There Will Be 22 Million Cord Cutters By 2018, Says Report (dslreports.com) 113
A new report by eMarketer predicts that 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service by the end of 2017, which is up 33% over 2016. It also notes that ad investment will expand just 0.5% to $71.65 billion this year, down from the $72.72 billion predicted in the company's original first quarter forecast for 2017. From a report via DSLReports: This year, there will be 22.2 million cord-cutters ages 18 and older, a figure up 33.2% over 2016. That's notably higher than the 15.4 million eMarketer previously estimated. The total number of U.S. adult cord-nevers (users that have never signed up for a traditional cable TV connection) will grow 5.8% this year to 34.4 million. Note that eMarketer's numbers don't include streaming options from the likes of Dish (Sling TV) or AT&T (DirecTV Now), though so far gains in subscribers for these services haven't offset the decline in traditional cable TV subscribers anyway.
Comcast has fake subscribers (Score:5, Informative)
At one point, in my area, Comcast Internet-Only was priced at $78 / month. They priced a Basic-cable + Internet bundle at $72 / month. I signed up for the $6 / month savings, but never hooked up a cable TV.
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Re:Comcast has fake subscribers (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that the AC signed up for a bundle of Internet and BASIC cable. The cord cutters that are reaping huge savings are the ones who were paying for a buttload of channel tiers and renting 3-4 cable boxes, at least one being a more expensive DVR so they could time-shift programming, etc. These expenses go way down when you only have the subscribe to a couple streaming services to have "all the content" and your streaming device is a one-time purchase.
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It's interesting how little the media companies understand this. They seem to think that because it used to work that way, people will now pay for multiple streaming services.
What actually happens is people save a huge amount of money and make up their minds not to pay that much again.
Re: Comcast has fake subscribers (Score:3)
I'm also curious about total consumption as revenue. Typically when goods or services become less expensive, consumption goes up. With al
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That's a great point. With on-demand streaming you don't need to have more channels to ensure something good is always available.
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That's because you're on cable/satellite. You don't need to see the current episodes, believe me. That's a luxury. If you want to pay extra for that, then that's your right. But it is very easy to wait a year for the season to show up (then binge it in a couple weeks and then wait another 50 weeks).
There are top tier movies. Many many more top tier movies than were being shown on non-premium cable. And you can watch them when you want, you don't have to wait for them to show up somewhere. Yes, you wil
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They're stuck in a mindset that customers will pay anything to get their channels. In reality you hit this price point where you think "maybe I don't need that." Similar to how when gasoline prices go up the sales of fuel efficient vehicles also goes up, as sell as ridership on mass transit, carpooling, etc. Consumers will hit a limit to what they are willing to pay even without alternatives, and this is only a bigger effect in a crappy economy like we have now with huge unemployment rates (mostly hidden
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The price the market will bear for a product, and the cost to supply that product can be very different. Market price falls somewhere in between these two. Competition is what pushes the price close to the
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Have you noticed how you can't even see a Comcast price list if you don't provide them with your address?
That's hardly a revelation. The cost of service varies by region so it's impossible to give you accurate pricing if they don't know where you live. And it's not just who the competing providers are. In a lower-educated blue-collar market you would see higher pricing for HD video service and Premium channel blocks, where in college town and other more affluent markets the Internet service is generally more expensive.
Making you give the exact address is just a nice way of getting a location for a mailing list
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The cost of service varies by region so it's impossible to give you accurate pricing if they don't know where you live. And it's not just who the competing providers are...
Oh, I think you are being too generous. They offer lower cost Internet not far from where I live, in the same jurisdiction, the only difference is that CenturyLink DSL is offered there.
Re: Comcast has fake subscribers (Score:2)
This.
My wife always had cable when she lived with her parents, and I never had an interest in it. When we moved in together in 2007 we only had internet from our local Telco. It was nearly $90/mo for 25Mbps down, and 2.5Mbps up. A few years later when my wife was on maternity leave for our first child, I caved and got her the television package from our Internet/Telco provider. The price went up to over $140 for the internet/tv bundle and one cable box with DVR. It included a home telephone land line, too,
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Therein lies the rub. Cord-cutting is not really as a substantial savings as many claim it is. All the discounts for bundles are out the door and there is currently no service that provides broadcast content at a lower price compared to cable companies.
