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Television Businesses

While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting (investors.com) 120

Posted by EditorDavid from the cutting-the-cords dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Investor's Business Daily: Shares in Charter Communications plunged after the cable TV firm reported first quarter earnings and lost more video subscribers than expected, also sparking a sell-off in Comcast and Altice USA... Charter said it lost 122,000 video subscribers, nearly triple analyst predictions for a fall of 43,000. Comcast on Wednesday said it lost 96,000 video subscribers, exceeding estimates for a drop of 75,000.... With Friday's sell-off, Comcast stock is down 20% in 2018, with Charter falling more than 24%...

Cable TV firms aren't the only losers. AT&T this week said it lost 187,000 pay-TV customers, including satellite TV subscribers and its U-verse landline business. AT&T's DirecTV Now internet streaming service added 312,000 customers. But AT&T garners much lower profit margins from video streaming.
Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.

MarketWatch notes that Charter also lost 100,000 customers in the same three-month period in 2017, calling the ongoing trend "a fundamental shift in consumer behavior."
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While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting More

While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting

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  • Not fast enough. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We need some controls on internet pricing though. Not sure we can expect that in the current US political arena.,

    • Your internet prices seemed to be subsidized by your TV pricing. If you no longer pay for TV pricing then your internet pricing will rise to compensate. After all, someone has to pay for the cable to get to your house, and that was likely massively financed, so there are continued payments due on the loans. You might have to learn to accept it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dk20 ( 914954 )

        Are you referring to the cables which were in many cases were installed 30 or more years ago?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by movdqa ( 1122661 )
          In our case, Comcast replaced copper with Fiber over a decade ago. They dug up the streets and put in new neighborhood boxes (our cables are underground).
      • thats not how that works. its just simple greed to keep there tv profits the same.
      • Lololol, people think "internet" is something expensive to provide, despite the fact companies just reuse existing cooper networks for the last mile and enjoy free peering agreements with the rest of the network (and can even blackmail to get paid to connect to other parts of the network, see Netflix)

      • Re: Not fast enough. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:06PM (#56521219)

        Bullshit, if in a 3rd world country I can get Gigabit fiber + TV + unlimited data 3G stick + mobile subscription with unlimited data plan, all for 25 bucks a month, then clearly something's very fishy in the USA.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rojash ( 2567409 )
          Same goes for drugs et al right - there are more naive rich in the US than any other country. Ask the Nigerians. Ask Reader's Digest. Ask 'As Seen on Tv'. Ask the Church - Naive religious widows of rich capitalist of yore have made the country what it is.

      • Re: Not fast enough. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Blymie ( 231220 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @08:35PM (#56521671)

        It's the other way around, actually.

        Now that no one wants cableTV any more, cable companies are left with massive infrastructure for a smaller customer base. For example, equipment to distribute TV signals over the wire, to replace TV commercials (cable companies do that in Canada, at least), and to pay for the product itself.

        Compliance with FCC regs for TV rebroadcasting, blackouts for specific areas, endless TV-only 'things to manage, support, and do'. Heck, even 'public access channels'.

        With a constant reduction in sales on that side, there's going to be overcapacity in manpower and tech/infrastructure for quite some time.

        Thing is, bandwidth is cheap, cheap, CHEAP! So is providing it. Just acting as a pipe though, doesn't allow for them to gouge you on 100 other things. It doesn't provide the same profit. Realistically, they could provide gigabit speeds for $20 per month, and STILL make a profit -- but, that profit would be very slim compared to all those packages and the rape that comes with them.

        In a competitive world, you'd (supposedly) have companies competing... but that doesn't happen most of the time with TV or Internet in most markets.

        So, I suspect internet is now subsudizing TV. And these complaints are just more blather and bullshit. They've probably also signed poorly crafted deals, where they perhaps pay $x per month for each channel, with a minor change per subscriber. A plus in the old days, a minus now.

        And of course most of these clowns are ALSO content providers. Which means they have to support all their specialty channels, but now with fewer and fewer people.

        Here's the amusing thing though.

        They think "HEEEY, they don't buy what we're selling.. well, we'll MAKE them buy it, but charging them more for something COMPLETELY UNRELATED!"

