Another 1.8M People Just Ditched Cable TV

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When are cable companies going to get with the program? Personally, I think lower prices and a la carte channels would go along way towards customer retention.

Another quarter, another dismal set of numbers for the TV business. About 1.8 million people ended their cable TV subscriptions in Q2 2013, according to analysts at SNL Kagan:
  • There were 366,000 total net losses across all TV/broadband subs in Q2
  • Cable TV suppliers lost 1.8 millions subs.
  • But telco companies — internet providers who also supply cable TV, in other words — gained 400,000.
  • 911,000 U.S. homes have cut the cord in the past year, according to MoffettNathanson.
  • The rate of losses is increasing. In Q2 2012, only 325,000 subs were lost, according to Leichtman Research Group.
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If they lost sports exclusively their subscriptions would plummet to nothing.

Cooking shows are online
Kid shows are online
News is posted online and rebroadcasted online
More and more people are waiting for season dvds

The only real strong arm they have left is sports.
 
I would have ditched cable as well if it wasn't for Football, and NASCAR to a much lesser extent. I never, ever just turn on the TV to see what's on.
 
Personally, I think lower prices and a la carte channels would go along way towards customer retention.
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Nope. The whole concept of "TV programming when the producers want to show it" is now out the window. This is the age of "Programming when the viewers want to watch it." Nothing will stop this tide. TV stations and networks are out the window. It's all going to be served from the internet in the very near future.
 
Could it also be partly because of the economic situation, where people are tightening their belts, and doing away with 'luxuries'?
 
312 million continue to get high speed Internet from their local cable provider because it's their only option.
 
Wrecked Em said:
312 million continue to get high speed Internet from their local cable provider because it's their only option.
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Well, it's either that or from their phone company, whose reliability and customer service is even worse.

I would give my left testicle for a decent ISP.
 
With the BS customer service I just went through with Comcast, I don't blame people for ditching these ass holes.

A friend of mine kept being told by Comcast reps that it's cheaper to get Net/Phone/TV bundle, than just TV/Net (this person doesn't use the phone). After the bill continued to climb, I finally became involved and called Comcast bluff.

The first customer service told us that my friend did not have phone active on the account so there was no reason to switch. I said I can prove we do, they said no thanks, but did quote a price for Net/TV that was $45 cheaper than current bill. When we said we want to do that, they said we had to call a number to cancel service. We called the other number and they told us again that they can make a way for Triple Play to be cheaper than just Net/Cable (like each of the previous two years). The "cheaper" price was more than the Net/TV price quoted earlier. So we called them out on it and they finally agreed to give us just Net/TV for the $45 month savings. Both reps flat out lied to us, and lied to my friend multiple times about this over the past few years.
 
I won't go back until I can buy channels a-la-carte. I want the local channels, Paladia or whatever plays music 24/7, the food and travel channels, and maybe other channels that don't play reality shows, and that's probably it.

They're going to have to cave in within my lifetime. I have at least 15 games on Steam I still need to play so I can wait for TV.

Grimham said:
I would have ditched cable as well if it wasn't for Football, and NASCAR to a much lesser extent. I never, ever just turn on the TV to see what's on.
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I think my sister buys cable just for the football season and then drops it.
 
Hopefully nfl will get a clue and get their own channel on roku or damn xbox.
I dropped cable, for the garbage content it wasn't worth the cost. Only kept internet and between nextflix and hulu and Amazon prime I am pretty much set.
 
bigdogchris said:
With the BS customer service I just went through with Comcast, I don't blame people for ditching these ass holes.

A friend of mine kept being told by Comcast reps that it's cheaper to get Net/Phone/TV bundle, than just TV/Net (this person doesn't use the phone). After the bill continued to climb, I finally became involved and called Comcast bluff.

