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Cord-Cutters Drive Cable TV Subscribers to a 17-Year Low (houstonchronicle.com) 201

Posted by EditorDavid from the uncabling-TV dept.
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: On Wednesday, AT&T told regulators that it expects to finish the quarter with about 90,000 fewer TV subscribers than it began with. AT&T blamed a number of issues, including hurricane damage to infrastructure, rising credit standards and competition from rivals. The report also shows AT&T lost more traditional TV customers than it gained back through its online video app, DirecTV Now. And analysts are suggesting that that's evidence that cord-cutting is the main culprit... "DirecTV, like all of its cable peers, is suffering from the ravages of cord-cutting," said industry analyst Craig Moffett in a research note this week. Moffett added that while nobody expected AT&T's pay-TV numbers to look good, hardly anyone could have predicted they would look "this bad."

The outlook doesn't look much healthier for the rest of the television industry. Over the past year, cable and satellite firms have collectively lost nearly 3 million customers, according to estimates by market analysts at SNL Kagan and New Street Research. The number of households with traditional TV service is hovering at about the level it was in 2000, according to New Street's Jonathan Chaplin, in a study last week. Other analysts predict that, after factoring in AT&T's newly disclosed losses, the industry will have lost 1 million traditional TV subscribers by the end of this quarter.
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Cord-Cutters Drive Cable TV Subscribers to a 17-Year Low More

Cord-Cutters Drive Cable TV Subscribers to a 17-Year Low

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  • Have had their cable xut by harrucanes and firestorms

    • Time for the entire industry to pivot. They need to provide internet services with streaming level bandwidth, and get out of the content business. Plenty of other people are providing content.

  • Perhaps they should get in touch with the printed newspaper and book publishing industry. They know a thing or two about loosing costumers to a new information/entertainment medium

    • Re:Lessons to be learned (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:09PM (#55370829)

      Get in touch with them - why? For commiseration? It's not as if the newspaper and publishing industries have figured out a solution either.

      • Re:Lessons to be learned (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:45PM (#55370905)
        Most newspapers have transitioned into a hybrid online/paper model. The cable TV model can follow. They have the rights to shows in the area. But they don't have any local streaming setup. There are piles of options they refuse to even consider, sounds like the newspapers, right after subscriptions flatlined and before the cliff.
        • Streaming "locally" may not be a cost effective solution.

          Besides, are you paying for less, in that being a local 24 hour stream? Or paying for "Hulu" merged with local programming for a higher price than Hulu? Does the price of Internet+Hulu compare to traditional cable subscriptions?

          My local networks have small scale streaming options for locally created content, ones which usually get overloaded during unscheduled major events like Tornadoes or Hurricanes. Occasionally even during scheduled ones like

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          When you are the publisher, the leach, the middle man, the parasite (when publishers were printers or broadcasters it was different), you will have right to nothing in the digital era, everyone will be publishing direct and if you want to collate that publishing, you will have to provide real services to justify any payment and not take 30% for attacking direct publishing, obstructing broadband, corporate cartels censoring non-'publisher' controlled content, using claims to piracy to shut down competitors,

    • But what really, do you think is going through a CEO's mind?

      While I sympathize especially with employees that may lose jobs, I have no mercy for companies that used to gouge ordinary folk with tens of [useless] channels in the not so distant past.

      • Tens of useless channels? Have you seen cable packages lately? We're talking hundreds and hundreds of worthless channels. And a lot of those worthless channels also have a HD version of their channel that is listed as a separate channel.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Horse shit.

      Cable is losing customers to a far less user-friendly way of viewing content simply because they price gouge. Cut their price in half, possibly by giving people ala carte pricing, and the exodus from cable would likely stop or even reverse. Most people love the convenience of a single solution, always on source, but they hate the insanely high price.

