Cord Cutting Accelerates as Pay TV Loses 1 Million Customers in Largest-Ever Quarterly Loss (usatoday.com) 133
Cable and satellite TV providers lost about 1.1 million subscribers during the July to September period, the largest quarterly loss ever -- and the first time the industry lost more than 1 million subscribers in a quarter, according to media and telecommunications research firm MoffettNathanson. From a report: After Dish Network reported its third-quarter earnings this week, the New York-headquartered research firm tallied up the publicly reported subscriber losses to arrive at the finding. Dish lost 341,000 subscribers in the third quarter, compared to adding 16,000 in the same period a year ago. Overall, Dish lost 367,000 satellite subscribers but added 26,000 Sling TV subscribers, the company said. Rich Greenfield, a media and technology analyst with financial services firm BTIG in New York, arrived at a similar conclusion and called it "the third-worst quarter in industry history and worst since Q2 2016."
Re: What's a TV? (Score:1, Funny)
A TV is also known as a Boob Tube which you will usually find wrapped around the chest of various girls until you get them drunk enough to take them off.
Re:What's a TV? (Score:5, Funny)
I have never heard of this device. Someone explain?
Its like a really large tablet you hang on your wall. Multiple people can use it simultaneously.
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Its like a really large tablet you hang on your wall. Multiple people can use it simultaneously.
But if you hang it on a wall, how do you move it around when you go to the bathroom or cook dinner?
And isn't the picture smaller than a tablet, considering how far away it is?
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But if you hang it on a wall, how do you move it around when you go to the bathroom or cook dinner?
And isn't the picture smaller than a tablet, considering how far away it is?
Easy. You don't use a TV, you use a projector and throw a picture that's 7, 8, 10, 11, 12+ ft wide (not diagonal -- wide.) Go big, or don't go at all. 7 ft picture seen from 9 ft away is roughly the same as a a 50 ft picture seen from the prime seats in a moviehouse.
To get the same picture from a phone you'd have to be about 8 inches from the phone.
See? TVs are useless. Get a projector.
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But my phone is a projector
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I do believe that this new technology called "broadcast television" may have a future.
They'd probably have more luck calling it "Wireless Streaming Video"... But who are we kidding, they'd call it "Free Unlimited Wireless Streaming Video with Wide Area Multi-Screen Synchronization (and sponsored content)". Watch what all your friends else is watching! At the same time!
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I find the touchscreen is really unresponsive on those things.
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They raised my bill to $80/mo (Score:5, Insightful)
They're well aware we're cutting the cords. If anything they like it. Right now they have to pay each and every channel to run them. With cord cutters I pay $100+/mo for the line and then $70/mo for all my services. Worst case they break even and best case best case they come out ahead. Internet is cheap to provide.
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Don't forget 18 USC 8008135: Causing severe butthurt to the OP.
Too much social engineering (Score:1)
Re: Too much social engineering (Score:2, Insightful)
Should just remove it now and use a pay-for-play on demand TV app. You can get GoT for about $3/episode or $23 for a whole season as soon as it airs. Or just use HBO itself.
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Question, are you swapping to streaming to avoid paying to watch ads or to watch other content. I dropped cable the same day they inserted ads, over a decade ago, I don't understand why people would pay to have some asshat scream at them to buy some rubbish. I do not watch free to air at home any more at all, once you start significantly reducing exposure to video ads, they become intolerable, YouTube forced ones, just leave me loathing the product advertised, really pisses me off, I am stunned advertisers
Still about the last mile (Score:1)
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5G wireless [wikipedia.org] is coming, hopefully it will alleviate some of the problems.
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...hopefully it will alleviate some of the problems.
I don't see why it would. The people who currently have control of your Internet infrastructure will also get control of 5g.
Competition is not allowed.
Re: Still about the last mile (Score:2)
Sort of.
Telcos are going to roll out 5G in areas they previously had zero presence.
This will put them in direct competition with Cable.
As a result, I would expect to see some decent price drops on Big Cables side in order to keep customers from jumping ship just before the deployment goes live.
