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Television United States

Cord-Cutting in America May Have Already Peaked (fool.com) 161

Posted by EditorDavid from the keeping-the-cable dept.
An anonymous reader quotes the Motley Fool: Cord-cutting has been a massive thorn in the side of pay-TV distributors and television media companies for nearly a decade. After U.S. pay-TV subscribers peaked in 2010 at 105 million households, about 14 million homes have cut the cord, according to a report from Digital TV Research. The trend has only accelerated in recent years. 2018 saw nearly double the amount of cord-cutting over 2017, according to Leichtman Research.

But 2018 might've been the pay-TV industry's worst year for cord-cutting. The U.S. will lose fewer pay-TV subscribers this year than last, according to Digital TV Research. And the research firm suggests annual losses will continue to decline next decade.
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Cord-Cutting in America May Have Already Peaked More

Cord-Cutting in America May Have Already Peaked

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  • Maths! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:08AM (#58402598)

    "The U.S. will lose fewer pay-TV subscribers this year than last, according to Digital TV Research. And the research firm suggests annual losses will continue to decline next decade."

    Right. If you have a million customers and you lose half of them one year, indeed the losses you experience the next year from the half million remaining cannot exceed the half million you already lost since you only have half a million left. I know that's vastly oversimplifying the issue, but indeed if you have a smaller pool of customers and that pool shrinks each year, statistically you're going to suffer fewer losses. Less people to cancel plus the more you lose you come closer and closer to finding your solid "base" that make up your truly loyal customers--for better or worse.

    Whether this base of loyal customers is enough to keep the sinking ship from sinking faster? Well, that's yet to be seen.

    • Re: Maths! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also, the demographics skew towards the old side. Over the next 20 years, many are going to die rather than cancel.

      • The only way to get rid of Comcast, I guess.

        • Also, the demographics skew towards the old side. Over the next 20 years, many are going to die rather than cancel.

          The only way to get rid of Comcast, I guess.

          One would think... Comcast Refuses To Believe My Father Is Dead [consumerist.com]
          (Note: This is from 2010, so Comcast may be better or worse now -- taking bets on which.)

      • not cutting any cords [Re: Maths!] (Score:5, Interesting)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @12:10PM (#58404132) Homepage
        I have to say I'm bemused by the phrase "cord cutting."

        Most people get internet through a wire attached to their residence. Usually it's the very same coax cable that brings in cable TV, and often from the same cable company.

        They're not cutting any cords. They are just switching what company is sending their feed through the cord.

        (And, amusingly, people who get television by subscribing to DirectTV, which literally does NOT have a cord, but comes in over the satellite dish... are not cord-cutters.)

        • Very clever sir, very clever, but its cords all the way down.

          DirectTV may get the signal from the source to the satellite wireless, but there's still a coax cable going from the dish to the receiver :).

          In all seriousness though it seemed to originally be moreso applied to be people quitting cable and satellite after the digital OTA transition (since the number of channels typically went up and the quality of reception was then able to match digital satellite TV), and it just carried over to describe people

    • Re:Maths! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gtvr ( 1702650 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:28AM (#58402688)
      Also how many new subscribers are they gaining? I expect kids these days aren't signing up to start with, so they can't cancel something they never started using.

      • We cut the cord 4 years ago. My kids (age 15 and 11) have gone from only watching Cable TV, to watching Netflix-Hulu, to primarily getting their video entertainment from YouTube videos. They will watch cable when they go to their grandparents' house, but other than that they really don't care that we don't have cable. Every so often, Spectrum tries to win us back with "deals" along the lines of "only" $45 extra a month (for 12 months after which the price will rise, taxes and fees not included in this price

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bob4u2c ( 73467 )
          Comcast, umm I mean Xfinity, or whatever they want to call themselves these days keeps sending me an offer for $5 more I can get basic cable! Those go straight into the shredder. I've even had someone stop by and offer us that deal; to which I've stated that even if they paid me $5 a month, I still wouldn't take their cable.

          I also canceled AT&T DSL (1.5Mbit was too slow to stream) and DirectTv (I can't even begin to explain how bad AT&T messed that up). AT&T keeps hounding me with deals to

          • I actually tried CBS' streaming service when it first came out. I cancelled before the free trial was over. It had too many ad breaks (even more than Hulu) and was very light on content. They would claim to have all the favorite shows and then it would turn out that this was only a couple of seasons. I couldn't even catch up on CBS shows I fell behind on.