      With more and more channels offering their own subscriptions, and more OTT options appearing all the time, we're edging our way toward ala carte pr

      • I like being able to watch TV on my own schedule. Not having to miss out on my preferred shows due to conflicting schedules regarding things more important or time sensitive than relaxing.
      • I agree with this, but they really can't cut their price in half. Disney and co are too greedy to allow that to happen. Yes, the bulk of the cost you see from a cable provider is the cost of the content from the content provider, which is basically Time Warner, Disney, NBC Universal, and then the various regional networks. Why do you think ATT is buying Time Warner in the first place? Sure it makes them money, but more importantly, it converts a former cost into a revenue stream.

      • I have been able to write essentially this same comment every year since cable hit is peak six years ago.

        Cable companies are monopolies and behave exactly like all monopolies. They charge every customer extra as rent just because they can. And when customers start rebelling and refusing to sign up or cut service they have, even though they have no competitor cable companies to buy service from, the thought that maybe they should lower prices or provide better service will never cross their minds, ever.

        Inste

  • Spectrum (old TWC) straw vs. camel's back (Score:5, Informative)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @08:51PM (#55370789)
    last bill was 41% over last year's same month, same service, same channels. as i said, last bill.

    • Re:Spectrum (old TWC) straw vs. camel's back (Score:4, Funny)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @10:20PM (#55370993)

      Maybe prices rise as customer's dwindle. The last remaining customer will have a bill for $1,000,000,000, in order to make up the profits.

    • indeed and its not 100% on the cable providers its the media owners demanding big money for less viewers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep, it is going to get worse too. :(

    • Re:Spectrum (old TWC) straw vs. camel's back (Score:5, Interesting)

      by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Sunday October 15, 2017 @06:32AM (#55372033)

      Exactly this. All cable companies I've ever been with rely on raising rates pennies at a time, but it adds up over a year or more. Some moron at Comcast gets a bonus because he made them money by raising everyone's rate by a quarter - the only way the cable company seems to be able to increase their revenue nowadays. I don't mean the promotional rates expiring, that I fully understand. I mean the prices they claim to be fixed for 1 or 2 years, yet the bill keeps on going up $0.50 to $2.00 every month. They blame it on raising fees, taxes, etc. I once questioned how one of the taxes on my bill went from $0.25 to $0.54, they claimed taxes have more than doubled but could not tell me what tax exactly that was so I could follow up with local government to confirm. Total BS. I had Comcast twice in our current residence, the first time they kept raising the rates, I would call threaten to cancel, they would give me some new "promotional rate" for next 6 months, then rate would climb every month. I got tired of having to call every 6 months to threaten, so I cut the service completely. Few years later, a sales guy came to the door to tell me how Comcast has chances, so he convinced me to sign up again for a fixed rate service for 2 years, I made sure in the comments he put down that if the bill goes up a penny, unless it is in fact verifiable tax increase, I will cancel. 6 moths later, I called him to say my bill went up $1. So he credited it back, next month it went up another $0.28. So I cancelled the service - done. I went back to HD antenna an internet for all of family content. It's not that I cannot afford it, we have 2 Tesla's in our garage, it's just that I despise doing business with dishonest companies.

  • specialized media delivery is obsolete (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sittingnut ( 88521 ) <sittingnut@@@gmail...com> on Saturday October 14, 2017 @08:51PM (#55370791) Homepage

    given that media can be delivered and consumed, without change in quality or convenience, through generalized methods, like the internet, specialized ways of delivery and consumption will be obsolete.
    some specialized ways, like movie theaters, may last a bit longer because they enable consumption experience not yet available through generalized methods .

    • Movie theaters are a way to spread the cost of a superior entertainment experience across multiple individuals.