        Internet != TV. Yet they think raising the price on Internet is the way to go.

        No!

        Raise the price on TV/CABLE if it is more expensive. Then people paying for a failing service, will leave.. oh wait.

        So I guess they decided to tax others to support their failing TV business.

        • The reason why there is little to no competition is that by current law in most municipalities licenses for cable TV and phone are only allowed to be awarded to one company. In some places fiber is even considered a separate service. This is why places like Albany, NY (a state capital!) has zero consumer fiber service. Political cronyism and effective lobbyism (and most likely recurring payments to politicians) make it so that Verizon FiOS is ending at city limits. If there are artificially created monopoli

        • Re: Not fast enough. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Sunday April 29, 2018 @09:48AM (#56523429)
          If they hadn't been so greedy in the past, maybe fewer people would have cut the cord.

          The main companies are still seeing high profits. Their CEOs are still making 10's of millions of dollars per year.

          When the going gets tough, they just charge customers more to protect their profits knowing the customer is screwed since the market lacks true competition.

          I cut the cord in April, 2009. I paid $46.95/month for internet. Now I pay $80.70/month. Service hasn't gotten any better during that time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            Just to be clear - your internet speed is the same today in 2018 as it was 9 years ago? I find that unlikely.

            Mind you, I do agree that providing 100mbps today is technologically as costly as 10mbps a decade ago (give or take but it makes the point).

            Yes, the cable companies have long feared what the internet and streaming would do to their revenue and, instead of taking a useful outlook, they hid their heads in the sand like the RIAA and tried to force everyone to perpetuate their doomed business model. No

      • Your internet prices seemed to be subsidized by your TV pricing. If you no longer pay for TV pricing then your internet pricing will rise to compensate. After all, someone has to pay for the cable to get to your house, and that was likely massively financed, so there are continued payments due on the loans. You might have to learn to accept it.

        Cable TV prices skyrocketed long before cord cutting started hurting their bottom line. Netflix et al are not viable replacements for TV, people are simply making do

      • The how come the many ISPs in Europe can offer better services for a fraction of the cost in the US? They often do not even have TV as a service in their portfolio. The cable to home is a one time cost and comparably low given that telco infrastructure is installed essentially the same way as for the past 150 years: string wires from pole to pole. Very error prone, but also dirt cheap. Cabling is the same cost for TV as well. If cabling is the cost driver, then wireless operators should be able to offer ser

    • Re:Not fast enough. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jody Bruchon ( 3404363 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @04:42PM (#56520875)
      I am being charged an extra fee for only having internet. Seriously, they have a $10 fee on my bill every month for NOT having a service.

      • Well, that's what you get for denying them additional revenue! What, you think you have the right to just pay for what you use? Silly peasant.

  • Sounds like (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @03:40PM (#56520639)

    A good time to buy in. There's too much money at play for these companies to simply fold up.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ark1 ( 873448 )
      They are not folding but adapting. By adapting I'm changing laws to repel net neutrality and turning Internet service into old school Cable subscription model.

    • No, but they will definitely shrink.

    • There's too much money at play for these companies to simply fold up.

      This is a really bad heuristic. P/E ratio is a better way to figure out whether it's a good time to buy or not.

  • BullSh!t Flag waived (Score:4)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @03:52PM (#56520687)
    Due to the Trump tax breaks and repeal of net neutrality, the communications cabal is racking in record profits:
    Comcast Q1 2018 profit beats expectation:
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/2... [cnbc.com]

    Verizon : Q1 2018 MASSIVE profit boost of 32%
    https://www.highgeekly.com/bus... [highgeekly.com]

    These companies are carving up the internet (Comcast is "bundling Netflix", oh, and if you don't pay the higher Comcast rate, your traffic 'flix gets punished aka: deprioritized) and monetizing user data just EXACTLY as the NN supporters claimed would happen. The result is massive profits... which drive stock prices, higher consumer costs, and poorer user experience...
    • And yes, AT&T missed Q1 earning results, but that's likely due to FirstNet not being ready yet. https://www.firstnet.com/ [firstnet.com]
      firstnet is a $40B, 25 year deal that AT$T won the sole provider single contract to provide 1st repsonder communication services. One of the miles stones is that FN was to be operational by 1/1/2018, AT&T claims it is, but it's not. There's no fixed IP's yet *(necessary end point VPNs) and band 14 isn't live - without BOTH of these, FN is functionally useless.

