Cord-Cutters Hitting Satellite TV Hard

DooKey

DooKey

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Satellite TV providers are really feeling the pressure from cord-cutters. Their subscriptions dropped 4.7% last quarter and this is the biggest drop ever according to analyst firm Moffettnathanson. However, not all is bleak since both Dish and Directv are offering their own streaming services. As a result of these services Dish only lost 36K customers last quarter and Directv gained a total of 90K customers. Also, AT&T CEO John Donovan doesn't really mind all of this since he wants his service to go streaming only in the future. Sounds good to me since I'm a cord-cutter and I'm loving my streaming options and over-the-air TV.

Still, those subscribers come at a price. MoffettNathanson notes that current streaming providers are offering TV service “at or below cost,” and they’re also buying subscribers through free trials and device deals. The hope is that they can recoup costs through more targeted advertising, but that assumes these streaming bundles will continue to grow, even as new bundle options like FuboTV and Philo pop up.
 
Didn't know about Philo.

"current streaming providers are offering TV service “at or below cost,” Because they don't negotiate well with Viacom or Scripps? They should cut their prices and change some more channels like Spike was axed.

I bet they aren't as cheap as good Youtube shows. Seeso shows also looked pretty cheap, everybody at UCB gets a nice IMDB credit but not many perks.
 
Cut the cord over eight years ago, haven't looked back.

Of course now my local cable company (and only reasonable ISP) has suddenly decided it needs data caps. Which couldn't possibly be an attempt to make up for lost cable TV revenue...I mean, they wouldn't do that, right?
 
lol satellite tv providers are their own worst enemies.. they refuse to pay subscription costs to provide channels to their customers but they'll still increase prices for their customers anyways.. that's why they're losing customers, not because of cord cutters but i guess that's easier to blame the problem on then themselves.
 
I'm now setting up my fifth kodi box so far. I setup up four for my uncles and now one for my neighbor cause he's paying over $200 for his Optimum service plus he has FIOS due to some shit with his business phone number not being transferable. He has like five cable boxes in his home so he's sick of paying up his nose and got a kodi box.
 
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After years of not doing it, I am finally getting ready to drop cable TV. Time Warner cable use to be ok, you just had to call them up every year when they decided to raise your bill. Now with Spectrum, if I want to change something, I am going to have to pay more for less due to having to move to "Spectrum's pricing". I only called because they raised the bill by more than $20 over the last couple of months and now want me to pay for more boxes for the tvs that didnt have them since they encrypted everything.

Now if only I had someone other than Spectrum in the area for decent internet.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
lol satellite tv providers are their own worst enemies.. they refuse to pay subscription costs to provide channels to their customers but they'll still increase prices for their customers anyways.. that's why they're losing customers, not because of cord cutters but i guess that's easier to blame the problem on then themselves.
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Not to say that doesn't happen, but I'm pretty sure cord-cutters remain a bigger factor than missed payments to content providers.
 
since i have moved feb of 17, I cut the cord, where I live its BFE in Maryland but it was a must.. DTV is a complete rip off !!
 
The satellite providers are in a somewhat tough position. Satellite TV by it's very nature is a one-way technology, whereas Cable TV on the other hand can handle two-way communication easily. Most Satellite providers handle 2-way communication for stuff like streaming by connecting to your internet connection. AT&T bought DirecTV but the best they can offer for most bundles is slow ass DSL which isn't really optimal for handling the upstream communication of your DirecTV service.
 
I wonder when they're all going to get together and lobby to have OTA broadcasts outlawed? I figure that's a battle they want to have too.
 
Cutting the cord was one of my best moves, last year. My TV bill dropped from $135 to $40 per month.
 
I have had directvnow for a few years (grandfather'ed early adopter so all channels and hbo for ridiculously cheap). Their service has gotten a lot better - all three networks and fox every cable channel I would want and HBO for an extra 5 bucks a month...including hbo go access..go figure...but they NEED to get that Cloud DVR out now. I use playon but it won't get live shows.
 
