8 ms·

My son will soon be a teenager. He has little interest in watching TV. His default is to go to YouTube and check what's new. Cable TV was an improvement on ove

My son will soon be a teenager. He has little interest in watching TV. His default is to go to YouTube and check what's new. Cable TV was an improvement on over-the-air broadcast networks. It's had a good run, but serves little purpose today, being inferior in all ways to the internet. It's just not worth $70, $100, or $140 a month. Our bills rose and rose until we shut it off completely and permanently - there are limits, and TV executives don't seem to understand that.

dhogan 10y ago
Even my mom is done with cable and she is far from a techie. It's getting easier for the masses to not have cable.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wslh 10y ago
Yes, and I don't know in US but Cable TV started with a lot of channels without advertisements. Now, you are paying Cable TV and the channels are full of advertisements, so it is not clear why you are paying.
- noxToken 10y ago
  The advertisements are subsidizing a portion of the bill. What portion, I'm not exactly sure. Even if it was a patently false statement and cable companies started showing TV with no commercials (or maybe 10 minutes per hour at the worst), $60 is too steep of a price. There is too much shovelware (or whatever the TV term is) for that price. I understand that live TV has blocked times for simplicity. That's fine. There is going to be filler to stretch the episode. However, don't stretch the show out for 25 episodes! If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    > If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year. The BBC model
- Lev1a 10y ago
  It's like in Germany where each household/flat has to pay an amount of money per month (~18€) for stuff like public television, radio and some internet presences of the state. The TV+Radio portion of this money-grabbing monstrosity is called "Öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (roughly "Public broadcasting") which still is plastered with ads all over. Also you get into this system when you move in to a apartement/flat/house because the institution that collects this fee somehow has the right to collect such information but is conveniently not a government body and not "rechtsfähig" (meaning they can't be sued). Also really convenient is the fact that courts in Germany have time and time again approved this institution's operations... Well, the rest of an overview is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitragsservice_von_ARD,_ZDF_und_Deutschlandradio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitragsservice_von_ARD,_ZDF_u...
  - sdoering 10y ago
    Well lots of countries do have public broadcasting. There is an extensive list compiled here. [1] It even does have its uses, if it were not for the abomination it is in Germany. If it were not for the fact, that the public broadcasters are controlled by political parties and clearly are everything but unbalanced (ok, compared to the US they are, but non the less). I would gladly pay the money for them, if it were not for the fact, that most of this goes into financing soccer rights and formula 1 rights. And some "Volksmusik" shit and such. I have to pay (being a German citizen with our own household). I could clearly see a real usecase for public broadcasting, not tied to advertising revenue, doing real investigative journalism and doing great documentations. But I am being naive here. And a dreamer. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting
    - Lev1a 10y ago
      My blood also gets easily to the boiling point if I see the public broadcasters complaining about not having enough money while simultaneously opening a new radio station only for "Schlager"-music (old-fashioned music listened to primarily by old people reminiscing about the "good old times") and paying the higher-ups of the TV broadcasters obscene amounts of money...
thirdsun 10y ago
> My son will soon be a teenager. He has little interest in watching TV. His default is to go to YouTube and check what's new. Of course. I'm 30 and if it wasn't for live sport I'd never watch TV and even that is going away: Sky Germany lost the right to the british premier league and before that the spanish La Liga. Both, as well as the italian and french football leagues, are legally available at DAZN for 10 bucks a month. It's a great deal. However besides sports the program just isn't there. It can't be since its priority is to find the lowest common denominator and please everyone. Which results in nobody getting what they actually want. YouTube doesn't have those limitations - you'll find in-depth content for any kind of niche interest and I welcome it. I can only assume that traditional TV is even less interesting to today's teenagers than it is to me, someone who grew up with it.
- exergy 10y ago
  I love that the internet has enabled this. Watching TV in India, where I grew up, was an absolute, unmitigated motherfucking abomination that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Bland, unidimensional characters whose only purpose was to act as a loudspeaker for what the scriptwriters wanted to convey. Idiotic moralising basically throughout (obedient daughter in law: Goooood, rebellious kid who wants to live life his own way: baaaaad). A story that you could predict from start to end after just Scene 1. Fuck that. Out with the old, in with the new.
- ssharp 10y ago
