7 ms·

400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year

134 points by kemper 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago
From article: A report from earlier this year suggested that more than 1 million U.S. households disconnected their pay-TV services in 2011. http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-subscribers-cut-the-cord-in-2011/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-subsc... From that article in April: Nearly 2.65 million cable or satellite TV subscribers have canceled their service since 2008 to rely solely on Web-based services according to estimates from the Convergence Consulting Group. ... It is estimated that roughly 930,000 customers will cut the cord in 2012, for a total of 3.58 million subscribers since 2008. The group also estimates that traditional television providers will add 185,000 accounts this year, up from 112,000 in 2011. 2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000 disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and the holidays?
- vonmoltke 14y ago
  2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000 disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and the holidays? I got the impression from the article that these are numbers through Q2, so only half the year. If so, the pace would be about right.
- rhplus 14y ago
  I mentioned on a previous thread that satellite/cable TV companies need to be adding 1.1% to their subscriber numbers ever year just to keep pace with the growth of the number of households in the US[1]. If you looked at the percentage of households that subscribe rather than raw subscriber numbers, we'd see an even steeper decline over the past 10 years or so. [1] http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf
- jftuga 14y ago
  Some people will disconnect when their contract is up. I signed a 2 year contract but it expires in January. My biggest apprehension is having to turn my 2 HD DVRs back in. Then realizing a few months later that I want 'real' service again. This would mean that I would to pay another upfront cost to rent the DVRs again.
bradleyland 14y ago
Looks like cable peaked in 2001, with increasing losses since then. http://www.ncta.com/Stats/BasicCableSubscribers.aspx http://www.ncta.com/Stats/BasicCableSubscribers.aspx It's also interesting to see that HSI over cable exploded around 2001. http://www.ncta.com/Stats/High-Speed-Internet-Customers.aspx http://www.ncta.com/Stats/High-Speed-Internet-Customers.aspx EDIT: Posted a graph on my blog: http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-television-subscription-rates-falling-but-where-are-they-going/ http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-television-subsc...
- chaz 14y ago
  You're not counting satellite, which has been taking market share away from cable. As of 2011, 60.4% of households have cable, and 31.1% of households have "alternative distribution systems," almost all of which is satellite, like DirecTV and DISH. Safe to assume that very few households have both cable and satellite, so about 90% of households have pay TV. Page 10: http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf
  - benmccann 14y ago
    According to the data in this article DirectTV and Dish Network both lost subscribers as well this quarter (52,000 and 10,000 respectively). While the losses historically were at the hands of the satellite operators, more recently it has been lost to the internet.
nicholassmith 14y ago
I moved house recently and decided to no longer pay for a TV subscription (which as I'm in the UK would be Sky). I don't watch much in the way of TV, my girlfriend watches a bit more so it was a tricky choice. We've ended up with NetFlix through an Apple TV as our primary source of content, it's not perfect but there's enough stuff on their that we have an interest in to keep us entertained. I'd be interested in seeing the stats for how many in the UK are going down this route, we've got slightly less services available, and as far as I can tell we have much less choice than over the pond.
- goatforce5 14y ago
  Do you get Freeview? The selection of free broadcast channels in the UK is really quite exceptional: http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Yeah we do, which covers our 'lets just put the TV on'.
sp332 14y ago
Tempted to call this blogspam; the actual information is from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-idUSL2E8J29MJ20120802 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-idUSL2E8J29M...
- benologist 14y ago
  It's more than just blogspam, BGR also have a few HN accounts they dump links here with.
  - jonursenbach 14y ago
    [Citation Needed]
    - benologist 14y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867616 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867616
wave 14y ago
One thing I missed after canceling pay TV is the way I used to watch news. You just turn on the TV and there is news. So I created http://tiltview.com http://tiltview.com to gather current news and play it without having to do any work.
- harpastum 14y ago
  Wow, this is really cool. I actually prefer this to watching broadcast news. You get the same feeling, but the ability to skip stories I'm not interested in makes the whole process way smoother.
- karanbhangui 14y ago
  This is really cool. Talk about making something people want :) Future plans with this?
  - wave 14y ago
    People are asking for mobile app.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- nazgulnarsil 14y ago
  I sort of regard people who enjoy watching the news the same as the people who enjoy watching horror films. What is the matter with you people?
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    Not so much watching the news but having some kind of ambient noise that may be informative. It's the same reason I have NPR on most of the time in the background.
  - heretohelp 14y ago