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Charter bought Time Warner Cable after Comcast were blocked. That won't be the last buyout.
Re:Still about the last mile (Score:5, Insightful)
Then vote politicians in office that put that last mile under state or municipal control. So that people can be wired up @ reasonable prices. Then make the commercial competition a thing of what happens on the other end, on those wires. Infrastructure under people's control, content provided over that infrastructure = competition among commercial parties.
Oh US... politics crazy, you're fucked LOL
Re:Still about the last mile (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya might wanna google "Natural Monopoly" before thinking you can deregulate your way out of the last mile problem.
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In canada, government decisions have made it so all the major telcos have to offer competing services access to the last mile. They then are teh next step out to the internet, but the major monopolies (shaw, telus, bell, rogers) have to offer have to light up the connection and provide rack space in their CO's.
You might want to DDG that!
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Where is this the case? Everywhere I've lived (SC, GA), there has been exactly one "option" for power.
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Oh US... politics crazy, you're fucked LOL
It's not the elected, it's the electorate. Well, OK; it's both. Top voter issues are the economy and healthcare, not necessarily in that order. TV and Internet access doesn't show up on any list of issues voters want addressed. If it did, politicians might be motivated to do something.
cord cutting not sure how though (Score:3, Interesting)
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I'm using the HDHomeRun OTA receiver right now, and have for a couple years now. This thing is freaggin nice for my area at least. It picks up 56 OTA stations, then broadcasts them on the local LAN for any device to view. The box, plus new roof antenna, wiring, etc cost me about $200 up front, but considering most pay $100-200/mo just for TV, I consider this a MAJOR win. Through my own VPN connection (using ZeroTier right now), I'm also able to connect to the LAN streams from anywhere I want. Also, HDHomeRu
Don't you get free wireless? (Score:4)
I mean, between HDTV antennas pulling down 150 channels free and free wireless in almost every business, why would you pay for cable?
And if you set the Second Audio Channel to English for the Spanish broadcasts, you get English subtitles on all the soccer and football and baseball games. They even have free radio apps for English language simulcast.
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No, in civilized cities there is free wireless everywhere. It's a public service.
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Then let me clarify the claim as I understand it: Civilized cities fund wireless Internet access through taxation on grounds of investment in infrastructure used by the labor market.
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I'd rather swim naked in the Ganges than use public WiFi.
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Not everyone can get OTA easily like in my rural area blocked by small mountains/giant hills. Also, some people want local live sports like CFB, NBA, tennis, etc. :(
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You mean 2 channels. I can reliably get 2 channels over the air. On a good day, I might get up to 4. The weather has to be really nice.
Fees & Mandatory Equipment (Score:1)
Forget the ever rising cost of the TV service itself, it's the service fees and mandatory hardware that are the real killer. If I want to add TV to my internet it's over $40 a month more just for the mandatory router, box for the TV, and broadcast/sports/etc fees before they even tack on the charge for the TV service itself! A bunch of people here signed up for the '79.99' service when FiOS first came into the building, only to discover their bills are actually $120 with the rentals/fees tacked on.
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Monopoly (Score:2)
Sad because where I live for half the year, the cable service is also the only option for actual broadband. Spectrum really SUCKS. Currently I travel with my Dish service and use my internet access to watch my sports, which generally all I care about anyways.
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What can I say, I like Hockey, I have season tickets and go to as many SJ Sharks games as I can. I also really enjoy Futbol (Soccer). I'd say you referring to other people as monkeys makes you a much larger part of the problem. Pathetic.
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I'd like to see them bleed out of their ass, but they'll probably recoup any CableTV losses with their own Internet access.
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Sports seem to be the largest part of the problem. They overpay for broadcast rights, which means the costs get shoved down to the cable customers.
Re:Content Owner Suicide (Score:5, Interesting)
Advertising kills every medium that it has ever come into contact with. And now the web too.
Just think about Cable TV. It's partly the cable channel's fault, and partly advertising.