    • Due to the Trump tax breaks and repeal of net neutrality, the communications cabal is racking in record profits:

      Comcast Q1 2018 profit beats expectation:

      https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/2... [cnbc.com]

      Verizon : Q1 2018 MASSIVE profit boost of 32%

      https://www.highgeekly.com/bus... [highgeekly.com]

      These companies are carving up the internet (Comcast is "bundling Netflix", oh, and if you don't pay the higher Comcast rate, your traffic 'flix gets punished aka: deprioritized) and monetizing user data just EXACTLY as the NN supporters claimed would happen. The result is massive profits... which drive stock prices, higher consumer costs, and poorer user experience...

      They got the bump from the tax cut in December when it passed [yahoo.com], any NN stock bump would already be priced in as well.

      But now the market is responding to the fact that people are dropping their cable subscriptions faster than expected.

      • Because the companies do not offer a service fast enough that is appealing to consumers. I have no problem with Verizon's FiOS service, especially since they offer symmetric Internet access unlike Comcast. That is a big deal when your kids run their own Minecraft servers. I also have no objections to locking in a two year contract (or even longer) at a fixed price.....as long as it doesn't clock in at the same cost as my mortgage. First service I'd cut is VoIP. Google Voice or even the granddaddy of VoIP Ma

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by movdqa ( 1122661 )
      Comcast and Charter are both down 30% in the past three months.

    • Keep in mind that stock price is based on some weird gut feeling of how a company might perform in future, not on current profitability.

    • Every country deserves the government it has. Your fault for voting a cheeto and other big business shills into office.

  • have no choice, cable internet is the only access. Unless you still have a landline and want to suffer with DSL or dial-up, so the cord isn't cut, just the bleeding costs of multiple services from one of the local monopolies.

    But a year of (an antenna) netflix, amazon prime, and hulu costs less than a couple months of cable tv.

    And for the most part, it's all content. Commercials for the most part don't exist on the streaming solutions...

    • i dont suffer with my 24mb dsl. my prices are lifetime locked. i dont have to deal with the cable provider etc.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by movdqa ( 1122661 )
      DSL performance tech has improved quite a bit. Last year, they started offering 14 Mbps DSL in my area. I was unable to negotiate with Comcast before then. After they came in Comcast was willing to negotiate. I didn't really want DSL but they made for a valid negotiation option. If I could get DSL at 25 Mbps, then they are more of a viable option. I would only need to use them for three months and could then go back to Comcast with a promotional rate (which I'd try to get for 2 years). Telecomm companies re

      • DSL performance tech has improved quite a bit. Last year, they started offering 14 Mbps DSL in my area. I was unable to negotiate with Comcast before then. After they came in Comcast was willing to negotiate. I didn't really want DSL but they made for a valid negotiation option. If I could get DSL at 25 Mbps, then they are more of a viable option. I would only need to use them for three months and could then go back to Comcast with a promotional rate (which I'd try to get for 2 years). Telecomm companies really hate losing customers.

        I'm probably at least 3 miles from the closest place I could provision any DSL/ADSL services, the only fiber around here is in the corn fields.

        Also the phone company cut the two phone lines on my property after I ditched them 20 years ago.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by movdqa ( 1122661 )
          Well I know how that feels. I've been waiting for DSL to provide decent speeds for 8 years. If the cable company has a monopoly, then there's not much you can do. I had though of using an unlimited cellular plan for three months and then going back for promotional rates but it would have been too much trouble for the amount of money saved. It's like what you have in a lot of my state. I just live in a large enough town to have options.
          • Common issue in the US, which is why dialup is still widely popular. Rather sad for a country that wants to take leadership in essentially all areas. I suggest you write to your local politicians and chambers of commerce. With broadband the opportunities for people to stay put and work remotely are significant. When you move away so that you can have essential services it will remove voters, local consumers, and cost the town more money for other services such as water and sewer (if you happen to have those