    News provides the gestalt for what's going to be rattling around in other peoples' heads. It also gives you material to work with for small talk. If your work or day to day life doesn't involve interacting with people even a little bit the utility of this is somewhat limited. I doubt there is a very large number of people for whom that is true.
juddlyon 14y ago
I can't give up my habit until I can watch basketball and boxing online. Ain't happening anytime soon.
- alirov 14y ago
  I don't know about boxing but to watch the NBA (I know that's not going to cover college sports), you can get NBA League Pass for around $100. It's not necessarily cheap but it's cheaper than paying the $64 a month I used to with DirecTV (the cheapest option in my area). Edit: Just wanted to point out that it's $100 for a whole season and not per month of course.
  - tcdent 14y ago
    MLB has a similar arrangement for between $40 and $50 a year.
    - kgermino 14y ago
      I'm not sure where you're getting your info (perhaps you saw the price for the remainder of this season) but it used to be $100-$120 depending on which Even you bought. It went up slightly this year, though I'm not sue how much since they let returning subscribers keep the old rate.
      - alirov 14y ago
        I don't follow baseball so please correct me if this information is for something less than it seems to me. A quick google search brought up two services (MLB.tv and MLB Extra Innings). The former seems to cost about $40-$50 while the latter is in the $200 range for the season. Also, Extra Innings looks like an add on package to an existing cable/satellite subscription while MLB.tv is a standalone service. MLB.tv: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp Extra Innings (found price info on Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Extra_Innings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Extra_Innings
paul9290 14y ago
Oh great! Here comes the bandwidth caps and overages for going over your cap. Google Fiber needs to deploy nationally to stop these cable TV/ISP providers from making up their losses thru bandwidth overages! That said for me, once I found EDonkey2000/Sharereactor I cut the cord. Cable TV sucks, specifically it's business model!
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I don't have pay TV and use netflix/amazon/iTunes streaming a lot. I sometimes have multiple kids watching distinct video streams on different devices at the same time. I haven't hit the bandwidth cap with my comcast internet-only service yet. I can imagine you need to get seriously into torrenting HD movies to go over the edge.
  - pyre 14y ago
    I think that the parent post was suggesting that the ISPs might increase overage charges, and reduce the bandwidth caps (as in smaller amount before overage charges) as a way of offsetting customers dropping their cable tv subscription (i.e. lost revenue) and streaming more video over their internet connection (i.e. more strain on the ISP's network + maintenance costs).
RonMN580SR 14y ago
As wave pointed out a lot of news videos are available on the internet. We at Metadata Labs have a web services which finds and plays internet videos on a variety of subjects including News. Take a look at http://debsnews.com http://debsnews.com
SwellJoe 14y ago
I think this is really interesting in the context of the HBO story: http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-geniuses-sells-more-hbo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-geniuses... Will companies like HBO make the necessary changes to their business to survive the end of pay TV, or will they go down with the ship, stubbornly clinging to their high margins and tightly controlled distribution channel? Of course, cable companies have, in collusion with telcos, locked down the Internet last mile in most markets by putting independent ISPs out of business...so they may not suffer much in the next few years, unless and until Google fiber comes along and makes them utterly irrelevant.
- catweasel 14y ago
  This is very much the reason Rupert Murdoch (and by extension News Limited papers) is so opposed to the NBN in Australia.
jsz0 14y ago
Sounds impressive until you realize that just Comcast and TWC alone have about 35 million subscribers. I couldn't find a total number for all pay TV subscribers but I would guess it's above 100 million.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
protolif 14y ago
This number would be a lot larger, were it not for Comcast (and probably others) bundling Cable TV service in with their Internet packages, for considerably less money than you can get Internet alone. I don't know if they're inflating their numbers to show their investors or what, but I can't wait for Google fiber. Even though I don't really trust Google anymore, they're the lesser evil here.
geebee 14y ago
I recently quit cable. I mainly watch sports, and I discovered that various web feeds along with espn3 gives me enough coverage that I don't really need cable (I'd say it's about 70% of what I want to watch). I do miss some soccer/tennis, but overall it's worth it - coverage through official web feeds is still good, and full digital cable is really expensive. The big disappointment has been the olympics. But as a tennis fan, I'm not at all surprised that NBC has been a disappointment. I was really delighted when the finally lost their rights to wimbledon, because finally things were aired live and were accessible on line. NBC has pretty much limited live web streaming to people who are paying for expensive cable packages. Essentially, they'll let you watch on the web as long as you aren't using the web to avoid paying for cable. ESPN is still be a little crappy about this - you do have to get your web through a particular provider (though if you have a military or university account, you'll also get through). But nowhere near as bad as NBC, and no surprise there.

