More Users Contemplating Cutting the Cord Than Ever Before Not only are customers actively leaving traditional cable at a faster rate than ever before, more people than ever are considering giving up on cable in the next few years. That's according to new data from research firm Magid, which notes that 9% of pay TV subscribers surveyed by the firm said they are "extremely likely" to cut the traditional television cord sometime in the next year. That's a 3% jump from the 6% that said the same thing last year, the highest bump in the company's history of polling on this question.

The spike in interested cord cutters comes, not coincidentally, with the rise of a flurry of new streaming competitors from the likes of AT&T, Dish, Hulu, Google, and eventually companies like Amazon. Analysts estimate that the pay TV sector lost a record 762,000 pay-TV subscribers last quarter -- roughly five times more than the total number of lost subscribers during the same quarter last year. Dish Network lost 143,000 subscribers, even when the company's Sling TV additions were figured in. AT&T lost 266,000 subscribers during the same period, again not offset by additions to its DirecTV Now streaming service. Charter was also hard hit, itself losing around 100,000 subscribers during the first quarter. Comcast eeked out a 42,000 subscriber net gain -- in large part thanks to the company's growing cable broadband monopoly. "For the better part of 15 years, pundits have predicted that cord-cutting was the future," an apocalyptic Craig Moffett wrote in a recent research note to investors. "Well, the future has arrived." And Moffett, it should be noted, used to downplay cord cutting at every conceivable opportunity. He's no longer laughing. And he notes that rate of cord cutting isn't the only metric now highlighting the growing phenomenon. "The litany of worsts is largely the same when one considers the data from the perspective of programmers," Moffett added, turning to sinking ratings. "Worst-ever first quarter sub losses (495,000); worst ever rate of decline (-1.3%); worst ever acceleration in the rate of decline (50 basis points). … It is the nature of skinny bundles that each includes a different subset of cable networks. Most individual cable nets, therefore, did materially worse." Of course cable providers can still do something about this before bloodshed gets too bad. It's called actually competing on price. Of course cable providers can still do something about this before bloodshed getsbad. It's called actually competing on price.







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Most recommended from 56 comments



maartena

Elmo

Premium Member

join:2002-05-10

Orange, CA 9 recommendations maartena Premium Member People are asking questions.... It's a often recurring question on several Facebook groups I am in, in particular a local city group, and it comes up more in the first 3 months of the year, when they have received their yearly price increase and sticker shock ensues.



People are serious about wanting to drop cable or satellite due to the price. They aren't always willing to give up on the 20th century "channels" concept, and that is where services like DirecTV Now, and Sling TV come in handy.



People are getting fed up with high cable prices. And not surprisingly if you look at my numbers:



In Feb 2014 DirecTV raised our bill from $107 to about $115, so me and the wife decided enough was enough..... Now, that number is television ONLY, I always had a separate internet bill, not combo. At the time it was around $80 including the modem rental fee, and ironically when I upgraded to Gigapower my price went to $80 without the need of equipment, so not much has changed there in the last few years.



That $115 went up to around $135-ish in 2017 based on current price increases, with of course taking the price increases of 2015 and 2016 into account. My "entertainment" bill is currently $32 a month, with $12 for the commercial free Hulu, $12 for the 4-screen, 4k Netflix, and $8 (amortized over the year) for Amazon Prime, bringing the total to $32. My entertainment budget for a month has been set to $50 by us, so that leaves $18 wiggle room for a 4th streaming service (such as Showtime, HBO, CBS, when we need it for certain shows), or buying a season of a show on Amazon Prime or something like that. So far, we haven't needed to do that, but I will likely sign up for CBS All Access once Star Trek Discovery launches.



Since we cancelled in 2014, we saved about $1,000 that year, and with current cable/satellite prices its now over $1200 a year in savings. In the three years without cable I have pocketed somewhere around the $3,500 mark in hard cold cash that I didn't have to spend on cable. That's a downpayment on a car! Or in my case, it was half the budget for a bathroom remodel I completed earlier in the year.



So, unless you are addicted to sports, and you would pay $300 a month to keep watching your favorite team, and therefore it doesn't matter how much they raise their bills..... because sports addiction and you will pay it either way.... are the current 150 or so channels you get really worth over a THOUSAND dollars a year to have? jspaldin

join:2001-12-05

Tallahassee, FL 6 recommendations jspaldin Member The other part of the reason for cord cutting is the programming itself. We got so sick and tired of 90% of the programming on cable being some form of reality programming that we had absolutely no desire to watch. Almost all of the Discovery, History, and Nat Geo programming we liked in the past has been dropped for formulaic reality TV programming. And that is true for pretty much every other cable network, including the Weather Channel of all things. The great thing with the streaming programming (whether on-demand or traditional chrono programming) is I can find niche interests and add them easily.



