content to save money). But, there are most definitely huge advantages to streaming.
"What’s that about slowly boiling a frog so that it doesn’t jump out of the pot…?"
A popular myth that doesn’t actually happen.
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The conclusion you draw is wrong, as it ignores an advantage you gave, the ability to watch on your schedule. Paying the same does not remove that advantage.
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Cut the cord years ago!
I cut the cord years ago. As prices went up, and up, I dropped what I could, until I finally cut out TV service from Comcast. Then I got my house and one of the first things I did was mount a large Antenna on the roof. THAT is how I get most of my TV. I had already been paying for Netflix.
Signing up for a replacing streaming TV service these days doesn’t make much sense. You have Bandwidth CAPS that streaming TV service eats up. Plus these streaming services prices have shot way up. It doesn’t seem any cheaper. I could never watch all those channels. Once you dump all that, you get use to less channels with an Antenna. That is free TV. Get an HDHomerun and connect that to your Network and use any number of Programs to DVR, I use PLEX and now you can record your TV and watch anywhere on anything. PLEX will also auto cut out commerials.
These days I do watch a lot of YouTube. There are a lot of great, well produced programs.
What are you actually paying?
Ohkay: what are the real rates people are paying?
Because talk of cable and internet keeps coming back to price.
Monthly we’re at 289 for the full tv package, 2 add on international channels, voice, and uncapped Gb internet.
If I cancel all but internet it would be 79.99.
That’s xfinity (Comcast) btw.
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"Ohkay: what are the real rates people are paying?"
Define "real rates". Part fo the issue here is that cord cutting is about flexibility as much as price. If you pay the same or more than you did with your old cable package, that’s usually on you, or you’re getting extras that you didn’t get with the old package.
"Monthly we’re at 289 for the full tv package, 2 add on international channels, voice, and uncapped Gb internet."
Wow, the difference of competitive markets! I pay way less than that but get more, but the markets are significantly different in the US.
This trend will stop as soon as the millennials start reproducing.
Wait for it… Any time now… Aaaaaaaany time…
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Too late. Although some people whine about "millennials" as if they’re teenagers, the oldest of that generation are already 40 years old. Even then, any kids born today will grow up n a world with internet, streaming, videogames, and all the competitors to traditional cable being commonplace, and that business model seeming quaint.