      When a single man or teenager cannot enjoy such niceties due to the high cost of a personal entertainment system, plus the lack of friends to share in said experience within one's own home or a friend's home, it will be a sad day. It would be a loss of an opportunity for a shared experience to build camaraderie, one which due to its neutral venue is a safe place to consider new friendships withou

    • Re:specialized media delivery is obsolete (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @11:00PM (#55371089)

      through generalized methods

      This is the thing that should get people moving and yet barely incites a reaction. The Internet is only a generalized method because of net neutrality. If that is gone, the Internet is no better than having cable TV or Sat TV, it just becomes a standard piece of hardware like a TV, but the TV itself is useless without content. The Internet works because content is equalized and it is equalized because it is all served the same way at the same rate without regard of the origin. I can't understand why American's are not marching with tiki torches in hand outside the FCC building, it literally boggles my mind.

      • Because in a normal market, something like net neutrality is not needed. People pay an ISP for service. if the ISP tries to throttle certain websites to extort money from those sites, people notice the slowdown, hear from a friend that those sites work just fine on his ISP, and switch to their friend's ISP. It's called giving your customers what the want - a hallmark of what makes a market economy function. Any ISP that tries to selectively throttle sites is shooting themselves in the foot.

        The only r

        • In other words, net neutrality is government regulation to try to fix a problem created by government regulation.

          See here's the thing. You are grouping all government into one big pile to make an argument and believe or not, I know this might come as a shock, local government is distinctly different than federal government. I know, surprising... Net neutrality is a federal guideline for how ISPs must conduct their business. Now how they go about that when it gets down to the local level, that's up to local governments to figure out. But let's be real here. The Federal government isn't fixing a problem they've ma

  • Yes, but so what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by seven of five ( 578993 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @08:52PM (#55370793)
    Cable fees just as high as they ever were... where's the incentive to stay with cable?

    • Re:Yes, but so what? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:17PM (#55370849)

      I love how Comcast keeps sending me adverts to purchase their "Triple Play" package - Internet, Cable TV, IP-based home phone. We haven't had a "home phone" in years, thanks to our cell phones... and we cut back to the lowest tier cable + internet package several years ago. The only reason we keep even THAT is my wife likes all those silly NCIS:SVU:NKVD:IOU series that've been on forever.

      It's bad enough that the price of Comcast's lowest Cable Internet + TV tier has climbed to $85 a month now in this region... but still, even that's $55/month less than we were paying them before we "downgraded". But why on earth do they think we'd want to start giving them $200/month - or more - to add a pointless home phone line? Their thinking is apparently still rooted in the 1980s...

    • Dumping (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      where's the incentive to stay with cable?

      Bundle pricing. Some Slashdot users report being quoted a smaller monthly rate for a bundle of basic television and Internet than for Internet alone, even with surcharges for local channels, regional sports, and CableCARD rental. In other words, DOCSIS operators are dumping [wikipedia.org] TV service on their subscribers.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Literally the only reason they want people to bundle is so they can tell investors that the cable and phone portions of their business isn't tanking. It's anti-consumer and dishonest. Fuck'em.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      Because it's still cheaper than subscribing to the 4 or 5 different streaming services you'd have to otherwise subscribe to in order to get 100% of the programs that you like. You can get about 80% with just one streaming service, and maybe 90% with 2, and it takes another 2 or 3 to get the remainder of the shows that you really want to watch.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        If you need 4 or 5 streaming services EVERY MONTH and can't alternate between them... you may be in need of a new hobby, and a gym membership

        We have a baseline of netflix, and amazon prime* and add HBO for 2-3 months during Game of Thrones season, we've bought hulu for a month at a time for specific series, periodically, but we're not going to pay for services we don't use.

        *I list prime simply because we have prime for the 2 day free shipping, and it's easier to bill hbo through prime than u

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          Or, perhaps, and more likely, one's tastes are simply too diverse to be found on just a small set of services.

      • Actually, it's not. I'd have to get 9 or 10 services the price of Netflix to match my last cable bill! I haven't cut yet because I'm a lazy SOB, but getting 80-90% of my crap for 10-20% of the price is sounding better and better all the time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trawg ( 308495 )

      I guess the fact that in many places they have a monopoly on Internet services?