Originally the premise of cable was that you wouldn't get ads because you were paying. Yeah, right.
But the ads weren't too long or too bad. Those were the daze.
By the 1990s at least the ads paid for good cable content. Good documentaries. Good entertainment. Etc.
Then came: Reality TV.
Reality TV is cheap to make. Entertaining, at first, purely because of shock value. But it gets old quick. If you don't watch Reality TV then your alternative is reruns of old cable TV content, and "marathons" of reruns.
Then the content got shorter and the ads got longer. Oh, and remember when the volume level of ads was twice that of the content?
Now you get all ads, punctuated by some content that is probably not worth watching, and then when the long string of ads are over, there are bugs, and animated characters crawling and walking out right over the top of the content you're trying to watch!
Gee, and they wonder why people are cutting the cable TV cord?
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My sister and I (both retired) share a home. She's hooked on TV shows about people buying and remodelling homes. Where's the shock value in that? She also loves holiday baking competitions on the Food Network; again, no shock. OK, I'll grant it that sometimes there's a bit of a shock on Chopped, [wikipedia.org] or some similar show when somebody's eliminated that you didn't expect, but that's about it. I'm sure that there must be rea
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Yeah, having been exposed to cable TV a couple times in the past year, after not having it myself since about 2004, it occurred to me that I wouldn't want it if it were free. The amount of commercials is insane... and I'm not so averse to commercials, because the commercials on the lowest tier of Hulu usually don't bug me. They are much shorter than the 3-minute break every 6 minutes you get on "regular TV". I tried watching a movie on broadcast a few years when travelling and turned it off after about
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plastic seats at the bus station with a TV built in and 25 cents for 30 minutes. That's $5.00 an hour today. Cable/Satellite are good deals. Subscribe TO-DAY for all you can eat and be one of the beautiful people.
I remember seeing one of those once at a Greyhound station. It looked horribly antiquated when I saw it 20 years ago.
Nobody but themselves to blame (Score:5, Informative)
After decades of being a cable and satellite TV subscriber -- most recently Dish -- I finally dumped Dish this summer, when their bill reached almost a hundred bucks a month, and I watched, at most, two or three channels every once in a while.
I would've happily paid $20-$30 a month for channels I occasionally watch. And although I could still afford the franklin every month, I really hate wasting money for nothing.
So now I effectively pay three bucks a month for a VPN, and can find acceptable substitutes from, ...err, slightly shady parts of the Internet, any time I want. I even have pretty good luck watching my favorite sports team after a five year break when Dish dropped my regional sports network. I was already paying for my DSL, and although it's not as speedy as cable, it's ...not cable. And I'm saving a grand a year.
Cable and satellite providers are in a death spiral. They keep raising rates, because of the shrinking customer base. Which only forces more customers to flee.
And let's not forget the unexpected results from the cutover to digital OTA TV. I believe that the cable companies really screwed the pooch by not realizing the impact of digital TV will have on their business. One thing I did was pick up a cheap HDTV antenna from Wally World, and 30 miles from the city it can pick up all but two local channels (that was mostly an academic purchase, out of curiosity, since there's not really much to watch anyway). Both of my neighbors also have an HD antenna stuck to their windows. Many of my acquaintances in the city also dropped cable, and simply attached an HD antenna, and get their local channels in crystal clear HD OTA, and resort to Kodi+VPN for the rest.
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So now I effectively pay three bucks a month for a VPN, and can find acceptable substitutes from, ...err, slightly shady parts of the Internet, any time I want.
OF COURSE stealing is cheaper...duh.
Thanks for the reminder ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Been meaning to call my Cable provider and tell them I don't need cable TV anymore, just internet since I'm pretty much 100% Netflix. Called as soon as I saw this headline.
I'm tired of the annual "why has my bill gone up", only to be told that my discount from last year has expired.
In the process of cancelling they've told me my two home phones will go up by $5 each, and I told them to stuff their discount because I was tired of having to call every year to get it, and if they won't have honest up-front pricing, I don't want to play that game.