Well, what do you expect when it's cable companies offering it... here in Norway it's a mix of former cable, telco and power companies doing fiber roll-out, no surprise who is most willing to give you just Internet. After all TV is just an IPTV server with no external bandwidth costs, the cost is licensing the content as the delivery is probably only a few bucks on top of the fiber optic cable they're maintaining anyway.
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Not true. I had internet separate from satellite. I save $60+ a month now.
Even with AT&T (my ISP) I save a lot of money compared to internet plus uverse tv. the Comcast "deal" feels like an anomaly. Possibly because the internet service came later, and most of these companies are atrocious in updating pricing schedules over time, and treat existing customers far worse than new or prospective customers.
Limited basic != expanded basic (Score:2)
Is that "limited basic", which is only the locals, public access, and home shopping, or is it "expanded basic", with MSNBC, ESPN, and the rest? And does $72/mo include the local programming retransmission consent surcharge ($3/mo in my area) and the regional sports retransmission consent surcharge ($5/mo in my area)?
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Speaking with regards to a similar experience I had with Suddenlink, who for a few years cut my Internet bill by $8/mo. to bundle it with cable, it had ESPN and all the other channels you'd expect in a basic cable package. It wasn't just the local stuff. By itself, it cost around $30/mo. at the time, but they were willing to pay me $8/mo. just to have it. I hooked it up to the TV so guests could use it, but I don't think any ever actually did.
TFA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cord-cutters? Cord-nevers? Are we running out of labels to identify humans?
Re:TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly fits into the narrative I'd want to sell if I was a cable company. Cord cutters almost implies some sort of deviant behaviour where people are moving outside the bounds of normal, polite society. Don't be a 'cord cutter' - they are anarchists and communists.
(I know that's a bit hyperbolic, but it just seems strange to me that there is a label that defines people who don't pay for something - at best its just feels old fashioned. If I only shop online am I also a 'store smasher'? What's the label for people who don't pay for Netflix, etc? Stream poo-pooer?)
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I guess maybe its just that leaving cable seems so ordinary now that I don't see why it deserves a moniker. Giving it a label makes it seem unusual. Like buggy whip cutters :)
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Freeloader? Stream pirate? That last one makes me think of a little kids with a pirates hat, eye-patch and fake parrot playing on a raft made from old wooden crates.
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You seem a little quick to infer a link between not paying for Netflix and illegal streaming. Perhaps you read my statement as 'people who steal netflix', but all I meant was people who don't use Netflix, hence don't pay for it. In the same way that 'cord cutters' don't steal cable, they just don't have it.
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It's not meant to be a term for people who don't pay for something; it's meant to be a term for people who *used* to pay for something that was extremely ubiquitous for a long time, and have now stopped.
So you can't compare it to people who never subscribed it to Netflix (though you could compare it to people who did subscribe to Netflix and gave it up because they were disappointed by all the content constantly disappearing). You could, however, compare it to people who have stopped shopping at the mall a
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Cord cutters almost implies some sort of deviant behaviour where people are moving outside the bounds of normal, polite society.
They are. America is built on a solid foundation of guns, Jesus, and cable TV. These cord-cutters will ruin this great country with their sacrilege. I say we take our guns in one hand, our crosses in the other, and do the lords work on these cord-cutters. Don't forget to bring a film crew as well, this is going to sell really well on pay-per-view.
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Well when you cut the cord, then you find out if the person will be an innie or an outie.
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The concept of not buying a subscription to cable television is fine, but who had the idea to call it "cutting [a] cord"?
Comcast Broke my equipment with Encrypted QAM (Score:5, Informative)
When Comcast Broke my equipment with Encrypted QAM, I dropped their service.
They broke 3 "cable ready" TVs.
They broke 4 "cable ready" VCR.
They broke 4 "Clear QAM" network TV tuners.
They broke 1 life-time TiVo.
So, I dropped their service, put up a $30 antenna in the attic, connected it to the network TV tuners, which also support ATSC. Getting 70 channels "for free". Sure, 45 of those are wacko religious and shopping channels. About 20 are entertaining enough to watch a little.
We read more books now.
The TVs are all gone. I kept 1 VCR (very high end). The tivo is long gone, useless.
We don't really care about sports in the USA. Our favorite sport has extremely bad coverage here and NBC geo-blocks our access to purchase the world-wide (except USA) web streaming service offered with their exclusive license for the USA of that content - which they don't show. Assholes.