  • they bought that company

    did a real audit and found that its not doing as well as they thought...

  • HAHA (Score:5, Informative)

    by XSportSeeker ( 4641865 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:07PM (#55370821)

    Well, I dunno how things are there in the US, but if it's anything like Brazil (and I think it is), people should be celebrating on the streets.

    Cable TV companies are oligopolies, some of the biggest companies in the country, and they abused their position in every way possible. Price gouging, exploiting legal loopholes for shady tie-ins, bundling sales, chopping up consumer rights in every way possible, offering the worst costumer service imaginable, using aggressive marketing tactics and whatnot.

    And they constantly keep trying to change the rules and force the costumers to either pay more, or receive less, on lame justifications that they don't have enough money to upgrade their infrastructure, all the while posting record profits every year.

    A whole set of consumer laws in recent years were passed because of them, including anti spam/telemarketing call laws, the entire net neutrality debacle, a bunch of stuff regarding how call centers should work to attend their costumers, etc etc.

    Every year they come up to threaten yet another restringent rule that will kill connection for a significant portion of their users. As if they could re-write the contracts we agreed upon when signing up for the service.

    The more market share for cable TV shrinks, the better for everyone as I see it. It'll be better for people who likes their cable, as the companies will have to fight to keep them and give them better service, and more options for us who never cared about cable in the first place.

    I went over a decade having to pay for cable just because there was some shady bundling crap that made it cheaper to pay for the entire package rather than paying for Internet alone. The majority of the country are still stuck on this deal because they have no other options. Like I said, oligopolies. They will price fix, they will close deals behind curtains to dominate certain areas, they will exploit people as much as they can.

    Fortunately, I moved to a place where there's fiber Internet available... jumped at the opportunity as fast as I could, it's like I'm finally getting what I pay for. No more unexplained outages, a fair working connection for the price I pay (which is lower than if I had to pay for the cable TV/Internet bundle), good costumer service, and no lies on speed, throttling practices and data caps.

  • First:
    I subscribe to one of the dish TV services. They rave about how great they are offering me 180-something channels. Of which I can find something to watch on exactly four. The rest are sales blurbs (lots of sales blurbs) or religious pandering for not-my-religion or Spanish language or ancient re-runs. (sorry, no offence meant, but I don't speak Spanish. Now where are the German language channels? But I digress). So I am paying all this money to watch my local city's news at 9:00, weather, an occasiona

  • What good is a bundle if you donâ(TM)t value (Score:3)

    by infosinger ( 769408 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:13PM (#55370841)

    The largest cost in a typical standard non-premium bundle is sports. In short it is forcing people to subsidize sports fans. No wonder people are going to cheaper non-sports alternatives where live TV is not that important.

  • Dear cable providers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:16PM (#55370847)
    Start offering services a la carte, at a reasonable price, and many of us might consider signing up again. Persist in your ridiculous extortions tactics, whereby to watch a couple of channels that people are interested in they have to pay for dozens that only carry junk, and expect the rate of defections to increase. Your call.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by luther349 ( 645380 )
      they cant trust me they would love to cut the fat off there networks and offer you a lower rate but big media company like Viacom charge you huge money for there networks and will not let you just pay for the ones you want to have on your network they force the cable company into overpriced shitty bundles.people blame the cable company and yes they can be some slimy fuckers on there own rite but the the media companys are the main reasion you are always seeing insane rate hikes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )
        That doesn't explain why their internet service also increase in price the longer you stay with them.
        • yes it does. as they drive there cable prices tv up and people downgrade to minimum tiers or cancel the tv service all together they raise the internet prices to keep there profits the same.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Bullshit they can't. If cable companies can do it in Canada with 10% of the population of the US, then companies in the US can do the same. They don't want to, the cable-co's in Canada didn't want to either until they were forced into it with regulations but they seem to be profiting just fine regardless.

