Cable TV Decline: Cord-cutting is accelerating | Hacker News Reader

Cable TV Decline: Cord-cutting is accelerating

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36 pointse15ctr0n66 comments

I cancelled all TV from my FiOS bill last month and I couldn't be happier. $175 was being flushed down the toilet every month.

The biggest thing, that no news article really captures, is that even if you sign up for a $50/mo TV package, the actual price is closer to $100/mo when you include taxes, fees, DVR rentals (!), etc. No thank you!

Like another commenter said, I think a hurdle for the average person is living without TV shows on a fixed schedule. Most people are used to leaving the TV on, or mindlessly flipping channels until anything satisfies you. I could not hope more to move away from that world, and I think that people are finally starting to do that.

> Like another commenter said, I think a hurdle for the average person is living without TV shows on a fixed schedule.

The biggest hurdle is sports. Being a sports fan and a cord-cutter at the same time is really hard. Even if you subscribe to every pro sports digital package (which aren't cheap, by the way) you still miss out on all of the nationally televisions games, the blacked out local games, and all of the commentary surrounding sports.

Sadly this one is much harder to fix than movies. You can't just build a Netflix for sports because the broadcast rights are too expensive.

"because the broadcast rights are too expensive"

They're in a bubble right now, and there is commentary in the sportsball press about what, for example, the NBA as a corporation will do when the bubble pops. Other than go bankrupt and emerge on the other side with the same people doing the same thing. Its a pretty serious concern for them.

A bubble how? Are they saying that the value of the broadcasting rights are artificially inflated? Or the value of the sport in general (licensing, merchandising, ticket costs, etc)?

Well the cost of broadcast sports is super high because that's the price they can demand. They demand more, and the cable companies have to pay it because who wants to be the cable provider without ESPN or Fox Sports? And then if you want sports on your cable plan, you're paying an extra $100/mo because you have to subscribe to them all so the cable companies can make a profit.

And then you get into the question of the quality of pro sports. Lots of people are unhappy with the NBA and their heavy focus on superstars. Ticket sales are down, and fewer people are watching it on TV as well. The NFL seems to be getting into controversy after controversy that's turning people off. If the players aren't behaving distastefully and if the teams aren't cheating, then there's the whole concussion fiasco playing out right now.

Not to mention a lot of these sports teams lean on non-profit status and taxpayer-funded stadiums. What would have happened if Detroit hadn't funded a replacement for the Silverdome? Taxpayers are getting a bit more wary of where their public funds are going.

None of these things will kill pro sports, but they do lower the value. And it's possible someday a cable company will drop high-priced sports and not suffer any consequences. When that day comes... well the bottom will drop right out of that market.

> Lots of people are unhappy with the NBA and their heavy focus on superstars. Ticket sales are down, and fewer people are watching it on TV as well.

That's completely false on both counts. Ticket sales are at record levels [1] and last years NBA finals broadcast had the highest ratings since 1998 [2].

[1] http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/10/26... [2] http://www.sbnation.com/2015/6/17/8795971/2015-nba-finals-tv...

> Lots of people are unhappy with the NBA and their heavy focus on superstars. Ticket sales are down, and fewer people are watching it on TV as well.

As the other commenter said, this is completely false. The NBA has been doing everything right by focusing on stars and personalities. People are much more likely to like/hate a player in the NBA than they are the NFL. The NFL is trying to replicate the star thing that the NBA does, but no players are on the field all the time and helmets make players hard to recognize.

Having been to both NBA and NFL games, I always feel more in the game when at the NBA game. IMHO, NFL games are best watched on TV, while the NBA is great in person particularly in the first 10 rows.

The biggest issue for the NFL cash cow are concussions and parents not letting their kids play football. It will take time, but eventually the skill level will drop.

Very detailed, recent article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/the-sports-...

ESPN costs cable subscribers about $40/month whether they watch sports or not. That's the real bubble; when those viewers cut the cable, that income will never come back.

That's a problem for ESPN, not sports in general. The other sports networks are not getting the level of income from subscriptions and are still bidding high on sports deals. NBC just spent 1 billion on EPL rights.

NBC is not bidding $1 billion out of the goodness of their hearts. They are submitting a bid that is greater then other bids. If ESPN and Fox Sports (FSN) have less money for bids due to cable cutters, NBC (and CBS) can lower future bid amounts.