  > However besides sports the program just isn't there. It can't be since its priority is to find the lowest common denominator and please everyone. Which results in nobody getting what they actually want. This isn't remotely true. I don't watch that much television but if you look at what TV critics are writing, there has never been a better time for scripted television ever. Now that networks like AMC, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, etc. can produce cost-effective original programming, it has allowed them to hit smaller audiences are still be profitable. That allows for far more creativity that the old network model where you had to appeal to such a mass audience. I'm curious to what all this great YouTube content that keeps people entertained for hours on end is. I personally find some of the instruction content pretty incredible, as well as some of the music content, but I couldn't occupy that much time with it. Especially with instructional content, I need to actually apply what I was watching to what I'm trying to accomplish! It seems like with music content, I'm constantly fighting off recommendations of low brow content.
kgilpin 10y ago
Yes. Youth of today will will sit in a room that has a TV and watch shows on their phone. TV is like Facebook for them, an artifact left by a previous generation.
MicroBerto 10y ago
> TV executives don't seem to understand that. Oh, they completely get that, but this generation of executives are ride-or-die into retirement. They don't care about the future of their companies. They're going to pick the carcass as long as they can, parachute out with everything, and leave it just in time to go the way of Blockbuster.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Oh, but they do understand that and that is why they also control the internet. Ok, just the tubes, but still. As more and more people start cutting cable tv, watch what your internet bill looks like. Up, up and way too much!
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  Exactly. It will end up just like landlines - no cheaper to cancel it. Cost of internet+phone+TV = $150 Cost of internet+TV = $149
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    Actually in my experience: Internet+phone+tv = $150 Internet+tv = $160 Internet = $165 We literally have tv and a phone line but neither of them hooked up because it's cheaper
    - mercer 10y ago
      As an additional data point it's the same here in Holland, or at least with my provider. I've never bothered to go for only internet, but I've also never used the phone or tv functionality that is available to me. It's just there. A few weeks ago I got scared shitless because suddenly our landline phone went off, which it never does. The caller was apparently from 'Microsoft support' and out to help me fix the viruses on my windows computer, despite the fact that every single device on our network is Apple...
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  I have been trying to cancel my Comcast internet+cable connection to a pure internet one for 2 years. (I haven't even set up my set top box.) But every time I call them they give me a promotional deal which costs less than pure internet (@the same speed).
lintiness 10y ago
most cable tv bills come bundled with internet which is half or more of the cost. the best internet provider where i live just so happens to be the cable tv company, so there's not much choice.
- macintux 10y ago
  I've had cable internet for nearly 20 years without cable TV. I suspect that bundling effect won't be enough to slow down the hemorrhaging.
gambiting 10y ago
I'm 25 and I never had TV when I moved out of my parents house. I mean, I obviously had "a" TV, but never used it to watch TV, cable - I basically use it as a display for my PS4 and to watch netflix, that's it. My ISP wanted to bundle a TV package with my broadband, but I just have absolutely no interest in watching it, it's a waste of time.
- chaoticgeek 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat as you. I have a TV and the cheapest cable/internet option I could get for the speeds I want through comcast. I stream whatever I get through chromecast stick and if it isn't offered that way I don't care to watch it. My service comes with a set top box of sorts to watch like 10 different basic channels. It still is sitting in the trunk of my car unopened. Probably broken now that it has gone through a few winters sitting in my car's trunk. When I told them I wouldn't hook it up and asked if I could just not have it they kept telling me if I return it or don't take it my service will be disconnected.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> there are limits My U-verse TV was at least $120 a month considering I had two boxes and HD (why is HD a fee in this day and age?) I dropped it for two FireTV's with Playstation Vue and Netflix and because I have Amazon prime I get all the Prime TV and Movies. We pay $50 a month now for TV and get an unbelievable selection of TV's, movies, and Netflix/Prime originals. I think the only reason we had ESPN was because it had to be bundled with the package with Bravo and E! my wife wanted. How many people are paying for ESPN when they don't need it? The bundling is completely out of control with cable TV as well as the box rental fees. How can Amazon sell me a wonderful box that has a great interface and has native apps for Netflix and other services for a one-time cost $99, but U-verse and Comcast want me to pay $20+ a month for their shitty boxes. Over a few years I've paid for those boxes several times over! Consumers aren't stupid. They've been ripped off for decades but its only recently we can get a cable-like experience with cable-cutting. Sadly, the margins on these services are very high so neither AT&T or Comcast wants to do price cuts. AT&T is instead launching its Vue competitor instead of making its cable problem more competitive. I think these companies want to continue to milk non-cablecutters for as long as possible and try to bring back cablecutters with these services, which ultimately reward the bad practices of the cable industry. So its almost like the worst of both worlds.
imagist 10y ago
At least in the US, there's a strong investor preference for growth stocks. This often drives companies to keep trying to increase revenue from saturated markets rather than stepping back reinvestment and paying a dividend.