        What's really killing these companies are what's being provided on the channels. It's nothing but wall-to-wall reality TV, out of my group of friends and co-workers that I know reasonably well(roughly 20

    • Start offering services a la carte

      But but but, then the Jesus channel won't be able to get funding, or the 25 shopping channels. And then no one will pay for ESPN27 which shows only fierljeppen 24 hours a day.

      Won't someone think of the CONTENT!

  • Cable is convenient! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:17PM (#55370851)

    Cable is convenient!

    You can watch it on the box we approve, at the time we set, on the channel we set, at the resolution we set, on the box you pay to rent from us.

    Don't like it at that time, pay to record it, don't forget you pay to record the commercials too.

    Don't watch it in time, don't worry, rent the episode from us!

    Don't like the content in SD? Pay more for HD, with HD commercials!

    Don't like the channel, pay for the same channel, in HD, timeshifted, with timeshifted commercials!

    100 Channels of crap

    100 Channels of crap in HD!

    100 Channels of timeshifted crap!

    100 channels of timeshifted HD crap!

    10 Channels of sports, but what you want to watch is blacked out!

    10 Channels of radio, playing crap, and with commercials!

    10 Channels of shopping crap!

    Don't forget, we have tons of C-F grade movies, with lots of commercials, with the swearing cut out, and did we mention commercials?

    We rotate in 1-5 A-B grade movies, but they are the same movies, the C-F grade movies get constantly added! You can watch Overboard! as many times as you can stomach!

    All for a small monthly fee!

    -Cable box rental fee
    -Cable fee
    -Fee payment fee
    -FCC Fee
    -FCC Surcharge
    -FCC Levy
    -FCC Premium
    -Local Content Fee
    -Local Content Improvement Fee Premium

    Ditch netflix and their cheap boxes and sticks! Your good old clunky power-hungry cable box is where it's at!

    • thats your media networks with there shitty rotations the cable provider has nothing to do with that. but you point is still very good.

  • Cord cutting is not the reason. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:22PM (#55370863) Journal
    Cord cutting is not the reason, it is merely the symptom.

    The cable companies are regulated utilities, granted monopoly in the areas they operation. They pushed through rate increase after rate increase, bundled useless channels, had abysmal customer service and all the arrogant entitlement attitude that comes with being a monopoly.

    All their infrastructure has already been paid for thanks to friendly regulators and relentless rate increases. They could have dropped their prices and made it impossible for the wireless companies to compete. They could have improved customer service. But no. They believed they are entitled to cash delivered to their coffers in fire hoses. They believed they had the customers by their balls and wanted to how hard the customers will scream and how hard they can squeeze.

    They can still fight back. Their infrastructure has been paid for, and it has much larger bandwidths than cell towers. They can compete if they wanted to compete.

    But they don't want to compete. Looks like.

    • Why compete when you can collude with no risk?
    • you confusing cable company's with the likes of Viacom. your shit monopoly tactics yep defiantly the cable provider. bundled shit channels nobody wants not even the cable providers thats the likes of Viacom oh you whant are syfi channel well you need these 10 useless channels to.

  • AT&T keeps making unattractive offers that aren't really competitive with Comcast's intro offers. AT&T is particularly notorious for demanding 2-year contracts on Internet plans, capping the monthly data allowance fairly low, and yet not even offering an attractive price.

    So it's no wonder AT&T is losing subscribers.

    I just don't understand why AT&T isn't at least trying to make a competitive offer, especially for Internet alone.