134 points by kemper 14y ago

From article: A report from earlier this year suggested that more than 1 million U.S. households disconnected their pay-TV services in 2011. http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-subscribers-cut-the-cord-in-2011/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-subsc... From that article in April: Nearly 2.65 million cable or satellite TV subscribers have canceled their service since 2008 to rely solely on Web-based services according to estimates from the Convergence Consulting Group. ... It is estimated that roughly 930,000 customers will cut the cord in 2012, for a total of 3.58 million subscribers since 2008. The group also estimates that traditional television providers will add 185,000 accounts this year, up from 112,000 in 2011. 2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000 disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and the holidays?

vonmoltke 14y ago
2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000 disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and the holidays? I got the impression from the article that these are numbers through Q2, so only half the year. If so, the pace would be about right.
rhplus 14y ago
I mentioned on a previous thread that satellite/cable TV companies need to be adding 1.1% to their subscriber numbers ever year just to keep pace with the growth of the number of households in the US[1]. If you looked at the percentage of households that subscribe rather than raw subscriber numbers, we'd see an even steeper decline over the past 10 years or so. [1] http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf
jftuga 14y ago
Some people will disconnect when their contract is up. I signed a 2 year contract but it expires in January. My biggest apprehension is having to turn my 2 HD DVRs back in. Then realizing a few months later that I want 'real' service again. This would mean that I would to pay another upfront cost to rent the DVRs again.

bradleyland 14y ago

Looks like cable peaked in 2001, with increasing losses since then. http://www.ncta.com/Stats/BasicCableSubscribers.aspx http://www.ncta.com/Stats/BasicCableSubscribers.aspx It's also interesting to see that HSI over cable exploded around 2001. http://www.ncta.com/Stats/High-Speed-Internet-Customers.aspx http://www.ncta.com/Stats/High-Speed-Internet-Customers.aspx EDIT: Posted a graph on my blog: http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-television-subscription-rates-falling-but-where-are-they-going/ http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-television-subsc...

chaz 14y ago
You're not counting satellite, which has been taking market share away from cable. As of 2011, 60.4% of households have cable, and 31.1% of households have "alternative distribution systems," almost all of which is satellite, like DirecTV and DISH. Safe to assume that very few households have both cable and satellite, so about 90% of households have pay TV. Page 10: http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf
- benmccann 14y ago
  According to the data in this article DirectTV and Dish Network both lost subscribers as well this quarter (52,000 and 10,000 respectively). While the losses historically were at the hands of the satellite operators, more recently it has been lost to the internet.

nicholassmith 14y ago

I moved house recently and decided to no longer pay for a TV subscription (which as I'm in the UK would be Sky). I don't watch much in the way of TV, my girlfriend watches a bit more so it was a tricky choice. We've ended up with NetFlix through an Apple TV as our primary source of content, it's not perfect but there's enough stuff on their that we have an interest in to keep us entertained. I'd be interested in seeing the stats for how many in the UK are going down this route, we've got slightly less services available, and as far as I can tell we have much less choice than over the pond.

goatforce5 14y ago
Do you get Freeview? The selection of free broadcast channels in the UK is really quite exceptional: http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Yeah we do, which covers our 'lets just put the TV on'.

sp332 14y ago

Tempted to call this blogspam; the actual information is from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-idUSL2E8J29MJ20120802 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-idUSL2E8J29M...

benologist 14y ago
It's more than just blogspam, BGR also have a few HN accounts they dump links here with.
- jonursenbach 14y ago
  [Citation Needed]
  - benologist 14y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867616 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867616

wave 14y ago

One thing I missed after canceling pay TV is the way I used to watch news. You just turn on the TV and there is news. So I created http://tiltview.com http://tiltview.com to gather current news and play it without having to do any work.

harpastum 14y ago
Wow, this is really cool. I actually prefer this to watching broadcast news. You get the same feeling, but the ability to skip stories I'm not interested in makes the whole process way smoother.
karanbhangui 14y ago
This is really cool. Talk about making something people want :) Future plans with this?
- wave 14y ago
  People are asking for mobile app.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
I sort of regard people who enjoy watching the news the same as the people who enjoy watching horror films. What is the matter with you people?
- Karunamon 14y ago
  Not so much watching the news but having some kind of ambient noise that may be informative. It's the same reason I have NPR on most of the time in the background.
- heretohelp 14y ago
  News provides the gestalt for what's going to be rattling around in other peoples' heads. It also gives you material to work with for small talk. If your work or day to day life doesn't involve interacting with people even a little bit the utility of this is somewhat limited. I doubt there is a very large number of people for whom that is true.