            I'll admit that I like Disney's content. From the classic stuff to their acquisitions (Star Wars, Marvel), Disney+ is definitely going to be a service I tr

      • you are correct and they are not counting the people who never get cable.

      • There are still issues with streaming services and new ones creeping up.
        For example.
        Disney+
        CBS All Access

        Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime/iTunes had been spots where you can get most of your content with one bill. However with these network only Streaming Sites, we are creating a case where we are paying near full cable price for less content, and canceling is a hassle multiplying itself.

        Plus streaming sometimes forces us to stick to watching the shows we saw all the time, and never getting into something new.

        Tha

  • It's too much of a PITA (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For most people, cutting the cord means managing multiple subscriptions to various content providers, paying much more for each piece of content than they previously were, and in addition maintaining a good broadband internet connection, likely with the same company they were attempting to 'cut the cord' from. The only way I've been able to make this even partially work is by selecting a single content provider for and only paying for a month, and then binging on their shows until I'm through everything I

    • You got a point... right now, you'll need Sling TV, Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access, HBO Go, AND Hulu to cover all of the shows most people want to watch.

      Soon, you'll get to add Disney TV and Apple TV + to that list. Add up all those subscription fees, and now you're paying a hell of a lot more than you paid for cable.

      People asked for All La Carte TV... now they can get it. Let's see if they enjoy it as much as they thought they would.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You got a point... right now, you'll need Sling TV, Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access, HBO Go, AND Hulu to cover all of the shows most people want to watch.

        At a certain point, you have to decide what you wantversus what you can live with and afford to pay for.

        Me, I cancelled cable, and have only Netflix ... if I can't watch it there, and if I'm not willing to buy it on DVD, it doesn't exist and I don't care.

        I'm not paying for half a dozen subscriptions, that would defeat the purpose of cutting my expensive ca

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You got a point... right now, you'll need Sling TV, Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access, HBO Go, AND Hulu to cover all of the shows most people want to watch.

          At a certain point, you have to decide what you wantversus what you can live with and afford to pay for.

          Me, I cancelled cable, and have only Netflix ... if I can't watch it there, and if I'm not willing to buy it on DVD, it doesn't exist and I don't care.

          I'm not paying for half a dozen subscriptions, that would defeat the purpose of cutting my expensive cable subscription.

          I have only so much time to watch stuff, and only so much willingness to shell out for more subscriptions. For me it's Netflix or nothing, because I have no intention of getting sucked into a bunch of individual subscriptions, I'll simply not watch the shows and not miss them.

          Pretty much: if it's not available on Netflix, Vudu, Prime or YouTube then I simply don't watch it.

      • Re:It's too much of a PITA (Score:5, Informative)

        by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @09:15AM (#58402986)

        People asked for All La Carte TV... now they can get it. Let's see if they enjoy it as much as they thought they would.

        Except this isn't A la carte
        What I wanted back then was a la carte pricing and selection from my cable tv provider. I didn't want to pay $150/month for a package with, e.g. BBCAmerica with a mandatory ESPN that I knew was adding $30/month to the package.
        But ESPN had cut a side deal with Comcast and there was no package with BBCAmerican without ESPN.
        You can try to redefine what a la carte meant. But AFAIC this isn't a la carte.

      • I guess it depends on how much TV you watch? I watch probably 1-2 hours of TV per week, so having a single subscription or two to focus on the shows I'm most interested in makes a lot of sense for me, and is a HUGE cost-savings. My "to watch" queue fills faster than my TV watch rate does so I'll be good spending my $10 for "all the TV I care to watch" for the foreseeable future.

      • You got a point... right now, you'll need Sling TV, Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access, HBO Go, AND Hulu to cover all of the shows most people want to watch.

        Soon, you'll get to add Disney TV and Apple TV + to that list. Add up all those subscription fees, and now you're paying a hell of a lot more than you paid for cable.

        People asked for All La Carte TV... now they can get it. Let's see if they enjoy it as much as they thought they would.

        We just watch less TV.

        We've got three subscription services... even they are not used much. When you're not watching to "see what comes on next" and just watching what you want to see, you end up watching less TV.