The first customer service told us that my friend did not have phone active on the account so there was no reason to switch. I said I can prove we do, they said no thanks, but did quote a price for Net/TV that was $45 cheaper than current bill. When we said we want to do that, they said we had to call a number to cancel service. We called the other number and they told us again that they can make a way for Triple Play to be cheaper than just Net/Cable (like each of the previous two years). The "cheaper" price was more than the Net/TV price quoted earlier. So we called them out on it and they finally agreed to give us just Net/TV for the $45 month savings. Both reps flat out lied to us, and lied to my friend multiple times about this over the past few years.
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This sounds just like every Comcast commercial ever created:
Buy our Triple Play (Net/TV/Phone) for only $5.00, we swear it's faster than FIOS and cheaper than individual services and cheaper than everyone else; it's a limited time deal for new customers. P.S. FIOS Sucks.*

Then in the smallest font ever at the bottom of the screen:
This special offer is only for 90 days, only good during solar eclipses that happen on the 13th day of the 5th month of the next leap year that ends in 7; after 90 days Triple Play costs $Millions per month. P.S You're a Sucker*
 
I really only watch F1 and the occasional race in another series.

I would like to have cable internet, but when I ordered they (Charter) went to the wrong house and then argued with me over the phone about me not being home. Literally like this: "I am standing in my drive way" 'No you are not', "what address are you at?" "Your house" "No, I mean what address on the house you are at" "Yours", etc. etc. etc.

Once that was sorted and they came to the correct house, I'm told that they can't install because the work order has the wrong address. Called the main office and.....let's just say it got to the point where I said never mind - biggest bunch of buffoons I've ever dealt with.
 
I'm in that group.

Although, I am tempted to start up again once Google comes to town. Their offering seems fair for sure, so I'll probably give them a shot.
 
Between Netflix and xbmc I haven't needed cable in three years. So glad I cut the cord. Wish I could lower my Internet bill tho. Comcast $69 a month after taxes....
 
Judging by the number of new Spanish language channels, I don't really feel like I'm the intended target audience of Cable TV anymore.
 
I have been off cable for about 6 years now and I don't miss it one bit. Now the wife on the other hand keeps swearing that we need to get cable even though she can access all her shows online, not going to happen though :) .
 
I dropped cable last week. I still get my interwebz from them though. Much faster than dsl here and no fios in my hood yet.
 
I havent had cable since the 90's and got rid of dish/directv in 2003. I do not even watch OTA much. Who the hell needs to watch crap like Big Brother every night? I would watch TV again if they actually put something on worth watching!
 
GotNoRice said:
Judging by the number of new Spanish language channels, I don't really feel like I'm the intended target audience of Cable TV anymore.
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I don't know about you but I love having tons of Shopping channels. Who needs the internet when I've got like 5 of them?
 
Outside of sports and the occasional show, I do not watch TV. Cutting sports, I may watch an hour or two a month. I rarely watch anything online either.
 
bigdogchris said:
With the BS customer service I just went through with Comcast, I don't blame people for ditching these ass holes.
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Primary reason why we dumped it. Climbing rates, a few pennies here a dollar there and before you know it, you're paying 10 bucks more a month than you used to. Fuck them.
 
its about to be 1800001 people. my bill just keeps going up. im up to 220 a month! if they didnt have the best internet option in my area i would have ditched crapcast already.
 
Why I think it is awesome that people fit hing cable, it always seems to be a concern of mine that since most TV companies also control some form of Internet service. My speculation is eventually the high prices we see for cable and sat will change to Internet.

But then again, you never know.
 
Television programming is dead. It's infected with commercials and the content caters to dullards. TV free for nearly 2 years now. Never going back.
 
From what I understand, cable companies would love to do a la carte programming, but the channels are against it of course. That's how they make their money: fleecing people who don't even watch. ESPN charges every single subscriber $5.50 / mo, and you pay it whether you watch a second of it or not. It's all part of the scam. Every month every schlub in America forks over $50-100+ of his hard-earned cash and that gets redistributed to people who run some network that nobody even knows is in the channel line-up.

This is a good article that delves into how the cable subscription package is designed around ripping people off: http://www.sportingnews.com/nascar/...etwork-contract-fox-sports-1-nbc-deal-ratings
 
My wife and I didn't have any TV service for almost 7 years. Then we had a kid, Netflix started losing a lot of content, and then we caved. Cox and U-Verse FTTP available here so at least I can play them against each other to keep my bill below advertised specials.
 