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Our favorite sport has extremely bad coverage here and NBC geo-blocks our access to purchase the world-wide (except USA) web streaming service offered with their exclusive license for the USA of that content - which they don't show.
When you complained to NBC about its failure to transmit the programming to which it holds an exclusive license, what was the reply? When you complained to the licensor about NBC's gross misuse of its exclusive license, what was the reply?
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its a waste of time complaining. You just end up trying to explain to a clueless foreign tier 1 phone answerer who can't/won't put you through to anyone with an actual clue..
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phone
Try written; that might get you past tier 1.
No competition really (Score:1)
RIP (Score:2)
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But another 40,000 come ever day.
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Dude, turkeydance gives a number per year and you write a number per day. It's too early in the morning to ask us to do math. Let's go shopping - online!
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I think a lot more than that come every day.
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It's difficult to render cowbells in text. I reckon they go "Tok".
and instead of adapting.. (Score:1)
and changing services and plans (ala carte, death to 'bundles' and 'contracts', etc), the cable and satellite companies will just jack the price up for their remaining subscribers.
case in point: our $100 after tax internet and cable with EVERY channel, even premiums, is now $140 for internet (same speed, i.e. 'slowest and cheapest available') and basic cable (one step up from broadcast-only). that basic cable package today includes about 20% fewer channels than that same package did a decade ago; and they'v
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and instead of adapting.. and changing services and plans (ala carte, death to 'bundles' and 'contracts', etc), the cable and satellite companies will just jack the price up for their remaining subscribers.
Yes, and what's wrong with that? Adapting to try to get subscribers back is a losing strategy; they're just not going to get that many back once they've experienced how much better life is without cable TV and with online streaming, and they'd have to accept much lower profits to try to appease those pe
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You're assuming that the death spiral is really a problem, or that it'll happen any time soon, or that it's even unavoidable.
Going backwards, is it unavoidable? Maybe it really isn't. Perhaps these companies have already figured out they're living on borrowed time. What would you have them do instead of soaking the remaining customers? Their shareholders want to preserve their investments, so jacking up prices is the obvious answer. They can't compete with online services any more than a buggy-whip mak
47 Billion by 2025 (Score:3)
47 Billion by 2025. There's an xkcd. Google it, I can';t be arsed.
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I'm guessing https://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
I wouldn't be so sure (Score:4, Interesting)
The alternatives are already getting worse than cable.
Up until now, the alternatives to cable are awesome. Sign up with Netflix and you enjoy a huge variety of shows and movies. For now. Disney already pulled their content out to create their own streaming service. You think it will be long until the various networks do the same?
In the end, you'll end up with the same ugly shit that cable has become. Only even worse. Now, on cable you get a "basic package" with a handful of channels you can watch and a load of religious, shopping or otherwise unusable channels they mostly add to boast "50 free channels". Want to see show X on channel A? Get package K with 20 new channels, all of them bullshit except the one you want to watch for the one show you want to see.
And with streaming, it will soon be the same. With Netflix being the "basic package" where you get two old shows that you enjoy to rerun now and then, and with every network creating its own streaming service that you have to get separately and pay extra for, to get the one show that you want to see from the 1000 they "offer".
I could see that people stop "cutting" the cable when they notice that streaming has become the same kind of bullshit, so why bother?
Re:I wouldn't be so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree at all. You can start and stop streaming services as needed. I wanted to watch a few shows on Hulu so I get it for a couple of months and then put it on hold. Same with Netflix. Same with HBO. I like baseball so I get the MLB.tv subscription and watch all I want. Fortunately I don't care about the local team anyway so I don't need cable. Playoffs I can watch at a local sports bar if I care enough or over the air if it's on a local channel.
Cable or satellite? Yeah you get a lot of garbage channels, although you're mostly paying for a few high flyers like ESPN. Which brings up the next point - ESPN has turned so disgustingly political and argumentative it's not worth watching anyway - who needs Faux News on a sports channel or some dumb bitch telling me about white supremacy. So unless you're desperate to watch some sporting event you'll need it, but in my case I can avoid them altogether (plus they are Disney, and I give zero dollars to Disney on principle.)
Streaming has saved me a ton of money and I don't have to purchase cable "news" and all the garbage shopping channels I don't watch.