      • Re:It's too much of a PITA (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @09:37AM (#58403120) Homepage

        People asked for All La Carte TV... now they can get it. Let's see if they enjoy it as much as they thought they would.

        People can get "something" a la carte, but I don't think that "something" is quite what they wanted. The preferred a la carte approach was meant to be that you go to single provider (whether that's cable like Comcast, or online like Netflix doesn't matter), tick all the channels/shows on their menu that you want to subscribe to (or pay as you go per movie/episode, again, doesn't matter) and you have everything you want. One supplier, one bill, all the shows you want, and - most importantly - none of the ones you don't just because they happen to be part of a bundle. As a bonus, if that could be without having to endure any more ads than strictly necessary to keep the shows in production as well, so much the better.

        I don't see this fragmentation is going to last. It's death by a thousand financial cuts; there's no way I'm going to subscribe to a service for a single show; I'll get that from torrents, and I suspect I'll not be alone once more people realise how much it's costing them for all their various subscriptions. That's going to make it very difficult for smaller providers with only a few shows so I expect cross-licensing to start appearing soon enabling the larger players like Netflix or Amazon Prime to provide shows for people that don't want any of the CSI shows but do want the new Trek, for instance. Better for CBS to have a slightly smaller slice of the pie than no slice at all because enough a viewers decided they'll just torrent the one CBS show they want.

        • >I don't see this fragmentation is going to last.

          At least not user-facing. I could easily see a market forming for a bundling company that lets you just tick all the check boxes for the streaming services you want and sends you a single monthly bill. The Roku folks are probably well-positioned for such a thing - let them handle the nuisance for you, you just pick what you want and pay a single bill.

          • The funny thing is that the original Apple TV model was perfect for infrequent TV viewers. Just subscribe to the shows you like, and that's all you get.

            Unfortunately, it was extremely overpriced. I'm not going to pay something like $30 to watch a season of Westworld in HD when I can probably get for that price on BluRay and probably get a better watching experience. No buffering, no weird compression artifacts in the video or sound, and no slowing down the Internet access for the rest of the house.

        • Yeah... I'm not going to sign up for CBS All Access subscription just to watch the new Star Trek, either. I would consider trying the free trial if the new Twilight Zone episodes were any good, though, but the reviews for the two episodes out there now have been lackluster.

      • The advantage being that if i want to get get HBO Now for a month, then stop it after I've binge watched the latest season of GoT or saw a few must see HBO originals, I can. During that time, if I want to prioritize the viewing, I can disable my Netflix account, reducing my cost. After I am done with GoT, I can turn on Netflix, or maybe not - maybe I want to activate my account on Hulu again and get caught up on their must watch list. Once i'm done there, and I want to binge the new Star Trek, then CBS gott

      • If you only want a handful of shows from the other platforms, you can usually buy seasons at a discount later on - streaming or physical. I must be watching a lot fewer shows than most people. And when I start a show, I'm usually watching all of that before I start anything else in the same genre anyway. I signed up for a 7-day trial of CBS All-Access last year and finished the one show I wanted to see before it cost anything. Get over your FOMO, it's practically a mental illness for some people.

      • Re:It's too much of a PITA (Score:4)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @10:04AM (#58403302) Homepage

        If you are subscribing to all these services are you really cutting the cord? Seems to me all you are doing is sending your money to just different services. I subscribe to 3 services, Coursitystream, Netflix, and Hulu. I'm also watching more Youtube channels now. If it isn't on those services I probably will not watch it.

        My daughter added a philo subscription. Adding all that up it is still cheaper than what I was paying for with cable.

      • When I cut cable four years ago, Spectrum wanted to charge me $115 a month for cable TV. Instead, we signed up for Hulu. We already paid for Netflix and Amazon Prime - the latter for free shipping primarily though I've grown to like their video offerings. I had a couple of one-time costs (an OTA antenna), but otherwise I was saving over $70 a month. Since then, the price for Cable has gone up much quicker than Netflix/Amazon/Hulu. Could I subscribe to ALL of the streaming services? Sure, but I don't need to

      • You got a point... right now, you'll need Sling TV, Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access, HBO Go, AND Hulu to cover all of the shows most people want to watch.