EVERYTIME me and the wife are out and staying at a hotel, while she is getting ready i do a bit of channel surfing.. and it always reminds me of why we dont have cable/sat tv anymore.

i mean good gawd.. i can spend 15 minutes switching channels and see nothing but commercials
 
JesDer said:
After years of not doing it, I am finally getting ready to drop cable TV. ... now want me to pay for more boxes for the tvs that didnt have them since they encrypted everything.
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I still don't have a cable box, just a cable card in my HTPC.

When Cox cable decided to start encrypting everything, we just stopped using the other TV's. They where old tube TV's anyways, so we rarely used them.

We usually record the shows we want to watch on the HTPC, so I can just stream the show to my computer, laptop or even my windows tablet if someone else is using the TV.
 
katanaD said:
EVERYTIME me and the wife are out and staying at a hotel, while she is getting ready i do a bit of channel surfing.. and it always reminds me of why we dont have cable/sat tv anymore.

i mean good gawd.. i can spend 15 minutes switching channels and see nothing but commercials
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120 channels, and nothing to watch most the time. About the only time I watch live TV is if I'm watching the news.
If I couldn't record (and watch later) the few shows I follow, cable would be worthless.
 
One of my neighbors has had Dish for years, but just in the last week they took their dish down and put up an antenna in its place.
 
Cut the Dish in 2010. They had obsoleted a bunch of my own equipment which was working well, and replaced it with junk. Not to mention my bill had sneaked up to $1200/yr and 99.9% of the programming was junk anyway...really only thing I miss is watching movies that I wouldn't bother with ordering on DVD/BD because they don't sound good but turn out to be great...well that and some of the softcore porn (I try to avoid porn on the Internet...probably why I've never had a virus ;) ).
 
Yeah, satellite TV has always made no sense to me. The time I'm mostly likely to watch it is the time it's most likely to be out. (rainy day). That doesn't affect you if you live in the desert, but for everyone else it's an issue.

And since everyone and their dog is now offering a streaming TV service, there's nothing preventing these other companies from completely overwhelming the current satellite streaming players. There's no satellite infrastructure required to make your own competitive streaming service :D
 
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katanaD said:
EVERYTIME me and the wife are out and staying at a hotel, while she is getting ready i do a bit of channel surfing.. and it always reminds me of why we dont have cable/sat tv anymore.

i mean good gawd.. i can spend 15 minutes switching channels and see nothing but commercials
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Yep - I have not had cable for over 8 years. Sometimes I will find shows I remember watching from 8 years ago! WTH! The commercials are awful, and usually the picture quality sucks (especially at a lot of hotels).
My kids have grown up without cable. I remember staying at a hotel when my one daughter was maybe 5 years old. She wanted to watch a show on the Disney channel. The show didn't air until 3pm (made up time) - she thought I was lying to her as she is used to Netflix and on-demand. When commercials started interrupting their shows, both kids were complaining how annoying they were. It was funny. There generation will not tolerate cable.
 
steakman1971 said:
I remember staying at a hotel when my one daughter was maybe 5 years old. She wanted to watch a show on the Disney channel. The show didn't air until 3pm (made up time) - she thought I was lying to her as she is used to Netflix and on-demand. When commercials started interrupting their shows, both kids were complaining how annoying they were. It was funny. There generation will not tolerate cable.
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LOL.. yeah imaging telling your grandkids that there was a time the whole family would have to plan a time and all gather around the TV to watch a show because it was only on then. They will probably laugh and think grandpa is being silly
 
Love DTV's whole home DVR feature so I never minded paying the high monthly fees. However, thanks to cord-cutters, DTV is subsidizing me to the tune of $60 off on my monthly fee so I'm only paying $18 now. At this price, I have zero reasons to cut the cord.
 