Months-old baseball (Score:2)
You can start and stop streaming services as needed.
Until streaming services realize this and jack up the price without an annual commitment. Amazon Prime service, for example, is typically sold by the year.
Same with HBO.
Except HBO still trickles out its series weekly. If your subscription is on hiatus, you're vulnerable to being left out of water cooler conversations among active subscribers.
I like baseball so I get the MLB.tv subscription and watch all I want.
But you still have to keep your subscription active throughout the season unless you like months-old baseball. And last I checked, the leagues still sold particular matches exclusive
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So when you want to sit in a recliner, unwind from a day's work, and catch up on current events, what do you do instead of watching TV news?
I'm thinking "Read Slashdot".
Re:I wouldn't be so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
You are probably right. I "cut the cord" over year ago and knocked my monthly entertainment bill down to $70 from $150. It was a tough at first. I've been a cable subscriber for over 20 years, always automatically subscribing to the service every time I moved without even thinking about the money. Once I considered the cost to the number of channels I actually watched ratio, it just didn't make any financial sense. So I decided to try cord cutting (a misnomer really). I also installed an antenna outdoors to get the local channels. I did miss a few channels at first, but it didn't take long to ween myself off. If I can't watch a particular show or can't get a particular channel, then it's not the that big of a deal. The media company just won't have me as a source of advertising dollars. Their loss, not mine.
And if what you say comes true with streaming services, then so be it. I'll just find other things to do. The big thing for me has been certain sports but I even found that I can live without that and just check the score and watch the highlights from a website. You ask why bother cutting cable; I ask why bother getting it in the first place.
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Your worst case for netflix is still better than cable, since I can choose what to watch and when.
I can also use my netflix when not at home. Not with cable.
And if netflix becomes too shit I will go back to piracy.
All of that is infinitely better than the current state of cable.
There is one more alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is not to watch TV to begin with. There are plenty of things you can do in all that time you now spend in front of a TV: having fun with friends and family, reading books, gardening, sports, enjoying sunsets, playing computer games, and many, many more.
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Too many of those things require to go to this "outdoor" thing. Most of us are scared of it.
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Right, so get Netflix, or Amazon, or Hulu, or something other than cable. Then use that money you save to buy healthy snacks to munch on while watching TV.
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Walking Dead is on Netflix for sure.
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Sure, sure, if they want to spend the money on that.
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I watch older shows on Netflix, but for current stuff, Hulu's pretty good. They usually have the shows the next day, and on the one I have, most (all the ones I've seen) are ad-free.
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There are plenty of things you can do in all that time you now spend in front of a TV
Actually no. You'll probably be very surprised to find that a lot of time spent in front of the TV leaves the TV as background entertainment for various activities.
*summons the anecdoter*:
In our house the TV is probably on for 3-4 hours per day, personally while that is happening I often stream netflix in another room. I would wager that we spend a whole 1-2 hours per week actually sitting down and watching something. The wife is doing masters of mathematics assignments, and I'm building shit or playing in
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This is why the Pirate Bay is so important. It's the only thing keeping them even half way honest.
Imagine music sales without Napster. Singles that cost â0.70 would be â4.99 each.
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Sling TV a good example (Score:2)
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Up until now, the alternatives to cable are awesome. Sign up with Netflix and you enjoy a huge variety of shows and movies. For now. Disney already pulled their content out to create their own streaming service. You think it will be long until the various networks do the same? In the end, you'll end up with the same ugly shit that cable has become.
I agree. The answer is simple: cut it all off, and download what you like from BitTorrent. There isn't anything new worth watching anyway (except GoT), so just
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The alternatives are already getting worse than cable.
Not even remotely. They aren't getting better, but they are far from worse.
Sign up with Netflix and you enjoy a huge variety of shows and movies
Still do. The catalogue is quite extensive even though I don't live in the USA don't get even a fraction of what is available there.
Disney already pulled their content out to create their own streaming service.
No they didn't. That won't happen until the end of 2018. Expect them to realise how dumb this decision was and reintroduce it all end of 2019.
I could see that people stop "cutting" the cable when they notice that streaming has become the same kind of bullshit, so why bother?
Wait I thought you said it's all bad, now you're saying people could stop seeing the point in the future?
In the end...
Okay stop time travelling. Pick a year to reference your p
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Disney will pull content in the future. They haven't pulled everything yet.