        Need? No. Want? Not even. I'm not Most People, I fucking HATE reality shows, I hate daytime TV, I hate cooking shows and other than F1, the Reno Air Races and a few other oddballs, I fucking HATE sports. Why should I pay to get all of that just so I can enjoy what *I* want?

        I have Netflix because legacy DVD subscriber here. I have Amazon because I have Prime from when it started years ago. HBO? No. Hulu? Ok I have Hulu. And Crunchyroll because I love anime. I don't have any other services.

        • Because youâ(TM)re not paying for everything you have access to, youâ(TM)re paying your share of what you have access to. Which means that youâ(TM)ve been watching niche tv subsidized by people who just need 150 baseball games a week. Thatâ(TM)s what will hurt. Debundling means higher budget sci-fi is more expensive to watch.

    • >paying much more for each piece of content than they previously were,

      Are you counting content watched, or content available? It doesn't matter if I get 600 channels for $60, if I only actually watch 6 then I'm paying $10 per channel, everything else is just bundled noise. And a $10 streaming service is likely to have a lot more content available than one cable channel.

      And even that misrepresents it. The central questions are how much are you paying per hour of entertainment watched, and how satisfied

    • Take a step back and ponder for a moment: How much of this do you really want?

      I happen to have Amazon Prime, mostly for my shipping needs (in my country, without you can expect your stuff to arrive within 2-3 weeks). So I use this on the side for video. Do I get everything I want? Probably not. But then again, I'm not someone who MUST see "his" show. I watch what's offered. So I don't get to see, I don't know, Game of Thrones or Star Trek. Ok. Accepted. Whatever. If I really feel like it, I'll get the DVD b

  • What do they call pay-TV? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:22AM (#58402658)

    Honestly, when pay-TV refers to the old pay-TV companies and exclude new pay-TV companies, like Netflix and Hulu, then this way to count customers is bonkers. This is like when you have one bakery in a town which sells all the bread and you count how much bread and rolls they sell. Then a new second bakery opens, but you still count only the products from the first bakery. Suddenly people by less bread. And before you tell me that Netflix is not pay-TV. It is you watch it and you pay for it. Yes it is not linear and there is no classic programming. So what? It is just the modern form of pay-TV.

    • Add to this that, for some insane reason, people consider Sling TV (aka Dish Network over the Internet) and DirecTV Now (aka DirecTV over the Internet) as "cord cutting".

      Buying an Internet delivered pay TV package is exactly the same as escaping your local cable or telephone monopoly on pay TV by going to DBS pay TV.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The distinction is not if you pay for it, so yes it is somewhat mis-named. The distinction is in the amount of lock-in there.

      With cable TV you need to have cable installed in your house and a receiver set up. Around here it's a 1 year minimum contract too. So just deciding you don't want cable this month isn't easy, it means you have to sent the rented receiver back and when you subscribe again it's locked in for a year.

      With Netflix etc. you come and go as you choose. It's just an app/web site so you can fl

      • >it's not really cord cutting either

        You're right - nobody is cutting 128 cubic feet of wood, nor several strands of twisted or woven fiber, nor an emotional bond.

        Where electronics are concerned, the distinction between cord and cable is usually that cords are handled relatively frequently (phone cord, electrical cord, etc), while cables are typically mounted within walls or otherwise out of reach such as high-tension power cables.

        • Where electronics are concerned, the distinction between cord and cable is usually that cords are handled relatively frequently (phone cord, electrical cord, etc), while cables are typically mounted within walls or otherwise out of reach such as high-tension power cables.

          That's not true at all. It's a video cable, HDMI cable, coaxial cable, etc. Cord and cable are, alas, both overloaded words. They both have to refer to things which provide tensile strength, and also to bundles of wires (among many other things!) They also can mean exactly the same thing, rope made out of multiple strands. English is dumb, because it's defined by usage, and people are dumb. People with small vocabularies misuse words, and misuse becomes use.

  • Not exactly great news (Score:3)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:24AM (#58402666) Homepage

    The cable industry lost four quarts of blood over the last two years but next year they're only going to lose another pint.

    Wooo! Pop the champagne.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      This exactly. I don't see cord cutting as has reached it peak by along shot. If any thing, it is just now really beginning to take off. Cable TV, as it has been, days are numbered. Even the broadcasters know that. It is why you have Disney and CBS trying to start up their own streaming systems.