I dropped cable a couple of years ago simply because I cannot justify paying a package price when I only watched 3 channels. Even worse, I don't even watch much TV. The same would probably apply to satellite services in my case, although I sure as hell don't want to put a dish up on my roof.
 
jwcalla said:
From what I understand, cable companies would love to do a la carte programming, but the channels are against it of course. That's how they make their money: fleecing people who don't even watch. ESPN charges every single subscriber $5.50 / mo, and you pay it whether you watch a second of it or not. It's all part of the scam. Every month every schlub in America forks over $50-100+ of his hard-earned cash and that gets redistributed to people who run some network that nobody even knows is in the channel line-up.

This is a good article that delves into how the cable subscription package is designed around ripping people off: http://www.sportingnews.com/nascar/...etwork-contract-fox-sports-1-nbc-deal-ratings
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Dont worry, they'll have an even better source of revenue once they've killed Net Neutrality. We'll all be paying for metered internet in a few years.
 
I have no cable, and am a happy camper. I do have one of those cheap pancake dishes though for free local HD news and the like.
Hofy said:
I havent had cable since the 90's and got rid of dish/directv in 2003. I do not even watch OTA much. Who the hell needs to watch crap like Big Brother every night? I would watch TV again if they actually put something on worth watching!
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There are plenty of great shows.

Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Dexter, Deadwood, Rome, Mad Men, Hell on Wheels, Boardwalk Empire, The Tudors, Wilfred, Futurama, Eureka, Family Guy, Archer, South Park, Doctor Who, American Horror Story, Misfits, etc.

Problem is, to get those shows you also are forced to buy Telemundo, some Vietnamese cat cooking channel, twelve Jesus Loves you Evangelist channels, three Feminazi soap channels, and more.

So to get EVERYTHING you want, you usually end up having to buy a 600 channel menu, of which you'll probably watch 6 channels and you'll pay $200 a month for the pleasure.
 
If I was able to afford to replace all 4 "tube" TV's we own with internet capable TV's, we would've ditched TV subscriptions long ago by now. I only assume this is one of the reasons most people haven't yet switched themselves, that and a lack of knowledge of the cheaper, and better alternatives.

Now of course if something like Google Fiber were available in most of the country... this wouldn't even need to be discussed. =P
 
Only a handful of shows are worth watching anyway, and you can get them online from torrent sites. I guess I could see having it if you like sports, but even then, a lot of that stuff like football games is available for free in HD over antenna. It seems like cable is really just for technophobes who haven't figured out the internet yet, kind of like brick and mortar Black Friday shopping.
 
Yep, I'm in agreement about Cable TV. Comcast is a monopoly and is price gouging as far as I'm concerned.$200 a month for cable is just way too damn much money I don't care how many stations you get. The price needs to come way down.
 
I'm just waiting for my contract to expire. I'm tired of paying for reruns and commercials and censorship when I can watch it all on DVD cheaper.
 
I'm not on cable, but I'm getting a bit fed up with DirecTV. The channels that I used to get it for, mostly Discovery based ones, have devolved into what the masses apparently want to watch consisting of "reality" shows on Discovery, TLC, NatGeo, the History Channel, etc. But I've noticed a disgusting trend , additional channels that actually go back to showing what those channels used to show... kicker is they're premium channels that require a larger subscription.

Legality aside with how I acquire content, I'm pretty close to ditching it all together... I do have to say though the DVR they have is really nice... fucker costs me like $8 a month to use though!
 
$180/month to Comcast for internet and HDTV pisses me off every time I pay it... but, I continue paying it.
 
I cut the wire for almost 4 years, but finally gave in due to sports programming honestly.
 
I cut the cord years ago without regret. However, my soon-to-be fiancee moved in with me a few weeks ago and can't live without cable, so it's back. It's nice to be able to watch my Braves, Breaking Bad and Lockup Raw marathons again, but the cost, eesh....
 
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