However I disagree with your main assumption. Watching no TV at all is still better than cable, economically. Cable right now is a very expensive luxury, and it's hard to call it a luxury except for the price, because the cable companies treat you like scum.
So, end of the month after the bill is paid, consider... Did you get your $10 worth from Netflix? Did you get your $150 worth from cable? If you think the price for cable is
snip the cord (Score:3, Insightful)
I have yet to find a cord cutting option that is worth anything. Yes I can steal all kinds of programming with KODI, but legal options are more expensive than cable. Everyone starting a streaming servers and wants $10-20/month for some nitch set of programs. THat meets cable prices pretty quick.
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I think that only applies if you have to watch the latest things NOW.
I have regularly taken breaks from the stuff on TV, video games, etc.
Wait a year, then everything you "discover" new to yourself is available cheaply, on cheap devices, broadcast for free, you avoid all the stuff that turns to shit (or know when it turns to shit), and you don't have to be left on cliffhangers constantly, we can just pop the next series on.
I think trying to keep up with "all the new stuff" is what sells games consoles, laun
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Most of the good stuff becomes available on disc (so probably for free at your local library).
For free OTA, I'll plug the ChannelMaster DVR... uses your external HDD, so you can use that spare one pulled from your lappie when you converted to SSD. The program guide is optional (over your internet) but free, and no ongoing fees unlike Tivo, which was the dealbreaker for me.
Note very well: has some internet streaming options including Sling and Youtube, but you CANNOT record those, just the OTA TV. Sling work
Programming with a short shelf life (Score:2)
Staying a year behind may be practical for some series. But it isn't very practical for programming with a short shelf life, such as sports, political talk shows, or scripted dramatic series whose most popular discussion forum closes the thread for each episode two weeks to six months after its first airing. The same is true of video games, where you end up a year closer to having the online multiplayer matchmaking service terminated permanently.
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scripted dramatic series whose most popular discussion forum closes the thread for each episode two weeks to six months after its first airing
So don't join in the pointless back and forth debates. Is it really that important for your to analyze every single little bit of information in a TV show?
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If the boss subconsciously bases raises and promotions in part on participation in water cooler discussion, under the umbrella "team player", it's a business expense.
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If that is the case, holy shit find a new job ASAP.
This is absurd: Almost no one is cutting the cord. (Score:1, Insightful)
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When people say "cable cutting" it means "cable TV", not "generic cable that can mean anything".
The real shame (Score:2)
Is that you don't have any alternative to cable companies for "useful" Internet services.
I would love to be able to completely cut the cord...
Move to a fiber city (Score:2)
The alternative in theory is finding a job in a city that has fiber to the home and moving your family there. Some Slashdot users [slashdot.org] find this practical; others [slashdot.org] do not. But if you have to move for a job anyway, consider the availability of fiber before you accept the job offer.
The cable companies deserve to lose money (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: The cable companies deserve to lose money (Score:1)
I don't understand your altruistic blame on the evil corporations. Don't blame them. Blame the mind numbed ribots like me and many millions more who are willing to pay it.
I don't know what you do for a living. But, let's just say you were a salesman. If you had a customer willing to pay you nore, would you not price your product accordingly? Who in their right mind wouldn't? Corporations aren't there to have a good time. They are made up of people who have risked and invested in themselves and sell a prod
For me it's about watching what I want (Score:1)
The Frog jumped out (Score:4, Informative)
How? (Score:3)
Tracking alternative sources (Score:2)
Are there any existing sites where I can match what current run shows I watch against what services carry them and what devices can access those services?
For broadcast networks I can plug the antenna into the Tivo, but for cable shows some are only streamed on the networks website, or some are on one streaming service and not the other. It should be possible to compute some minimum covering set that gets a viewer everything they want, but every time I try plotting it out myself I get stuck.
Cutting The Cord You Say? (Score:2)
So, you are streaming everything via wireless then? For a large number of us the Internet comes through our cable company or not at all. So, maybe we cancel cable TV but we can't really cut the cord, can we? Now that Trump has appointed a cable/telco company FCC commission, net-neutrality is done. It is only a matter of time until we "cable-cutters" find that our streaming services will be raising their rates because the cable companies are charging them for access to customers (us).
We are also seeing t
Not surprising (Score:2)
Over 2 years satellite free (Score:1)