Clearly audiences moving to other platforms is a problem for all networks, but that's not a "sports" problem, that's a cable TV problem.

NBC is not bidding $1 billion because there are people who are forced to subscribe to ESPN that don't want to. They are bidding $1 billion because there is a high demand for sports programming.

I'm arguing against the guy who said that sports leagues are going to go under because people are no longer forced to subscribe to programming they don't want.

Total NFL revenue is about $7B, total TV contracts per year across multiple networks annualized to about $3B, in the most recent contract. Just a couple years ago it was about half... but we're not in a bubble ... sure ... a 70 year old sport doubled in real value in a couple years, not just bubble doubled in price, not very believable claim ...

If XYZ network could win at a bid of $750M I don't think they'll toss away $250M out of the goodness of their heart by bidding $1B. That's $250M that isn't going toward player salaries, overhead, stadiums, owner profit both immediate and via the estimated value of the team increasing for some future sale, etc. That, is a "sports" problem.

If TV revenue were a rounding error on the budget, variation could be ignored, but its not. It varies from sport to sport but very roughly about half the total revenue comes from TV for most popular pro sports.

On a technicality, there isn't a $1B bid because of high demand for sports. There's all kinds of things in high demand with no functioning market at all. Think of weed, for example. Anyway the football bid is $1B because they reckon they can sell more than $1B in advertising to baby boomer aged fans or other viewers who still have money to be influenced. Betting on TV commercial revenue increasing in perpetuity for all time is not a good bet to make.

It's possible to get sports. Basically you buy a non-US version of a sports package like NFL GamePass and then stream the content through your phone. You can get any game without blackouts.

You'll need a VPN connection to a foreign country, and you may also need to get an app (eg NFL GamePass or NHL) from a foreign App Store. Android is easier I hear.

Yes, it's possible, I said it was "really hard", not impossible. If you go to extraordinary means you can find a way to watch the games. You can usually find a Chinese streaming site with 1000 pop-up ads for any game you're interested in as well.

I'm guessing NFL GamePass doesn't include pre-game or post-game shows, I'm guessing it doesn't include NFL Network shows, or Sportscenter or any of the other places where you can watch people talk about sports. This is as big a part of being a sports fan as the games themselves.

It includes NFL Network Live which has all their specials and pre/post game shows.

Bigger part. The games only have 3.5 minutes of action, so you have to have pre/post-game chatter.

I live in an out of market area, so I can get the games, and for a single team subscription, NBA is $120 for a full season, and $200 for every team. NHL is something like $110 (?) for a single team, $130 for every team, MLB is something like $160 for every team. This gives you 82, 84, 162 games respectively multiplied by the number of teams, for a total of just under $500 USD for the most expensive options. This is a lot of money, but comes out to just under $42 bucks a month. The league that can go screw right off is NFL with their $360 something streaming package from DirecTV for 16 games, especially when there's things like Monday Night Football that broadcast half your team's games nationally and black you out. I don't watch soccer so I have no idea how much their packages cost.

Per the parent though, (at least for NHL) if the game is on national TV, it's blacked out on NHL Gamecenter. Fortunately, NHL isn't all that popular, so there's only a few games on national networks each week (of the dozens of games that are broadcast locally). No idea if it's the same with other leagues.

As a big college football fan, SlingTV has been awesome for me. It's about $15/month, and I get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Goal Line (or something like that), SEC Network, and a bunch of other junk I don't watch.

I've been able to watch about 60% of my school's games this year on it, and the quality is outstanding.

Are any other non-Americans here as genuinely shocked as I am by the idea of paying $175 a month for TV?

Yes! $175 seems like an absurd cost, and I bet it's full of advertising too.

It seems especially strange when I think about what other things I could get for 175$.

American here and the only reason we have cable TV is because it's nowhere near that expensive when bundled with internet access.

Since cable is our only option for broadband where I live, it breaks down like this:

Just internet access for $70/mo

Internet access plus HBO and several channels and a tuner/DVR rental for ~$110/mo

Now, there are some limitations. On HBO, only the "main" HBO is in HD. The other HBO channels are only SD. Same goes for other cable. The "big" channels and network re-broadcasts are in HD or SD but many of the more niche channels are only in SD.