      I predict that that cable tv's current business model might have 10 years left. Then we are going to see a more networks start off with their own apps on a device like Ruko. Now the question will be if we w

      • They are playing statistical games - or at least the headline/article is. We've hit the point where, unless the percentage of people leaving Cable skyrockets, it's basically impossible for the number of people who leave Cable in 2019 to be greater than the number who left in 2018.

        For example, say there are 1,000,000 cable users 10 years ago. Every year since then, a percentage of the subscribers leave cable, and this percentage grows every year by 10%.

        So year 1, 10% of 1,000,000 leave cable, for 100,000 lea

  • Let's not forget that the Motley Fool is the stock market equivalent of the Onion. If you use their advice for more than entertainment value, you are the fool. I guess we will know in a few more years.

    • I'm with you. The fetid stench of industry propaganda and spin control whaffs strongly from this piece.

      And the bad news couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people, those beloved telcos and cable companies, hallowed for their integrity, visibility of billing, advocacy of the consumer, and friend to local networks.

  • It's happening more (Score:5, Interesting)

    by andydread ( 758754 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:40AM (#58402748)
    My 74 year old mother just cut the cord from AT&T/DirecTV to playstation vue. No she doesn't have a playstation. anyway her cost dropped from 125/mnth to 60/mnth. That was the driver for her to switch. If the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world keep gouging people then the exodus will continue. I guess I should follow her lead and drop DirecTV also but i haggle with them every 6 months to year to keep my price down to $64/mnth so I guess it's no rush. She was done with the haggling and just had enough. she still struggles to use the app and chromecast but she's determined stick to the man so she's getting the hang of it.

    • Try YouTube TV if you like the channel selection. It's rather awesome.

      We also use Netflix and Amazon (for shipping and renting on demand). Easy to navigate from the Roku, and we have the apps on a couple of tablets which is nice when travelling (offline Netflix is sweet).

  • Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:54AM (#58402866)

    The cable companies saw the writing on the wall and increased Internet prices to make up some of the difference.

    And with all the new, separate streaming services programming has gotten fragmented and aggregators like Netflix are losing content left and right that all these companies want to keep exclusive to their own streaming services which leads to the al a carte people said they wanted, but also leads to death due to bloodloss from a thousand smaller cuts

    • " separate streaming services programming has gotten fragmented and aggregators like Netflix are losing content left and right that all these companies want to keep exclusive to their own streaming services which leads to the al a carte people said they wanted"

      But that isn't "a la carte", that's just changing who is doing the bundling.

  • it's just now heating up (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08, 2019 @08:58AM (#58402890)

    I was out to eat the other day when I overheard a lady complaining about her cable bill approaching $200. A person at another table told her to dump her cable TV package in favor of Hulu. A person at a 3rd table recommended YouTube TV.

    Cable cutting is about to become A LOT more common.

    • Which is why cable companies are raising the cost of Internet access....

      • Which is why cable companies are raising the cost of Internet access....

        Indeed- especially in places (most of the US) where one cable company still has a monopoly on broadband internet connection. I ditched my $70 cable subscription 6 years ago to go with internet and Netflix.

        Now I'm paying $70 for internet because one company has a monopoly in my area and can charge whatever the hell they like because there is no competition allowed by the government.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          one company has a monopoly in my area and can charge whatever the hell they like because there is no competition allowed by the government.

          How often have you raised this issue at town hall meetings?

          • "Monopoly" doesn't always mean "government-granted monopoly".

            There hasn't been a government-granted monopoly in the US for cable TV since about 2000. However, all the incumbents have a natural monopoly caused by the high cost of a competitor rolling out new service, and the ease with which the incumbents weaponize that.

  • Cord Cut (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Honestly I'm starting a new 2TB drive and buying movies and TV shows on DVD. Pop em on the hard drive and off I go in to no commercials TV land of my own choosing and not the cable provider who would dare send me a bill every month for TV that is mostly advertisements.

  • With the proliferation and fragmenting of content from streaming providers, I can't say that this surprises me.