dhogan 10y ago

Even my mom is done with cable and she is far from a techie. It's getting easier for the masses to not have cable.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wslh 10y ago

Yes, and I don't know in US but Cable TV started with a lot of channels without advertisements. Now, you are paying Cable TV and the channels are full of advertisements, so it is not clear why you are paying.

noxToken 10y ago
The advertisements are subsidizing a portion of the bill. What portion, I'm not exactly sure. Even if it was a patently false statement and cable companies started showing TV with no commercials (or maybe 10 minutes per hour at the worst), $60 is too steep of a price. There is too much shovelware (or whatever the TV term is) for that price. I understand that live TV has blocked times for simplicity. That's fine. There is going to be filler to stretch the episode. However, don't stretch the show out for 25 episodes! If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  > If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year. The BBC model
Lev1a 10y ago
It's like in Germany where each household/flat has to pay an amount of money per month (~18€) for stuff like public television, radio and some internet presences of the state. The TV+Radio portion of this money-grabbing monstrosity is called "Öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (roughly "Public broadcasting") which still is plastered with ads all over. Also you get into this system when you move in to a apartement/flat/house because the institution that collects this fee somehow has the right to collect such information but is conveniently not a government body and not "rechtsfähig" (meaning they can't be sued). Also really convenient is the fact that courts in Germany have time and time again approved this institution's operations... Well, the rest of an overview is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitragsservice_von_ARD,_ZDF_und_Deutschlandradio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitragsservice_von_ARD,_ZDF_u...
- sdoering 10y ago
  Well lots of countries do have public broadcasting. There is an extensive list compiled here. [1] It even does have its uses, if it were not for the abomination it is in Germany. If it were not for the fact, that the public broadcasters are controlled by political parties and clearly are everything but unbalanced (ok, compared to the US they are, but non the less). I would gladly pay the money for them, if it were not for the fact, that most of this goes into financing soccer rights and formula 1 rights. And some "Volksmusik" shit and such. I have to pay (being a German citizen with our own household). I could clearly see a real usecase for public broadcasting, not tied to advertising revenue, doing real investigative journalism and doing great documentations. But I am being naive here. And a dreamer. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting
  - Lev1a 10y ago
    My blood also gets easily to the boiling point if I see the public broadcasters complaining about not having enough money while simultaneously opening a new radio station only for "Schlager"-music (old-fashioned music listened to primarily by old people reminiscing about the "good old times") and paying the higher-ups of the TV broadcasters obscene amounts of money...

thirdsun 10y ago

> My son will soon be a teenager. He has little interest in watching TV. His default is to go to YouTube and check what's new. Of course. I'm 30 and if it wasn't for live sport I'd never watch TV and even that is going away: Sky Germany lost the right to the british premier league and before that the spanish La Liga. Both, as well as the italian and french football leagues, are legally available at DAZN for 10 bucks a month. It's a great deal. However besides sports the program just isn't there. It can't be since its priority is to find the lowest common denominator and please everyone. Which results in nobody getting what they actually want. YouTube doesn't have those limitations - you'll find in-depth content for any kind of niche interest and I welcome it. I can only assume that traditional TV is even less interesting to today's teenagers than it is to me, someone who grew up with it.

exergy 10y ago
I love that the internet has enabled this. Watching TV in India, where I grew up, was an absolute, unmitigated motherfucking abomination that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Bland, unidimensional characters whose only purpose was to act as a loudspeaker for what the scriptwriters wanted to convey. Idiotic moralising basically throughout (obedient daughter in law: Goooood, rebellious kid who wants to live life his own way: baaaaad). A story that you could predict from start to end after just Scene 1. Fuck that. Out with the old, in with the new.
ssharp 10y ago
> However besides sports the program just isn't there. It can't be since its priority is to find the lowest common denominator and please everyone. Which results in nobody getting what they actually want. This isn't remotely true. I don't watch that much television but if you look at what TV critics are writing, there has never been a better time for scripted television ever. Now that networks like AMC, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, etc. can produce cost-effective original programming, it has allowed them to hit smaller audiences are still be profitable. That allows for far more creativity that the old network model where you had to appeal to such a mass audience. I'm curious to what all this great YouTube content that keeps people entertained for hours on end is. I personally find some of the instruction content pretty incredible, as well as some of the music content, but I couldn't occupy that much time with it. Especially with instructional content, I need to actually apply what I was watching to what I'm trying to accomplish! It seems like with music content, I'm constantly fighting off recommendations of low brow content.

kgilpin 10y ago

Yes. Youth of today will will sit in a room that has a TV and watch shows on their phone. TV is like Facebook for them, an artifact left by a previous generation.