The way they tie these things into bundles amounted to the extortion of "well, if you cancel your TV you'll lose your discounts" ... great, last month the discount was $10, you've slapped another $10 onto my two phones, and I'm still net $40 less on my monthly bill.
Cable companies are assholes, and go out of their way to make it look like you're getting savings, but at the end of the day, you aren't.
I'm officially done with cable TV, and will likely stay that way. At some point I'll need to assess if having two land lines is working for me and the wife (cell coverage in our area sucks, and we both occasionally work from home), but for now at least the cable is done with.
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Landlines are pointless these days. Fewer features and much more expensive than a mobile, and I'm going to have the mobile anyway.
Sometimes you need one just to get internet via ADSL, but for making/receiving calls they suck.
Also disable the voicemail on your mobile. Voicemail just wastes your time, text is better or email if they know you. Alternatively instead of just disabling it change the intro message to "I don't listen to these messages, send a text or email" and use it to filter out people who can't
I figured as much (Score:1)
Whenever I get multiple mail in a week for all the satellite people I know their business is suffering. Never been a Direct TV customer but Dish was a OK service a decade ago, today I wouldn't consider such a service. I use a antenna for my local channels which provides me with great HD signal, and stream the rest of what I watch. Cable broadband with Comcast is fine, occasionally I get a deal where broadband cheaper with a basic TV package. I take those deals, but never use the TV service.
Re:Cutting Netflix / Amazon Prime (Score:4, Informative)
Reading books. Mostly, paper ones.
Money? Quality of shows? (Score:2)
People are getting bored with all the content?
The extra political content in new shows is getting to be less fun?
The quality of plot creation is now so low other types of entertainment get the spending?
Different streaming media is now more fun from the internet?
Good, riddance! (Score:2)
I am paying $100 a month for basic+ cable and another $100 for Internet.
Cable companies can't die fast enough.
They did it to themselves. (Score:2)
At $125 for cable TV and Internet I just won't bother.
After it went over $200/Mo I dumped everything but the internet access.
I don't see anyway they could get me to go back.
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I'm very excited for the SpaceX Starlink for this reason. I would give them $400/mo just to finally get out of Comcast's monopoly.
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Any time my bill goes over $100 I call to see what my options are. They always assure me that is the best they can do, so I can cancel and they transfer me where that tier can get me back to $84.32, which pays for 100/10 internet, local channels, and 10 cable channels. No set top box and no charge for the router or modem. Internet alone costs over $60. I also have Netflix, Hulu, and Prime, But I grow weary of the game. My electric co-op is laying gig fiber now so maybe I'll give them a shot when they reac
Over the air is growing, in addition to streaming (Score:3)
In case you haven't been following the news on this, at the same time that some cable networks have been folding in the last couple of years, new over the air broadcast networks and channels have been appearing.
Sure, it varies by local broadcast market, but look for this to accelerate and expand as ATSC 3.0 rolls out. The growth of streaming will also accelerate with the roll out of 5G.
Expect major changes in the TV industry over the next 5 years.
OTA digital is the way to go (Score:3, Informative)
For anyone out there who hasn't got the newsflash: OTA digital works great. You get your local channels for free and there's a good chance that the picture quality is better than cable. You can build your own OTA antenna, (instructions all over the internet) or just buy one from the dollar store. If you're feeling particularly rich, Best Buy has them for anywhere from $20-$100. Even if you have no intention of cancelling cable, you should still get one for those times the cable is out.
And I was one of them. (Score:2)
I cut the cord in Q2 and I'm very happy with it (Score:1)
I spend $34.99 per month on my internet access and I stream like mad.
LK
Time to pay the piper.... (Score:2)
This has been a long time coming and its just going to get worse for them. The price gouging and service fees, paying $120 a year for a control box that costs 5 bucks in hardware, 90% of the 150+ channels get are crap and you have still pay for "premium" movie channels...why would anyone be interested in paying for cable if you have an internet connections at this point unless you had too go through them?