    Given that one of the drivers of "cord-cutting is the desire to save money over the (frankly) ridiculous cost of cable TV, the fact that one now has to subscribe to more and more streaming services to get content is becoming more of a downside. As each new content owner makes their own streaming service with their own content and their own subscription price, it's becoming less and less of a

  • During 2018, hardly anyone switched from telegraph to WhatsApp.
    As less people pay for traditional TV, the rate at which people abandon traditional TV is bound to decrease. There is a finite number of subscribers, after all.

  • Net Neutrality's end could reverse it (Score:3)

    by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Monday April 08, 2019 @09:17AM (#58403008) Journal

    With the end of Net Neutrality (hopefully not permanently), your Xfinity cable internet service could decide that you don't get access to Disney and ESPN through streaming; your U-Verse service could decide not to let you stream Sling (owned by Dish Network) and so on.

    If an of the big ISPs cut off Netflix or Amazon, there'd be riots in the street, but the smaller players may get cut out if Net Neutrality isn't restored.

    Any why doesn't everyone do what I did and turn a $100 DirecTV bill (no premium channels, DVR, HD) into a $30 Sling bill (ditto)? Laziness. It's easy to keep that autobill payment on your credit card, it's hard to empty out a DVR.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      With the end of Net Neutrality (hopefully not permanently), your Xfinity cable internet service

      I have FTTH from the local phone company. It was an uphill fight when Verizon ran the system. Because they were always cutting non-compete deals with Comcast (they promise not to do phones, we promise not to actually connect DSL service). But when Frontier took over, things got better.

    • Any why doesn't everyone do what I did and turn a $100 DirecTV bill (no premium channels, DVR, HD) into a $30 Sling bill (ditto)?

      My roommate watches Washington Journal, C-SPAN's call-in morning show. Sling Blue + News Extra doesn't offer C-SPAN.

  • Not if you go by me and what I plan to do.
    Once I get 5G in my area and a 5G phone I'm going to drop my cable broadband service like a hot potato and tether my home wifi to my phone and use my phone's data. No reason to have always on broadband when there's nobody home using it 10+ hours a day.

    • Not if you go by me and what I plan to do.

      Once I get 5G in my area and a 5G phone I'm going to drop my cable broadband service like a hot potato and tether my home wifi to my phone and use my phone's data. No reason to have always on broadband when there's nobody home using it 10+ hours a day.

      I suspect 5G will be more expensive than cable for a number of years still; but, it will be great to give cable a run for their money once it is established and prices drop. Of course, 5G doesn't work well in the rain, so it will be like the old satellite dish subscriptions that were around in the 90's like DirectTV where you lose connection when it rains.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I tried to watch some standup comedy on Netflix before I canceled my subscription. It was all very predictable and boring and safe. No one dares to say anything provoking any more.
    And most of the TV shows seems awful predictable as well.
    Well, there's not a shortage of things to do in the course of a day so it is not a great loss. :D

  • This is great news for them. And the Rat party. They are still running communist retreads though...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Congratulations on being a net negative to the discussion. Your polarized, barely-tangentially-related bullshit has made the world a slightly worse place.

  • The greedy bastards raise the price every year and have it saturated with advertising, 20-30 minutes every hour concentrated in the latter half. And the few good shows end up on specialty channels that cost extra.
  • We cut the cord and saved $155 per month by leaving Mediacom. We switched to 24-Mbps DSL with commercial-free Hulu and Netflix. Any local shows are watched with a digital antenna, which gives a superior picture over cables compressed crappy image. Cable has turned into a huge con game.

  • I can either pay $30 a month for cable TV and not get my downloads capped or I can pay $30 extra to have the download cap removed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Try to see if you can get a "super-basic" tier on the TV. In particular, if you get ESPN and don't watch it, you're being overcharged. The cable companies pay them a lot of money for being a default channel in a "regular" tier. If you watch local channels, try using an antenna, you may even get better picture quality.

  • Eventually: internet will cost $80 a month and internet + cable bundle will cost $90 a month.

  • All the 'negative' coverage in mainstream news about cord-cutting the last few months? Even NPR has had a couple of articles. Seems that slamming cord-cutting has become all-the-rage. We cut (6) years ago, and the only thing missed is breaking news and perhaps the winter Olympics. Netflix and a Roku and we're good to go. True our internet feed comes from Spectrum but they're sole provider in this area.

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