Cable Nostalgia Persists As Streaming Gets More Expensive, Fragmented (arstechnica.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: TiVo's Q2 2025 Video Trends Report: North America released today points to growth in cord reviving. It reads: "The share of respondents who cut the cord but later decided to resubscribe to a traditional TV service has increased about 10 percent, to 31.9 percent in Q2 2025." TiVo's report is based on a survey conducted by an unspecified third-party survey service in Q2 2025. The respondents are 4,510 people who are at least 18 years old and living in the US or Canada, and the survey defines traditional TV services as pay-TV platforms offering linear television via cable, satellite, or managed IPTV platforms.
It's important to note that TiVo is far from an impartial observer. In addition to selling an IPTV platform, its parent company, Xperi, works with cable, broadband, and pay-TV providers and would directly benefit from the existence or perception of a cord reviving "trend." When reached for comment, a TiVo spokesperson said via email that cord reviving is driven by a "mixture of reasons, with internet bundle costs, familiarity of use, and local content (sports, news, etc.) being the primary drivers." The rep noted that it's "likely" that those re-subscribing to traditional TV services are using them alongside some streaming subscriptions. "It's possible that users are churning off some [streaming] services where there is overlap with traditional TV services," TiVo's spokesperson said.
It's important to note that TiVo is far from an impartial observer. In addition to selling an IPTV platform, its parent company, Xperi, works with cable, broadband, and pay-TV providers and would directly benefit from the existence or perception of a cord reviving "trend." When reached for comment, a TiVo spokesperson said via email that cord reviving is driven by a "mixture of reasons, with internet bundle costs, familiarity of use, and local content (sports, news, etc.) being the primary drivers." The rep noted that it's "likely" that those re-subscribing to traditional TV services are using them alongside some streaming subscriptions. "It's possible that users are churning off some [streaming] services where there is overlap with traditional TV services," TiVo's spokesperson said.
lol, limewire (Score:1)
Re:lol, limewire (Score:5, Insightful)
Millenials are finally buying houses (Score:2)
Millennials have finally started buying houses and plan on living somewhere long enough to buy a wire-in-the-ground annual cable subscription.
Not me though, I'm ad-free streaming till I die at this point.
Still too much garbage (Score:2)
When I cut the cord over a decade ago, rising cost was definitely part of the issue but it was mostly the crap reality tv model that most cable channels had moved to that really turned me away. Even the shows t
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For that reason, I'll never go back to cable. OTA and 1 or 2 streaming services at a time (at most). Currently paying about $25/mo and have plenty of shows/movies to watch.
I see you are a sensible smart person by keeping the OtA service. Many people forget it existas, and also forget that it is a good way to get things like local news, and programs that debut in the big four and get to the streamers the day after.
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As I have no idea of "Tanked" or "Gold Rush", I looked up Wikipedia, and I found the original Gold Rush that is a silent Chaplin movie and expectedly it's absolutely hilarious. The other day I was watching Plan 9 from Outer Space, Nanook of the North, and Nosferatu, all from Wikipedia. I don't know what other entertainment is needed other than the classicals that you can get this way for free (including ad-free).
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Plan 9 From Outer Space! That movie is beyond classic. One of the greatest masterworks of absolute cinematic shit ever filmed.
I'd highly recommend the Ed Wood movie that Johnny Depp stars in if you're a fan of Plan 9. He did a fantastic job of portraying Ed and his maniacal obsession with his own art.
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>"it was mostly the crap reality tv model that most cable channels had moved to that really turned me away."
^^^ This.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the CATV model, as long as it isn't priced astronomically and you have a good DVR. The main problem is that is has turned into hundreds of channels of sh**.
The number of channels I pull any watchable content from has dropped to maybe 3 now? And even those are contaminated. $150 a month for one person/TV for near-basic cable (and no, that amount doe
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To hell with cable (Score:4, Interesting)
When I moved to my current domicile eleven years ago, I signed up for "Basic Cable", just ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CW, Fox, and the "rerun channels". $30 / month. I thought about cable, but at $80 / month, I didn't think I'd get my money's worth.
Today my basic cable's $60 / month, and regular cable is $150. Double the price and half the value in 11 years.
Don't forget, the same companies are trying to control both cable and streaming. They're all working hard to consolidate the market as much as possible to drive up the price even further. Do you really think Sinclair and Nexstar want to merge just so they can kick Kimmel off the air?
I wonder what we should do about that problem... [theguardian.com]
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Sequential is the way to go. (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, in my mind you have to be an idiot to have more than one service at any time.
Buy a years worth of Netflix. Watch everything you want on it. Come January, cancel and buy Amazon Prime. ... repeat
Next January cancel and buy Hulu
Then Apple TV +
The crap ain't going anywhere. The things you miss on Hulu because you have Prime will be there waiting for you NEXT year. You pay literally 1/4 the price for getting the exact same stuff, just a bit time shifted.
I see no reason at all to pay for all the channels at the same time.
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The crap ain't going anywhere.
Oh really? [independent.co.uk]
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If they're not crap, chances are, they're going somewhere else that made a better offer. And if they are, no great loss.
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Not everyone is as cheap as you.
They don't want to live like you either.
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Nope, some of us are even cheaper. I won't even buy a "year's worth" of a streaming service, just one month at a time. I can watch everything I want on a service in a couple of months, because 95% of it is garbage.
You go ahead and spend $200 a month to keep all the services active, I'll use the extra $180 for other things I want.