MicroBerto 10y ago

> TV executives don't seem to understand that. Oh, they completely get that, but this generation of executives are ride-or-die into retirement. They don't care about the future of their companies. They're going to pick the carcass as long as they can, parachute out with everything, and leave it just in time to go the way of Blockbuster.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Oh, but they do understand that and that is why they also control the internet. Ok, just the tubes, but still. As more and more people start cutting cable tv, watch what your internet bill looks like. Up, up and way too much!

Unklejoe 10y ago
Exactly. It will end up just like landlines - no cheaper to cancel it. Cost of internet+phone+TV = $150 Cost of internet+TV = $149
- Klathmon 10y ago
  Actually in my experience: Internet+phone+tv = $150 Internet+tv = $160 Internet = $165 We literally have tv and a phone line but neither of them hooked up because it's cheaper
  - mercer 10y ago
    As an additional data point it's the same here in Holland, or at least with my provider. I've never bothered to go for only internet, but I've also never used the phone or tv functionality that is available to me. It's just there. A few weeks ago I got scared shitless because suddenly our landline phone went off, which it never does. The caller was apparently from 'Microsoft support' and out to help me fix the viruses on my windows computer, despite the fact that every single device on our network is Apple...
maverick_iceman 10y ago
I have been trying to cancel my Comcast internet+cable connection to a pure internet one for 2 years. (I haven't even set up my set top box.) But every time I call them they give me a promotional deal which costs less than pure internet (@the same speed).

lintiness 10y ago

most cable tv bills come bundled with internet which is half or more of the cost. the best internet provider where i live just so happens to be the cable tv company, so there's not much choice.

macintux 10y ago
I've had cable internet for nearly 20 years without cable TV. I suspect that bundling effect won't be enough to slow down the hemorrhaging.

gambiting 10y ago

I'm 25 and I never had TV when I moved out of my parents house. I mean, I obviously had "a" TV, but never used it to watch TV, cable - I basically use it as a display for my PS4 and to watch netflix, that's it. My ISP wanted to bundle a TV package with my broadband, but I just have absolutely no interest in watching it, it's a waste of time.

chaoticgeek 10y ago
I'm in the same boat as you. I have a TV and the cheapest cable/internet option I could get for the speeds I want through comcast. I stream whatever I get through chromecast stick and if it isn't offered that way I don't care to watch it. My service comes with a set top box of sorts to watch like 10 different basic channels. It still is sitting in the trunk of my car unopened. Probably broken now that it has gone through a few winters sitting in my car's trunk. When I told them I wouldn't hook it up and asked if I could just not have it they kept telling me if I return it or don't take it my service will be disconnected.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

> there are limits My U-verse TV was at least $120 a month considering I had two boxes and HD (why is HD a fee in this day and age?) I dropped it for two FireTV's with Playstation Vue and Netflix and because I have Amazon prime I get all the Prime TV and Movies. We pay $50 a month now for TV and get an unbelievable selection of TV's, movies, and Netflix/Prime originals. I think the only reason we had ESPN was because it had to be bundled with the package with Bravo and E! my wife wanted. How many people are paying for ESPN when they don't need it? The bundling is completely out of control with cable TV as well as the box rental fees. How can Amazon sell me a wonderful box that has a great interface and has native apps for Netflix and other services for a one-time cost $99, but U-verse and Comcast want me to pay $20+ a month for their shitty boxes. Over a few years I've paid for those boxes several times over! Consumers aren't stupid. They've been ripped off for decades but its only recently we can get a cable-like experience with cable-cutting. Sadly, the margins on these services are very high so neither AT&T or Comcast wants to do price cuts. AT&T is instead launching its Vue competitor instead of making its cable problem more competitive. I think these companies want to continue to milk non-cablecutters for as long as possible and try to bring back cablecutters with these services, which ultimately reward the bad practices of the cable industry. So its almost like the worst of both worlds.

imagist 10y ago

At least in the US, there's a strong investor preference for growth stocks. This often drives companies to keep trying to increase revenue from saturated markets rather than stepping back reinvestment and paying a dividend.