    • Bureaucratic incompetence? We're talking about a phone company that doesn't have accurate records of it's own internal lines. I can't tell you how many times I've called for business support and been transferred to out-of-service numbers; or been transferred to residential support (who can't help) then back to business support who send out a tech that never shows up or calls saying they can't find the location (because they don't keep track?), or when they show up a day late it turns out they're the wrong

  • DirecTV used to beat cable in price. Not anymore. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tjp($)pjT ( 266360 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @09:43PM (#55370895)
    I am not a sports fan. I pay a regional sports fee. Why? I get over 200 channels. Watch, tops, a couple dozen. Why pay for the others? Ala carte is suppressed by the cable and satellite providers, but it is how to save their industry and negotiate lower fees to the source owners. Why license CNN if only 5% view CNN? The single purpose channels are also a losing proposition. And then there are the nickel and dime fees, extra receiver, pay $7.99 a month. DVR ability, pay per month, HD pay per month, 4K WOW pay per month. Formerly you'd subscribe to a movie package and the next would cost less, then less for the third, etc. Now they not only cost more per package than Netflix and way more than Amazon (with Prime Video as a perk)... Video on demand? A great concept, except it also comes with commercials you can't fast forward through. And you're paying for it already. I used to get every channel except sports and it cost about $90 a month. Now my basic "total choice that is far from total" costs that, and it more than doubles with all the added fees. Add that to "buying" a DVR/Receiver that you are really leasing monthly after paying them more than the cost of manufacture for a device locked to their system... Wow. If they started reducing fees and negotiating cheaper costs, like put networks in a selectable package and see how fast the network stations dropped their ask for presence. Yes, You pay for the networks through higher fees, and the networks still get to count you for advertising rates. Everyone is asking a bit too much and the broadcast model is going to collapse. I really want to eliminate the high cost of carriage of sports channels etc. Watch their ad rates drop as people are no longer counted as potential viewers. Then watch as the cable providers demand cheaper fees. And then watch as they fail to pass them on and still fail.
    • That was my straw. The Sports Fee was $7 per month. I tried to wonder what Disney - ESPN was thinking, then I realized it was basic arrogance. "snip". My cable co raised the broadband $10 per month when I tossed the cable. I'd already gone through a year of mandatory cable boxes, then they became $8 per month, per box, all so the cable co can turn my service on and off without a truck roll. I thought using Tivo and cable card would be OK, but then they said "aha ! Sports Fee" I'm lucky I live on a st

    • I am not a Netflix fan. Yet I pay $90/mo for access to the internet. Why? I get access to every node on the net. Places I regularly visit, tops, a few dozen. Why pay for peering to the others? Why am I subsidizing all my neighbors who want to stream video 24x7? Ala carte is suppressed by the ISPs, Why pay for peering overseas if I never request data from foreign servers? The single purpose services like Netflix and Hulu are also a losing proposition. And then there are nickel and dime fees, cable modem rent

    • Ala carte is not surprised by the provider so many people get this fact wrong. Ala carte is suppressed by the network owners many only have 1 or 2 good channels and they know this but they also have 15 shit channels so they will force the providers to also buy the 15 shit channels to get the 2 good channels and if they refuse this offer they will start a huge mud slinging campaign on all there networks talking shit about the provider to get the customers to flood there lines to try and force them to give in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        A-la-carte programming (for channels beyond the most basic cable service that has no really good channels at all) is often available... but it rarely seems worth it, financially. You can pay more for just a half dozen a-la cart channels than you do for a basic cable package that comes with dozens of channels that you never watch.
    • sad part if none of the networks gave in to there mud slinging they would be forced to come back with a better offer as if your not airing on any of the providers your not making any money are you now. the providers seem to have giving away there power for no reason.

    • The CATV model was always explicitly socialist. Long gone are the days when it was just shared access to awesome broadcast antennas, but the ethos remains. They pick the content providers for you, they decide on the packages, and they tell you what [false] dependencies exist in programming. You see, they are the experts and if you were free to make your own choices you would destroy "everything good" about the system. Meanwhile, the gatekeepers get fabulously rich.

      Contrast that with the Internet model.