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by movdqa ( 1122661 )
              I don't think that I'd move to a place that didn't have realistic broadband as my workplace has the expectation that you may get called at any time to work on something.
      • Yep, acquiring and setting up customers is expensive. I suggest you tell Comcast what your plan is and ask for the promotional rate to be locked in for a two year commitment. If Comcast has any business sense they will agree to that. Or if you are OK with what you pay right now for Comcast service make that your offer. I do that with Verizon. I lock in current price and service package for 2 years. So far they always accepted that plus a few bucks increase.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by movdqa ( 1122661 )
          I have a two-year contract right now. But there's only a year left on it. A friend did the same thing (I told him about it) and he was up this year and they jacked his price up to the retail price. He called, gave them hell and they gave him his old price for another two years. He has Consolidated Communications Fiber as an option in his city.
  • they're still the Gatekeepers to virtually all content. They can raise the price as high as they want. WallStreet has to know that.

    • they're still the Gatekeepers to virtually all content. They can raise the price as high as they want. WallStreet has to know that.

      Offering media means you're offering special content no one else can deliver, you can charge a higher premium.

      Once you're just a utility all you can sell is bits, consumers find it a lot easier to compare packages so margins are lower.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The deal in the past was to buy a plan to watch movies and series on a TV.
      With streaming that cost is now much lower for as many hours of new movies and series.
      The number of hours people have to watch cant be changed every day.
      The costs of cable cant be changed quickly as they have so much to pay for. Movies, series, sport and exclusive content.
      Streaming looks like a much better deal to average users who just want a few hours of new TV shows and who want to save on costs.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by movdqa ( 1122661 )
      If they raise rates high enough, then competition shows up, at least in metro areas. Folks in rural areas generally get a raw deal with only one realistic provider. And I don't consider 1.5 Mbps DSL realistic service.
      • No, it won't! Local laws typically prohibit more than one license holder per service. If company X has cable and company Y has phone then no matter how expensive they get there will be no more competition. The only thing that will happen is them losing subscribers. You need to bitch to your local politicians to fix that moronic setup.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by movdqa ( 1122661 )
          Boston has Comcast, Verizon and RCN and my neighborhood has Comcast, Consolidated and DirectTV as providers. So you can have choice in cities. Comcast is very good at playing the political game. They provide lower rates for low-income folks, and do good works in big cities and I assume that the Mayor gets some credit and photo ops with those. Our situation is much improved with three realistic options. I really want Comcast service but competition helps in negotiations.

  • I, for one, do not welcome our cable overlords.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Squirmy McPhee ( 856939 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @04:16PM (#56520773)

    When I left the US a decade ago, I was paying about $100 a month to Comcast for internet service and basic cable (no premium channels, no HD, not that it mattered since I didn't have an HDTV). Today in France, I pay €39.99 a month for basic cable, internet service, VOIP including free international phone calls, and all the mobile phone calls and text messages I can make (within France, international texts typically run me about €0.20 a month). My parents in the US, for that same bundle of services, are paying more than $200 a month.

    I can't really see myself doing anything but streaming TV if I ever move back to the US. I enjoy TV, but I don't need it. Why should I spend a bunch of money supporting a business model that doesn't really serve me?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can even pay less. I'm with Bouygues paying 3euros per month for illimited calls/20gb/etc.., and 8euros for the fixed line (same stuff as yours). Or you can find in venteprivee.com offers with free with the fixed line at 2 euros, and the cellphone 1 euro (they have those offers every 3 months)

  • But I still need Charter for Internet, and they're charging me $100 fucking dollars a month.

  • They make lots on wireless and they own the fiber, they also moved a lot of their uverse customers over to directv which lowers ATT's costs.
    ATT's uverse has the advantage of not being the fastest but being cheaper and good enough for most people. ATT also doesnt have the customer hate that comcast does.

