Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services 380
suraj.sun writes "Netflix and Hulu are convincing millions of cable, satellite and telco subscribers to cut the cord and dive into video streaming. That's the conclusion of a new report released this week by the Convergence Consulting Group, which finds that 2.65 million Americans canceled TV subscriptions between 2008-2011 in favor of lower-cost internet subscription services or video platforms. Though Convergence co-founder Brahm Eiley projects that the number of people opting out of TV subscription services will begin to slow in 2012 and 2013. Part of the problem, Eiley argues, may be the rising price tag for streaming rights to programming which could cause fiscal fits for Netflix."
Only Logical (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see:
* Cable TV with the few channels that air shows I want to watch: ~$100/mo.
* Cable TV with only basic channels + Internet ~$75/mo.
* Internet only: ~$50/mo.
Netflix: $8/mo.
Between stuff available online, stuff downloadable as a torrent and netflix, WHY would I want to watch something that is:
* Only available according to the broadcaster's schedule
* Chopped up to make room for 15mins of advertising at a minimum
* Where the ads are broadcast louder than the shows
* The shows worth watching are all scattered on specialty stations each of which costs me extra $$$ to watch, or broadcast in another country but not here and simply not available.
Cable TV and the 5000 channels of shit have priced themselves out of the market, the huge number of (mostly pointless) channels have spread the advertising potential so thin that none of them can make anything that isn't a cheap reality tv show etc.
TV is dead IMHO. The only problem is that the shows I like to watch still cost money to produce, and they need revenue from somewhere. Hopefully the deals with Netflix and other services are sufficient to provide that money. Hopefully this also kills off the shitty programming that isn't worth the time and money it took to make it. Let the viewers decide. I would much rather spend $8 per month than ever see another ad again in my life.
Re:Seems about right (Score:5, Interesting)
There's really no need to have cable anymore unless you want live sports. Practically everything else is available online for free.
That and cable news. I would love to get my parents to switch, it kills me to see them sending $100 to Comcast every month. But they are absolutely addicted to the talking heads. I have tried to introduce them to online news, but so far online news is mostly text based with short video clips. Until there is a mainstream site that streams 24 hour news presented by a human, they (and many others) will never give up their precious cable.
Cost and annoyance factor. (Score:4, Interesting)
First, yes, cable costs too much. I'm not technically old enough to "remember" the days when one of the major selling points of cable TV was the theoretical lack of commercials. After all, you're paying for the TV channels directly, why would you need commercials? But companies are greedy, and folks learned to tolerate commercials, and now you get where we are today. You're paying to be advertised to. And don't think I've not noticed the same creep happening with Hulu, originally one commercial per show, now 2-3 commercial breaks per half hour show, with 1-2 commercials each break... (However, Hulu's the internet equivalent of free-broadcast TV, so I cut it a lot of slack.)
What really turned me off and pisses me off now, though, is the return of the cable box. When cable was new, the cable box was a requirement. I remember it oddly fondly. Old fake-wood plastic with a sliding linear tuner, up to channel 35 or 55, even though we only got up to 21 or 22...
Then came Cable-ready TV's! You can just plug 'em in, use a remote, handy dandy!
Now, with the Digital transition, you're dependent on cable boxes again, which I understand from a practical stand point. Older TV's aren't Digital Cable ready. Annoying, but acceptable.
However, even with Digital Cable-Ready TV's you still need to rent a "box" from the cable company, except now it's a card. You have to have a cable-company specific decryption card, which my local company charges you monthly rent for, in addition to the "subscription" fee for digital cable, which just happened to increase as they transitioned these past 6 months. Plus, my understanding is, they can use it as a poor-mans Nielson, track my habits, make MORE money from me that way...
Oh, and let's not forget that there's a new format/standard for the cable cards that's coming out, and your "Digital Cable-Ready" TV may not be able to use the NEW card, so you're back on the damn box again...
Really? I'm really going to PAY for a service that's LESS convenient than it was in the 1980's? That makes my functional technology artificially obsolescent? I'm going to accept a BACKWARDS movement in capabilities and convenience? When I don't even use 95% of what they make me pay for anyways, but tolerated because it was "good enough, barely?"
Hell, NO. I'm taking advantage of the digital transition to drop cable. I'm not dropping TV entirely, I know myself, but Over-the-air, with Netflix, Hulu, and DVD supplements will be enough for me.
Screw 'em.
(Of course, I think those cunning bastards at Comcast, or some of them at least, have realized that as cable becomes more of a hassle more people are going to be Net-only households, thus their aggressive acquisition of so much internet infrastructure, but that's another delusional rant for another time.)
Well that and if your lucky like I am (Score:5, Interesting)
I get the basic channels for free. How? Simple, I have cable internet and phone over which basic cable comes through unfiltered. When I asked the installer about it he told me they do not have filters for that range. Since that gets me my locals, weather being most important, its all good.
What is really sad. I was paying for basic cable. I subscribed to the basic service using the website for 12.95 a month. Then come January someone at work mentioned that their cable bill went up by $5.00 and they say increases in internet charges too. Other people later chimed in to say similar. Well I did check my bill and lo and behold, I was now being charged 17.95 for basic cable. I called, cancelled it, and still have it all because my televisions can read it just fine. Best part about it, on their website it is still 12.95 but I cannot get it. Seems the local version of the same provider could care less about the web site pricing.