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I don't spend $200/month. I simply don't value media that highly.
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I go even further. I have one per month at most. I renew one when I want to watch something and then immediately cancel it. It will prompt me if I go to watch something and its expired. I find some months I don't even a subscription... except for YouTube premium, but that's because YouTube ads are so bad and you get YouTube music.
Streaming Cable Alternatives aren't really cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
We're now at the point where YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV both cost over $80 a month. We've gotten to the point where you might be able to get a triple play (Cable, Internet, Cell phone) bundle for cheaper than a streaming plus fiber service plan.
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Makes sense.
Distributing live TV is cheaper over cable (Or has this changed?).
Cable got really bad with ads for a long time (Score:2)
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>"Nostalgia or collective amnesia? 18 out 60 minutes watching blaring ads?"
What is an ad? Oh, that is the thing I quickly zoom through using the TiVo. I haven't watched ads on TV in what, 25 years?
Frak the content providers! (Score:2)
I long ago decided content providers could lick my salty balls. I'm old enough to have suffered thru cable company monopoly abuse. I switched to DishNetwork and had them for years, until the native DirecTV TiVos were released, providing higher quality recording because they captured and saved native MPEG2 streams to disk, instead of a TiVo external to the satellite receiver recompressing the content and storing to disk. Soon after switching to DirecTV I got a call from Dish's anti-piracy dept basically accu
I have several streaming services (Score:3)
Even if I ignore the free Disney that's 80 bucks a month.
The closest equivalent cable package I could get with access to that content would be about $150 a month if I had internet through the cable company bundled. This assumes I don't want sports which I don't which helps but God help you if you want sports.
All I'm saying is that it is a hell of a lot cheaper to have streaming. If I go back to the days when I still had cable which was over two decades ago that's basically the equivalent of $55 a month. I think back then I was already paying a hundred bucks a month for cable with the bundle discount from the cable internet I had.
This entire article just seems like nonsense. To be fair I haven't looked in a while did the price of cable television collapse? Because the last I looked it was pushing $100 a month for a base package. The really really cut down ones I think are 70 or 80 but they are explicitly structured to cut you off from at least some of the shows you're going to want to watch. You're going to end up wanting to spend at least 115 a month to get the next teir up if you like TV
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So how's your mom's basement going for you?
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>"To be fair I haven't looked in a while did the price of cable television collapse?"
Mine certainly hasn't. With "loyalty" discounts that require I call EVERY YEAR and threaten to leave, the portion of my bill that is nearly "basic" cable with zero premium channels is about $150 with cablecard and taxes. For a single person to use on equipment *I* supply (TiVo). It is ridiculous. The ISP portion is $60 for 300/30.
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I pay $40 a month for 100/100 (symmetric) internet connection and use hypnotix to watch TV for free:
https://github.com/linuxmint/h... [github.com] (says linuxmint but works on other linuxes too)
more free to watch channels here:
https://github.com/iptv-org/ip... [github.com]
What an amusing coincidence! (Score:2)
Well, I was specifically complaining about how we used to complain about channel bundling on cable and wanted it a-la-carte; now that we have it, it sucks even worse! Now ABC/FOX, NBC, and CBS all want me to pay them separately?!?!
We thought we would save money by going a-la-carte. Now it's more expensive.
Re:What an amusing coincidence! (Score:4, Insightful)
We thought we would save money by going a-la-carte. Now it's more expensive.
Well, I think we did 'simple math' when we thought that, rather than 'real-world-math'. If my cable bill is $150/month for 100 channels, that's $1.50/channel. Since I only watch maybe 20 of them at most, 20*1.5 = $30/month for the 20 channels I watch. Who wouldn't want that?
The problem is that channel costs don't divide evenly. ESPN is very expensive ($8 or more of one's cable bill goes for just this channel), while Home Shopping Network and QVC have historically paid the cable companies for inclusion in the lineup. Public Access stations are both legal requirements in many jurisdictions, and the content is paid for by whoever submits it for broadcast...and again, roughly nobody would include it in their custom lineup.
Finally, there *is* a baseline amount of cost for the last-mile distribution. Whether it's got 1 channel or 1,000 channels, the infrastructure needs to exist. I'm not making any excuses for Comcast here, but someone needs to pay the right-of-way to the townships for the wire runs, the backend equipment costs money, the staff to service it, and the staff to answer the phone for CSR requests all cost something. Streaming services generally get away with chat-only support and don't have any wires to run.
So...while I'm not calling cable a good deal by any stretch, I *am* at least acknowledging that a-la-carte math would be something closer to $30 infrastructure + $10/month ESPN + probably-something-closer-to-$3/channel for the ones with actual-content, making that beautiful $30/month bill something closer to $80/month in practice.
Personally, I think that there *does* need to be some sort of court case that uses United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948) as precedent to decouple distribution from production, which would probably do more to solve the cost issues than anything else.
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It's also interesting that ESPN is not only expensive, but at the heart of why we were told a-la-carte wasn't possible. I still can't get away from it, despite having negative interest in anything they run. Why? Because somehow it's the cheapest way to get Hulu+Disney. How does that make sense?
Some separation of production and distribution might
I understand (Score:3)
There are shows I'd be interested in watching, but I'll never see. I'm paying what, $10 or so a month to see SNW. I am NOT going to pay $100 to get Netfucks/Apple/Paramount/Disney/etc. There are no multistudio bundles.