  • NFL might lead to an acceleration (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @10:09PM (#55370961) Homepage

    Preface: I have no political or philosophical position on whether NFL players should stand or kneel for the pledge. I'm speaking not of their "cause", but rather of it's effects.

    The primary reason most people I know still have cable is because of sports ( football, baseball primarily ). With the NFL players doing what they can to offend and drive away their base, I wonder if we'll see a dramatic acceleration from this quarter forward as more people realize that spending 100+ bucks a month just to get sports is a waste of cash.

    • Are people really being offended?

      • Re:NFL might lead to an acceleration (Score:4, Insightful)

        by schematix ( 533634 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @10:54PM (#55371075) Homepage
        yah. i am. haven't watched a single NFL game all season and that comes from someone who has watched the NFL constantly for decades. i don't even consider myself to be extremely patriotic. it's not about the flag. to me the issue is deeper. its thugs protesting that when they break the law, they shouldn't be punished. i am not ok with supporting people who go out of their way to support people who break the law. As a white person have *never* had a positive interaction with law enforcement. I've been pulled over multiple times for "speeding" when i wasn't speeding (i'm not a speeder as evidenced by the fact i've had never had speeding ticket). these were all police mistakes or phishing expeditions. However, i remained honest and respectful in the face of false accusations, and the issues were resolved. If you run from the police, attack the police, or otherwise don't act as requested you are on shaky ground. it's not racism. it's stupidity and i don't support it.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

          What laws are being broken? I'm lost. The original protest was about the high numbers of black people being shot by cops, including those who did not run, attack, or argue. None of which deserve being murdered by the way. That these officers were exonerated by the juries is a shameful mark on the country.

          The new protest isn't really the same, it's about being offended that a moronic president wants to force the owners to fire them.

          There were no national anthems played at professional sporting events befor

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by ChrisMaple ( 607946 )
            That these officers were found not guilty by a jury indicates that the charges against them were false. Have any of these fool protesters ever served on a jury?
            Many in professional sports fought in WWII, although the cases I'm familiar with are baseball, not football.

            • I've been on a jury. There is always at least one person who refuses to believe a law enforcement officer would lie. I was actually on a jury that somehow had 3 people who were ex law enforcement or worked in a police station, and they were more dubious of a police testimony than the others were.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Actually, the protest are because unarmed men, women and children are being killed and not receiving justice. So far, most of the people these protest are about haven't broken any law and further for the outliers; As a nation, we don't kill our citizens when they break the law. We bring them to the altar and scales of justice. As an ex soldier, I find your commentary appalling as well as the behavior of anyone who is against these football players protesting. It's absolutely shameful.

      • Re:NFL might lead to an acceleration (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Sunday October 15, 2017 @12:00AM (#55371253) Homepage

        Offended might be the wrong word. What's actually happening is far worse ( for the NFL ).

        Let me ask you this: Why do people cheer for specific teams? Rosters change, coaches come and go, management and owners change. Hell, you can't even rely on a team to stay in the same city. When you come right down to it, people are fans of nothing more than a name. So how does that work? How does slavish devotion to a name result in very serious amounts of cash being extracted from fans?

        Tribalism. Humanity is, at it's core, tribal. Fans view these teams as "their tribe", which enables all the other behaviors that follow. And as long as that reality is maintained, the cash will continue to flow.

        Enter the protests; the protesting players are no longer a part of the tribe. They are shattering that reality. Without realizing it, fans are waking up to the fact that it's just a team name and one they can live without.

        So offended is probably the wrong word. If you offend a friend, you can apologize and everything is fine. The NFL protests, however, are creating a dynamic where the fans can't go back to being in the same tribe as their team's players. Even if the players profusely apologize ( which I doubt, given their recent remarks ), the fans will always have doubts, and those doubts will translate into a very serious loss of revenue.

  • Traditional TV (Score:3)

    by I'm New Around Here ( 1154723 ) on Saturday October 14, 2017 @10:13PM (#55370975)

    Why are they calling satellite and cable TV "traditional"? Seems like free, over-the-air broadcast is traditional TV.