TL;DR. Cable is killing itself because the right hand doesn't let the left hand in on what it is doing. Worse, they have tried to follow this combo model where they aim for over one hundred a month in combined charges. I am at 62 now with phone and internet (16/4 btw) and still have more TV than I want.
I do know one thing, more people would drop cable and sat like a rock if you could stream HBO; there are people at work who get HBO and Cable simply for Game of Thrones!) and other "premium" channels.
A side note, my cable lists a cap of 250g a month. I haven't hit that cap yet but I am wondering if the improved show quality (1080p) offered by some services will push me over.
TV schedules need to revolve around me, not some schedule determined in a room in NYC or LA. Once a provider can time shift all their content then they will have value to me, but probably not as much as they will want to charge.
Re:Seems about right (Score:4, Interesting)
Aye, that was the last thread holding my father to paying for cable as well. I eventually convinced him to start reading his news instead of watching it. I showed him the CNN website and the BBC, and got him to start listening to NPR.
Text is superior to watching a talking head anyway; it's just hard to convince people of that generation--assuming your parents are within a generation of 50yo.
It came down to time. You can read a rundown of the news in just a few minutes that would normally take an hour if you were trying to watch it on cable with commercials. But I know a lot of people are devoted to their particular favorite news personality so that keeps them tuning into that channel every day.
Re:I opted out last year (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/commerciallength.htm [waynesthisandthat.com] for a piece on pop-ups, logos, and increasing time given to standard commercials. When I was a lad a half-hour TV show was about 26 minutes; last I looked, more like 17 1/2. Haven't owned a TV in five years and didn't use it for two years before that. I now watch a half-dozen shows from Hulu and some of the networks' sites.
Seems like every time I look at the local cable company, everything's fifty bucks: digital cable, telephone, "high-speed" Internet. I got a "deal" from Time-Warner for Internet for $35, 7 down, 1 up. Real-world mileage varies.
Re:Well that and if your lucky like I am (Score:5, Interesting)
People are watching less TV partially because there's less TV to watch in an hour.
I stopped watching broadcast TV except on the BBC in the UK because there were too many ads (I then stopped watching the BBC channels, because iPlayer is a more convenient way of getting at the same content). When I tried watching TV in the USA, I was amazed anyone put up with it. You had at least twice as many ads as we did when it passed my tolerance threshold.
I don't have a TV anymore, and I watch a lot more TV shows than I did back when I had one. Between iPlayer and DVD rentals, there's a lot of enjoyable content, and I know that if I sit down to watch a TV show for an hour then I will get an hour of entertainment, not 45 minutes of entertainment and 15 minutes of being annoyed.
ROI (Score:5, Interesting)
People have hit on two major issues as to why cable is dying: first, the on-demand issue (who wants to have to be in front of a TV on a weekday at 7pm to catch their show - or what if it only comes on at 2 am?); second, the cost (paying for Netflix and internet can be a lot cheaper than extended cable and internet, and it can offer more variety of shows).
However, I want to expand on the cost issue. For me it isn't just the rising cost, but the cost for comparable goods. Who here remembers when over-the-air (OTA) television stations when off the air in the wee hours of the morning? Ah, I fondly remember the "Indian" crying or the waving flag/bald eagle playing at sign-off. To fill their late night blocks, many stations (especially the independents) would buy up whatever was cheap - old movies, B movies, or whatever was in the equivalent of the discount bin for TV. Eventually cable took over with its 24 hour schedule of reruns - and TV viewing was good for insomniacs.
However, things have changed significantly in cable land. Late night shifted from a "lets fill the airwaves with cheap shows" to "lets make money by selling ad time to people who make 30-60 minute commercials - score!!!".
I am a night owl, I am most likely going to watch TV between 10pm and 4am. Not their main market, I know, but I've watched infomercials take over the wee hours of the morning, creep into the just after midnight hour, and now see the bloody things as early as 9pm. Heck, they are even creeping into the daytime hours now.
TL;DR Long story short - I dumped cable not only because the price kept were going up, I dumped it the minute I realized they were asking me to pay to watch commercials (infomercials) rather than entertainment shows during the hours I was most likely to watch! As mentioned, the shortening of shows due to increasing ads is hard enough to swallow - but when most of the channels of expensive extended cable are nothing but ads on the late night, why the heck should I keep paying more for less?!? This is why I dumped cable and even have to avoid many OTA channels. Thankfully, ad-free Netflix and Amazon Prime is there for us night owls.
Ad supported Netflix (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well that and if your lucky like I am (Score:5, Interesting)
My advertising threshold dropped to zero pretty quickly in 2009, which is when I cut the Cable due to a negligible benefit/price ratio. I tried Hulu, which was great for about two weeks:
The first week of watching Hulu, I had to watch 15 seconds of commercial per half-hour show. I could tolerate that, so I was fairly happy. In week two, I had to watch one 30-second commercial per half-hour show; which was starting to annoy me, but which was just barely tolerable. In week three, Hulu started showing two or three 30-second commercials per half hour show.
Seeing where this was ultimately headed, I stopped watching Hulu and subscribed to Netflix instead. That hit the perfect sweet spot, so that's where I stayed. Even Netflix's recent price increases (due to greedy studios raising what they charge Netflix) are way, way better than watching even one commercial on TV/Hulu (which is run by the same TV people who flooded us with commercials to begin with).
If the time ever comes where Netflix streaming has even one commercial, I'll cancel my Netflix subscription too.