The other thing was all the sports programming being dumped into our cable, whether through the bundles we had to buy to get one channel we like or the add on 'regional sports networks fees'. All the sports programming I need (my favorite football team) I can get OTA and I DVR it as well. And the OTA programming we use Tablo and now watch next day so we can DVR it and skip over the commercials. Roadkill

Premium Member

join:2008-06-17

united state 4 recommendations Roadkill Premium Member Cutting the Cord Here is my gripe: Cut cable TV for OTA television, that is fine. I nearly hate watching seven minute segments of a TV show between commercial breaks. Regular TV (not cable TV) frustrates the hell out of me due to the breaks in the show. OTA TV is turning into advertisers wasteland where the TV show doesn't seem to be the main point of viewing any particular show. I'll cut the cord this summer, but it won't be to watch OTA TV or the cable-like bundles from the streaming services. I'm cutting commercials and that is the end of it. I have Netflix and maybe I'll pick up Hulu to watch ad-free if that can actually be done. Television OTA and Cable needs a paradigm shift away from milking money as much as possible.

davidc502

join:2002-03-06

Mount Juliet, TN 4 recommendations davidc502 Member Prices are just too high I know several people who are paying more than 200 per month, and are just acclimated to the expense, and don't think much about it. However, when you tell them that's 2,400 dollars for the entire year, to which they may only watch 10 channels or so, they start to contemplate if they really need it or not. For most people, in the US, 2400 dollars is still a good chunk of money.



When you can simply go over to Hulu and Netflix, which will cover 75% of a persons viewing needs... If they are willing to wait a week or perhaps the next season, there is still significant savings. Also, it's still easy to install an attic antenna that can simply plug into a TV tuner card on the PC... Those ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox shows can simply be recorded, commercials stripped, and served to any DLNA device in the home which connects to the TV.. It's a bit of a hassle to set up, but once done, it's smooth sailing and costs nothing monthly. However, not everyone has antenna coverage in the US as it depends on terrain an distance from the transmitter.



I'm rolling up on 3 years as a cord cutter, and absolutely love the flexibility and low costs of watching pretty much commercial free TV. The only downside is certain sports events, and certain TV shows where one sometimes has to get inventive to pull it in.

scott2020

join:2008-07-20

MO 3 recommendations scott2020 Member Re-Cutter I am a cord re-cutter. I cut the cord around 2006 or something and re-connected it a couple if years later. About a year ago after constant price increases I cut it again, at least for TV. I didn't see the point when all I have time to watch are a few network shows.



With streaming becoming more popular, it won't take long for the cable monopolies to start raising internet rates and overages to make up the difference. Since there is next to no competition in most areas and more consolidation happening, it is a perfect situation for the cable co's. zod5000

join:2003-10-21

Victoria, BC ·TELUS

·Shaw

2 recommendations zod5000 Member My cableco keeps offering me sweet deals not to cancel: At this point the only reason I keep cable is for the odd local news broadcast and sports. Regular price on that is about $45 through my telco (roughly the same if i used the cableco). Everytime I call to cancel they sell me the same package for $23 so I keep it rolling.



The moment they don't I'll cut the cord. It's not worth $45 for the handful of tv content I watch on cable.



The funny thing is broadcasters are trying to simply move the model to streaming. Making their channels even more expensive via streaming than cable. I don't think they get it's not really the platform, it's that they're pricing themselves to a point where demand is really low. mlcarson

join:2001-09-20

Santa Maria, CA 2 recommendations mlcarson Member Not viable That cord is most people's Internet access since cable is the primary ISP for most people. The cable companies then put bandwidth caps on that Internet connection to dissuade cord cutters and create the pricing structure so that you aren't saving much if you try to avoid their TV service packages. There might still be some savings but then you get into the inconvenience factor of not having a common media center with recording capabilities. For example, if you are lucky enough to get your local networks OTA - now you need a way of recording them for time shifting. Whatever method you use to do time shifting will now be different than what you are using of your "cord cutting" service for the non-OTA channels/services.



Most people would save more money by weaning themselves off from their cell phone usage rather than their TV service. Those are the bills that are the easiest to reduce or eliminate since most people don't need to be online everywhere they go. If you think you do and it's not job related, you have a problem that's a lot larger than cord cutting.