  • One of the nice motorized ones. Not really for any worthwhile content but just to be able to put noise on and have the option in an emergency to watch TV broadcasts.

  • Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

  • As if they aren't using broadband provided in some way, shape or form provided by the cord!

    denial is more than a river in egypt

  • Three words... (Score:3, Informative)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Sunday October 15, 2017 @03:07AM (#55371717)

    Get an antenna. I just bought a new house out in the boonies and it made me take a long hard look at cable. At the old house I was paying $220 a month for tv and internet. I never really paid attention to the bill and was a bit shocked to see how much it was. At most I was watching 10 channels. More and more I was watching Amazon.

    I did a little research and ended up buying a Mohu Leaf antenna. $18 at WalMart. Damned if that thing isn't picking up about 40 channels. Now granted, some of them are shopping channels, some are religious, some are spanish but I'm getting all the local channels and the picture is fantastic. What my research also led me to understand is the the satellite and cable companies compress the signal so they can fit more data in their pipe. So 1080 doesn't really mean 1080. If you want to really see what 1080 resolution looks like get one of those antennas and you will immediately see how much sharper the picture is.

    Then i have Amazon video, which I consider a freebee since I got Prime mainly for the shipping savings. That has plenty of stuff worth watching. I stumbled across something called Pluto tv. It's an app on Roku with free tv and movies. It has commercials but so does cable - and I'm not paying anything for Pluto.

    I'm debating on getting Netflix again but probably won't. I have enough stuff to watch. And I'm saving about $150/month in the process. Life is good. The cable companies can go get stuffed.

    • > What my research also led me to understand is the the satellite and cable companies compress the signal so they can fit more data in their pipe. So 1080 doesn't really mean 1080. If you want to really see what 1080 resolution looks like get one of those antennas and you will immediately see how much sharper the picture is.

      Is Terrestrial HD so much differnet in the US?

      I doubt it. The bandwidth is more limited that cable/sattelite and so is compressed more here in the UK.

      Only way you are getting andwhere

      • "Is Terrestrial HD so much different in the US?" - Well in my experience, yeah it is. The images on the OTA antenna were much better than what I was seeing with my cable provider. Same channel, same content. Now I don't have any technical benchmarks to back it up but I know what I saw and it certainly looked a lot better to my eyes on the antenna. Your experience may be different and I can't speak to that.

        My point was that this cheap antenna brought in a lot more channels than I thought possible and many of

    • Just curious: what broadband solution did you go with at your new place?

      • Initially I looked at DSL but their bandwidth was laughably slow - 3mb/s. Then I considered HughesNet. But they have data caps and I was concerned about network latency. I eventually ended up going with a place that offers Microwave Wireless technology. My neighbor runs a home based business and he vouched for it.

        Essentially the way it works is they have a series of Data Centers that connect to the internet at large. They put up a series of towers and facilitate a connection using radio frequencies. They pu

        • Cool beans. :) I've heard some great things about microwave wireless. Too bad it hasn't seen wider deployment. :(

  • With the advent of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc, they were still able to hand-wring about being an ISP.

    Yeah... about that: Locally, they tried to block the UTOPIA initiative and lost. It's a fiber-to-the-premises service that gets you 250mbps symmetrical for $65 a month. Gigabit can be had for a bit more. Comcast has been pussyaching about it ever since, attempting to make the proverbial door hit the asses of former customers on their way out.

  • I used to spend over $200 bucks a month on data.

    Now I spend $20 for Republic phone, $40 for internet, and $10 on Hulu.

    Smartest decision I ever made.

  • services and support, right?

    Wait, you say they aren't doing that? They're raising prices and not improving anything?

    Oops.

  • Hmm. I used to pay 160.00 a month for cable. "Cord cutting" has saved me at least $3,600 so far.

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