snowcrash said:
Love DTV's whole home DVR feature so I never minded paying the high monthly fees. However, thanks to cord-cutters, DTV is subsidizing me to the tune of $60 off on my monthly fee so I'm only paying $18 now. At this price, I have zero reasons to cut the cord.
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soooo. how can we get the same subsidiary. (dtv = direct tv? or digital tv)
 
bugleyman said:
Of course now my local cable company (and only reasonable ISP) has suddenly decided it needs data caps. Which couldn't possibly be an attempt to make up for lost cable TV revenue...I mean, they wouldn't do that, right?
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For me the data caps came along coincidentally when the cable company started offering significantly faster than 100 mbit speeds at attractive prices - deceptively attractive as it turns out if you don't consider the data cap tax. Data caps completely soured any notion of upping my internet speed recently.

And that's more to the point, when you cut the cord, data caps become a huge concern, especially if you use your internet for more than just streaming content to your TV. You'd be surprised how fast you can reach 1 TB in a month when you treat your streaming devices like a regular TV subscription. After a few mishaps of "going over", I've had to make sure my streaming devices turn themselves off if I fall asleep watching something.

My parents could never survive cutting-the-cord given the current state of affairs. They leave at least 4 TVs running simultaneously at any given time. They'd hit the 1 TB data cap within 2 weeks. Then when they get the bill, the real fun ensues.
 
Absalom said:
For me the data caps came along coincidentally when the cable company started offering significantly faster than 100 mbit speeds at attractive prices - deceptively attractive as it turns out if you don't consider the data cap tax. Data caps completely soured any notion of upping my internet speed recently.

And that's more to the point, when you cut the cord, data caps become a huge concern, especially if you use your internet for more than just streaming content to your TV. You'd be surprised how fast you can reach 1 TB in a month when you treat your streaming devices like a regular TV subscription. After a few mishaps of "going over", I've had to make sure my streaming devices turn themselves off if I fall asleep watching something.

My parents could never survive cutting-the-cord given the current state of affairs. They leave at least 4 TVs running simultaneously at any given time. They'd hit the 1 TB data cap within 2 weeks. Then when they get the bill, the real fun ensues.
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Yup. Things have gotten better for me now that a teenager is out of the house, but between game consoles and streaming, sometimes we still flirt with that 1TB limit. And that's after setting Netflix down. (I know, I know: First world problems).
 
arnemetis said:
I wonder when they're all going to get together and lobby to have OTA broadcasts outlawed? I figure that's a battle they want to have too.
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Nah, they've got deals with the OTA broadcasters. Comcast charges me $5 or so for a "rebroadcast fee" each month. I should probably try if I can get them to cut off those channels to save money since I can get all the OTA via an antenna, usually with better quality than comcast.
 
I cut the cord back in something like 2004.
Outside of a short period where my then-landlord kicked Comcast out for kickbacks from some fly-by-night satellite/DSL reseller and I was relegated to shitty DSL, I've never looked back.

I was a TV addict as a kid.
Now, I don't give a shit, and could probably give up my various streaming services if it came down to it.
 
Cut the cord so so many years ago, I took that extra money years ago and started a Blu Ray collection and I am at almost 500 BD, I watch what ever I want when I want, better visual and sound. There is great deals on BD you just have to hunt for them.
 
Never had a cord for the past decade. No Netflix / Hulu either,
though technically I've had my own private Netflix for quite awhile now.
 
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Tried to get Sat for six months, twice. You need to unlock your credit report. Nope. 7mbs d/l is all I need. Screw sat and cable. Content is usually there, you just have to work to find it.
 
Cut the cord eight years ago with a computer, TV tuner, and an XBOX 360 media center extender. Good times.

Now I've switched to Linux Kodi boxes, Intel NUCs, and an 802.11ac network since the house isn't wired. Still a fraction of the cost that I would have spent on cable, and the only content we don't get was one network we choose to give up. $120/mo wasn't worth that one network.

If I had to go back and do the math, factor in Hulu + Netflix + equipment ... comes out to around $8K not spent on cable bills.
 
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