Stock Market Has Cord Cutting Freak Out After ESPN Viewer Losses For years the legacy TV industry liked to pretend that cable TV cord cutting in the face of Internet video was a mythical beast, akin to yeti or unicorn. That belief appears to be changing as big media stocks all took big hits this week after Disney acknowledged that the grand mac daddy of traditional cable TV -- ESPN -- would continue to see notable viewership declines.

Reports had already indicated that ESPN had lost 3.2 million subscribers over the last year. ESPN is of course the primary reason for skyrocketing cable TV bills, which in turn are the primary reason for customers either reducing their cable TV packages or cutting the traditional cable cord altogether. A recent survey suggested that ESPN might not be as essential to consumers as broadcast executives like to believe. The continued losses at ESPN could drive the company to offer a direct-to-consumer streaming service sooner than it had originally wanted (the company recently suggested it might not arrive for another five years). ESPN has been ESPN has been suing any pay TV provider that offers so-called "skinny TV" bundles that don't include ESPN in the core channel lineup. They're now stuck between a rock and a hard place: ignoring the cord cutting revolution and maintaining the status quo (which will drive cord cutting) or embracing the cord cutting revolution and offering a direct-to-consumer option (which will drive cord cutting).







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Most recommended from 50 comments

ke4pym

Premium Member

join:2004-07-24

Charlotte, NC 30 recommendations ke4pym Premium Member I would like to live in a world Where I can call up my cable company and say:



*Insert cable company name here*, I don't want any sports on my channel line up. And *POOF*, all of the sports are gone from my line up.



I have no use for sports. Except for once a year for the Indy 500 and would rather not pay for any of them. zod5000

join:2003-10-21

Victoria, BC ·TELUS

·Shaw

9 recommendations zod5000 Member I hope this brings sanity to sports TV channels: I'm in Canada and we have TSN & Sportsnet as our main sports channels here. They either come imbedded in some cableco's basic packages or often a sports addon for $10 or $15. I think most people have at least TSN in their basic package.



The amount these channels (especially sportsnet) are paying for content is insane. You kind of want to see them squirm a little so they can tune back in to sanity FM. We've got a la carte and skinny basic regulations coming in next year. It'll be interesting to see how our sports channels squirm when they start losing customers who don't want sports channels.



They'll be left with two choices. Stop paying so much for content and get their costs under control OR jack up the rates for those that want sports. I imagine if people pay the fees directly (via a la carte) that they will only be able to increase it so much. Hopefully this puts pressure on sports channels to stop offering insanes amount of money for content. pittpete1

join:2009-06-12 8 recommendations pittpete1 Member Im a huge sportsfan but ESPN sux and i barely watch it

karlmarx

join:2006-09-18

Moscow, ID 6 recommendations karlmarx Member It'a Reaganomics for the TV industry As the conservatives are so fond of saying "a rising tide lifts all boats", I guess the reverse is true too. "A falling tide lowers all boats". ALL the media companies are taking a beating. Viacom, Comcast, TWC, Disney, etc, etc.. Pretty much anyone who is in the market for making or selling TV services is getting spanked. Why? Just ask any 20 year old today. You would be surprised at how many of them have ZERO desire to pay for cable TV. Old people (65+) are the most common demographic who pay for cable, but it drops steadily as you get younger. The FUTURE is content on demand, WHEN we want it, WHERE we want it, and HOW we want it. These dinosaur companies don't seem to get that, but wall street is waking up and taking notice. Sure comcast may have another 5 years of non-stop TV rate increases, but they are driving more and more people away from their TV business. Naturally, Comcast KNOWS this, ERGO, insanely low Data Caps (yes, they ARE data caps, no matter what comcast calls them. The fact that they charge you MORE for using more data does not mean it's not capped.). The pathetic thing is the data caps are pretty much the same as they were 8 YEARS ago, when they first started capping. Internet usage doubles every 2 years, so that 250GB cap SHOULD be about 2TB today (if it kept up with the times). It's GREED by the cable companies, nothing more, nothing less. IluvMoney (banned)

join:2015-05-04

MiddleClass 6 recommendations IluvMoney (banned) Member Disney is the great god of content blackmailing



»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN_Inc. ESPN Inc. is an American sports media conglomerate based in Bristol, Connecticut. Jointly owned by The Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation (which owns a 20% minority share) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di ··· on_Group ABC, Inc. DBA DisneyABC Television Group[27]



Disney/ABC Television Group Digital Media

Walt Disney Television

DisneyABC Domestic Television - formerly Buena Vista Television

Disney Media Distribution - formerly Disney-ABC International Television and before that, ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group

ABC Television Network (1943  Radio) (1948  Television)

ABC Daytime (1960)

Times Square Studios (division)

ABC Media Productions - formerly Buena Vista Productions

Valleycrest Productions

ABC News (1945)

ABC News Radio (1968)

ABC News All Media

ABC News production unit

ABC News Productions(1994)

Lincoln Square Productions (2003present)

Fusion (50%) (2013-) a Hispanic news and satire shows cable channel.

