With companies like Samsung releasing television sets such as this massive 4K one in the picture above, you wouldn’t think that cable television was in a downward spiral. The truth is, the cable television industry is still large and in-charge, but more people are cutting the cord than ever before. Month after month, cable companies are losing subscribers. Where are they all going? According to a report from SNL Kagan, the U.S. market lost close to 1.8 million cable TV subscribers in the last 3 months alone (Q2). This doesn’t denote significant change yet, but it does bring us closer to an upcoming tipping point where cable television subscriptions (and their 33% commercials) are a thing of the past. In the same report we can see a more significant change in internet service subscriptions nearly doubling from 9.7% to 17% while cable TV took a 7.4% dive from 2009 to 2012.
Another analyst and possibly one of the most renowned in the country, Craig Moffet (founder of the MoffetNathanson) looked at statistics from the past 12 months and concluded over 900,000 homes in the U.S. cut the cable. He is quoted stating “Cord-cutting used to be an urban myth, it isn’t anymore.” But one could easily rephrase that to say, cord-cutting used to be for the technologically adept, but it is becoming more mainstream. Compared to just last year, this is a huge increase in the number of subscribers lost. The Leichtman Research Group reported that in 2012 only 325,000 subcribers cut the cord. Keep in mind that cable TV is still a long ways from phasing out. In the U.S. alone there are over 94 million subscribers still paying for service, and that is a big chunk of money pie at the average price of $34 per month. I stream everything. Sports, music, TV shows, movies. The best part is no commercials. No advertisements. I watch what I want to watch. Everything else is streaming via Netflix and other services via Roku, Xbox 360 and sometimes Apple TV. http://groovyandroid.com/save-money-switching-prepaid-126/ I’ll have to write up something similar for cutting cable. I’ve been doing a lot of math on this recently as I’m about to move into a new residence that has access to FIOS and several other ISPs all trying to sell a bundle. My findings so far with just Verizon alone was that I can save $40+ per month by opting for Internet only. Over the two year period that they want for a contract it comes out to a savings of $960 – which is enough to buy a new TV and a completely new media center for streaming, or a new computer. There are services popping up all over like https://aereo.com/ which allow you to watch local TV channels over the net. And then there’s always just going out and buying a large digital antenna and picking up the broadcast because things like Fox News aren’t considered premium cable subscriptions. Dave – KilltheCableBill Still, the ability to watch what you want, when you want is a huge benefit…plus no annoying commercials – unless you subscribe to Hulu Plus — still, there’s fewer commercials with it too. There are Fox News streaming channels. For instance on Roku there is a live streaming Fox channel that streams from 9am to 3pm. It’s not the full production, but allows you to get the news. There’s also plenty of on-demand Fox stuff. Also, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Bloomberg all have live streaming pretty much 24/7. Comment Name * Email *
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