juddlyon 14y ago

I can't give up my habit until I can watch basketball and boxing online. Ain't happening anytime soon.

alirov 14y ago
I don't know about boxing but to watch the NBA (I know that's not going to cover college sports), you can get NBA League Pass for around $100. It's not necessarily cheap but it's cheaper than paying the $64 a month I used to with DirecTV (the cheapest option in my area). Edit: Just wanted to point out that it's $100 for a whole season and not per month of course.
- tcdent 14y ago
  MLB has a similar arrangement for between $40 and $50 a year.
  - kgermino 14y ago
    I'm not sure where you're getting your info (perhaps you saw the price for the remainder of this season) but it used to be $100-$120 depending on which Even you bought. It went up slightly this year, though I'm not sue how much since they let returning subscribers keep the old rate.
    - alirov 14y ago
      I don't follow baseball so please correct me if this information is for something less than it seems to me. A quick google search brought up two services (MLB.tv and MLB Extra Innings). The former seems to cost about $40-$50 while the latter is in the $200 range for the season. Also, Extra Innings looks like an add on package to an existing cable/satellite subscription while MLB.tv is a standalone service. MLB.tv: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp Extra Innings (found price info on Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Extra_Innings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Extra_Innings

paul9290 14y ago

Oh great! Here comes the bandwidth caps and overages for going over your cap. Google Fiber needs to deploy nationally to stop these cable TV/ISP providers from making up their losses thru bandwidth overages! That said for me, once I found EDonkey2000/Sharereactor I cut the cord. Cable TV sucks, specifically it's business model!

MartinCron 14y ago
I don't have pay TV and use netflix/amazon/iTunes streaming a lot. I sometimes have multiple kids watching distinct video streams on different devices at the same time. I haven't hit the bandwidth cap with my comcast internet-only service yet. I can imagine you need to get seriously into torrenting HD movies to go over the edge.
- pyre 14y ago
  I think that the parent post was suggesting that the ISPs might increase overage charges, and reduce the bandwidth caps (as in smaller amount before overage charges) as a way of offsetting customers dropping their cable tv subscription (i.e. lost revenue) and streaming more video over their internet connection (i.e. more strain on the ISP's network + maintenance costs).

RonMN580SR 14y ago

As wave pointed out a lot of news videos are available on the internet. We at Metadata Labs have a web services which finds and plays internet videos on a variety of subjects including News. Take a look at http://debsnews.com http://debsnews.com

SwellJoe 14y ago

I think this is really interesting in the context of the HBO story: http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-geniuses-sells-more-hbo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-geniuses... Will companies like HBO make the necessary changes to their business to survive the end of pay TV, or will they go down with the ship, stubbornly clinging to their high margins and tightly controlled distribution channel? Of course, cable companies have, in collusion with telcos, locked down the Internet last mile in most markets by putting independent ISPs out of business...so they may not suffer much in the next few years, unless and until Google fiber comes along and makes them utterly irrelevant.

catweasel 14y ago
This is very much the reason Rupert Murdoch (and by extension News Limited papers) is so opposed to the NBN in Australia.

jsz0 14y ago

Sounds impressive until you realize that just Comcast and TWC alone have about 35 million subscribers. I couldn't find a total number for all pay TV subscribers but I would guess it's above 100 million.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

protolif 14y ago

This number would be a lot larger, were it not for Comcast (and probably others) bundling Cable TV service in with their Internet packages, for considerably less money than you can get Internet alone. I don't know if they're inflating their numbers to show their investors or what, but I can't wait for Google fiber. Even though I don't really trust Google anymore, they're the lesser evil here.

geebee 14y ago

I recently quit cable. I mainly watch sports, and I discovered that various web feeds along with espn3 gives me enough coverage that I don't really need cable (I'd say it's about 70% of what I want to watch). I do miss some soccer/tennis, but overall it's worth it - coverage through official web feeds is still good, and full digital cable is really expensive. The big disappointment has been the olympics. But as a tennis fan, I'm not at all surprised that NBC has been a disappointment. I was really delighted when the finally lost their rights to wimbledon, because finally things were aired live and were accessible on line. NBC has pretty much limited live web streaming to people who are paying for expensive cable packages. Essentially, they'll let you watch on the web as long as you aren't using the web to avoid paying for cable. ESPN is still be a little crappy about this - you do have to get your web through a particular provider (though if you have a military or university account, you'll also get through). But nowhere near as bad as NBC, and no surprise there.