    • Back in the old days, AT&T prided itself on 99.9% uptime, no matter what happened. If something made you lose your power and phone service at 2 AM on a Saturday night, the odds were that your phone service would be back up before you had power. This may not seem like much, but at least you could call friends and family and let them know you were OK, or ask them for anything you might need. I don't have service with the new ATT, but I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't have that kind of corporate cul

  • they have nobody to blame but themselves. Nickle and dime their customers to bankruptcy with all their different fees, forced packages, and more. they should have seen this coming. They fooled themselves into thinking their customers will put up with price increases every few months. I cut the cord over 10 years ago and never looked back.

  • They have it covered. (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:07PM (#56521221) Journal
    So what if you are streaming? Most of the streaming is done over the "tubes" owned by these cable companies. Its a matter of time before they rake in more in internet service than in cable tv.

    Unless there is a real competitor to the cable broadband pipeline to the homes, the cable companies will settle into a new revenue pattern.

  • Good by at $20 for Comcast (Score:3)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:14PM (#56521245) Homepage

    COMCAST is trending back to $20/share where it will be a good buy. With the repeal of Net Neutrality, they will be back with a vengeance. Nothing stopped them before from overcharging and nothing will stop them from making us pay to be in the Internet fast lane, even though we the taxpayers paid to build their networks and rural America is still dark.

    So you might as well buy their stock at $20 and make some money on the comeback since that is all you will ever get out of them, other than a high monthly Internet service bill.

  • Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.

    I know they can sell their services at whatever price they want, but what are they trying to compensate exactly? Less people watching cable means less expenses on the TV side, doesn't it? It only looks like a cash grab to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Its their network product to "sell" per month.
      Want a different ISP with lower costs? Shop around.
  • These guys are going to get an introduction to the "positive feedback loop" concept. The hard way.

  • You reap what you sow (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:43PM (#56521365)

    If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.

    Instead they created the perfect conditions for streaming providers to experiment with how to deliver good quality video over the internet and totally bypass the ISP as an issue, or like Netflix work out how to get hosted elements inside a provider...

    As cable companies become nothing more than very bad ISP's, I will just pity them for what could have been.

    • > If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or
      > Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning
      > us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.

      It's the content-owners' fault. E.g. Disney owns ABC, multiple ESPN channels, and multiple Disney channels. They offer *ALL-OR-NOTHING*. I.e. if a cableco wants ABC and Disney channels, they *MUST* put ESPN on basic on 80% of th

  • Companies need to change and be cheaper.

  • Noooo! Must have TV! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This has got to stop. Coal, nuclear, oil, and now TV! Make America Great Again! Ban this internet stuff and bring back Happy Days!
  • It was good to start with, and they've just about doubled since I started with them. And talking to folks online the only way I can get a good rate is to switch over to Dish...and then, after they hike things up to Annoying do it back to DirectTV.

    Really very annoying. JUST LET ME PICK MY OWN CHANNELS and we can go from there.

    Ferret

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      As you switch your multichannel pay TV from cable to satellite, are you also planning to switch your Internet from cable to satellite? Enjoy paying overage penalties to your satellite ISP when your desktop or laptop computer running the most popular PC operating system decides to download gigabytes of feature updates because its publisher neglected to provide a GUI to change the media cost setting for Ethernet.

  • The current cable box has to get permission from a head end every time it powers back on. It also gets your list of channels. The cable co's could al la carte the current system today.

  • We haven't owned a TV nor "watched TV" in a decade (was a 15" blue night special, at that). Same with streaming.

    We simply fail to see what is good, interesting, necessary or attractive about TV (or cable, or most other online shows and things you can watch).

    All of us read, think, and talk instead. A bit like Fahrenheit 451 ...

  • Cut the cord 3 years ago, and have never been happier. Had Sling TV for a while, that was alright. YouTube TV came available in my area, tried that out and liked it a little better than Sling and switched to that.

    I get my internet from the local phone company, who has no skin in the content provider arena, and I couldn't be happier. Well.... if their gigabit connection was in my area, I'd probably be a little happier, but I've got a 50/20 connection from them, and a static IP address, for a somewhat reason

  • 1. Raise TV rates to an absurd level
    2. Wait for the vacuum to be filled by alternatives
    3. Lose your TV customers
    4. Raise Internet rates to an absurd level
    5. Wait for the vacuum to be filled by alternatives
    6. Lose your Internet customers
    7. Go bankrupt

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