A+E Networks (joint venture with Hearst Corporation; 50% equity holding; 1984)

A&E

History

Bio. - international

FYI - US only

H2

Military History

Crime & Investigation Network

A+E Networks International

A+E Networks Consumer Products

A+E Studios

A&E IndieFilms

A+E Films

A+E Networks Digital

Lifetime Entertainment Services

Lifetime

Lifetime Movie Network

Lifetime Real Women

ABC Enterprises, Inc.

Hulu (32%; 2009)

ABC Entertainment Group

ABC Digital

ABC Entertainment

ABC Studios - formerly Touchstone Television & ABC Television

ABC Owned Television Stations Group (1948)

Live Well Network (2009)

ABC National Television Sales

ABC Regional Sports and Entertainment Sales[28] Disney is the prime content semi-monopolist that wields a huge bat in negotiations with cable companies. Besides owning the ESPN channels, they also own all the child friendly Disney channels and also ABC. Whenever a cable company tries to move ESPN out of the basic tier and in to a Sports tier, Disney threatens them with pulling ALL their channels from that cable company. The screams from the cable companies customers with kids is deafening and the cable companies always back down. The only way that this situation would change is if the big bad government passed a law forcing content monopolists to not bundle their channels in to one contract.

maartena

Elmo

Premium Member

join:2002-05-10

Orange, CA 6 recommendations maartena Premium Member Cut the cord... Cable is a complete ripoff nowadays. Unfortunately most people would panic when they realize they actually have to think about what they want to watch, they rather be entertained by what the media industry decides should be on your television.



ESPN is just one of many reasons why I cut the cord. Besides the fact you are being charged for television you don't even want to watch, they charge you for every TV you want to watch TV on, they charge you extra for a DVR, some providers charge extra for HD still, then you get to deal with a "broadcast surcharge", and a "sports surcharge", and a whole bunch of regulatory fees which the cable company likes to point out on your bill by basically saying: Look, these are fees that are imposed on us by the fedgov/state/county and we have to charge them on top of your bill because they make us, and it isn't going to our profits!



Bullcrap. A bar is charging you $5 for a pint. When you get the bill, it says $5. It doesn't say: $3.50 for a pint, $0.50 local business tax, $0.50 liquor license recovery fee, and $0.50 health inspection costs recovery. NO, it says $5. Because that is simply part of doing business.



A $19.99 "special deal" will turn in to $60+ when you want to watch that deal on two televisions, you want one of them to be a DVR, you would like it in HD, and you will have to pay "broadcast surcharges", "sports surcharges", and a whole lot of other fees.



There is no such deal that says: Pay $20 for TV, and you actually getting a bill that reads $20. And to me, that's a pure ripoff. travelguy

join:1999-09-03

Bismarck, ND 5 recommendations travelguy Member The Panic Starts Caught a few minutes of Cramer on CNBC last night. The Wall Street crowd is really getting the message about cord cutting. They are starting to understand that year over year rate increases are about to stop.

KrK

Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy

Premium Member

join:2000-01-17

Tulsa, OK 5 recommendations KrK Premium Member Finally, I hope the PayTV model is going to change. For far too long Disney (ESPN) has been able to bully and dictate pricing and cost most Americans a lot of money.



I'm glad to see the days of the customer putting them in check are finally arriving. rradina

join:2000-08-08

Chesterfield, MO 4 recommendations rradina Member ESPN Litigation.. Curious -- how can ESPN sue as if it's a "must carry" content provider? jdofaz

join:2013-04-15

Phoenix, AZ 3 recommendations jdofaz Member ESPN or HBO It used to really bug me that the most expensive channel in the basic packages is ESPN. It costs about the same as what the operators have to pay for HBO. Considering that 30% of ESPN subscribers don't watch a single minute of it, how many basic cable subscribers would opt to have HBO instead of ESPN if offered the choice?



For about a decade (USSB,DirecTV and finally Dish) I subscribed to only HBO and Showtime until I was no longer able to subscribe without purchasing basic channels I didn't want (be it sports or opinionated news). When Dish sent me a letter about 7 years ago saying I would have to subscribe to a basic package to keep service I decided to stop playing the game and go without.



With cord cutting I watch with glee as ESPN's profits fade. I hope the insane sports programming fees ,that they bid up with their former captive subscribers, forces them into bankruptcy.