Additionally, with the phasing out of unencrypted QAM, you can't easily use your own tuner. I used to use a simple Hauppauge card in a PC along with a software tuner/DVR program to handle all of my channel flipping and recording but now I have to use their crappy cable box. In theory I could get a different PCI or USB card/box and rent a CableCard to handle the decryption and use my own tuner/DVR but CableCard is very poorly supported both in terms of software compatibility and cableco support.

In the end, we decided to keep cable for now even though I watch maybe one or two shows on traditional cable every week. The vast majority of my watching is done on Netflix or HBOGo. Still, my gf likes the convenience of just being able to flip through channels and she does a lot more "casual" watching of stuff that wouldn't be found on Netflix. If we swapped cable for Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, and whatever other OTT subscription services, it wouldn't save a whole lot of money and you'd be stuck dealing with various apps and websites to find the specific thing you're looking for.

If it was just me, I'd probably skip cable TV but since it's both of us, we have to balance the actual savings against the very real issue of convenience, usability, and options.

I think a main issue is that there's not always an easy way to find the cheaper cable plans. They aren't well advertised and we typically get these offers after specifically asking for them from a cable customer service rep.

As an American I think it's absurd too, which is why I don't do it. I get 120 Megabits/second internet for under $100/month and use netflix, etc. if I want to watch a show or movie.

I'm and american and I've never paid that much for even my combined internet and TV.

To explain to non-Americans: $175 for "TV" doesn't mean just the typical channels you would receive over an antenna or clear satellite.

$175 is typically the largest premium package, which includes about 100-200 specialty/sports channels plus about 20-30 movie channels.

And with that, you get over 1000 channels, but almost none of them have anything interesting on.

Don't worry, Comcast and company will quickly fix this by making any kind of streaming prohibitively expensive on their internet connections.

Comcast owns NBCUniversal, so they also own a big chunk of content; they're in a position where they can effectively sink Netflix from both ends by also raising the price Netflix pays for content.

Except that Netflix is constantly adding/removing content. Movies become available and then stop being available.

This is one of the major reasons Netflix is hitting "Original Content" so hard.

They can take away South Park (or whatever it is NBCU owns) but they can't take away Orange is the New Black or other Netflix Exclusives.

The real problem then becomes what happens when Amazon Prime has exclusives. HBO GO has exclusives. Netflix has exclusives. Hulu has exclusives. etc. Now, to legally watch all the popular shows, you have to pay 3, 4, 5, etc companies $~10 a month on top of your internet bill.

à la carte that everyone has always said they wanted (Why should I pay for sports when I don't watch them? Or Holy TV? or spanish channels?)

I often see this sentiment; does anybody actually have anything to back it up? The underlying thought seems to be that TV packages must be more profitable for multichannel operators than Internet. Is that true? Your cable operator has to split the TV bill with content providers. Comcast acts as ESPN's bill collector (good deal for ESPN, they don't get the hatred from the rising bills.) With Internet there is no bill to split. I once read that Internet is more profitable for Comcast than TV.

I can't give you data for US, but at the telcos I worked for, TV was the ONLY profitable part of the package. Internet and phone subscriptions were barely covering the operations (partly due to usage of obsolete copper technologies instead of fiber).

They were all scared to death of becoming a dumb pipe and are hedging their bets on selling content.

Why else institute 300GB data caps when there is no problem with congestion, and make incremental charges for exceeding those data caps at $10 per GB? Why else roll-out their own streaming service that doesn't count against those caps, and allow other major players to pay them for that access? They're positioning themselves to continue to cash-in on those wishing to access television-like content.

They'll blame technology, but for me at least, it was the "worst in the world" customer service from time Warner cable. Also, the desperation that they employ trying to prevent you from cancelling is enough to ensure I'll never go back.

Same. I initially cut cable (and cable internet) because Cox kept disconnecting me instead of my neighbor, and expected me to take time off from work (wouldn't show up in the evening or on weekends) to get me reconnected. Treat customers poorly, and if you don't offer them a compelling reason to stay (cable is hardly a necessity, and there are other ISPs), and they'll leave.

This is what I never understood about this "make it hard to quit" strategy. If you make it EASY to quit then people won't think twice about returning, if you make it super hard then people will do everything they can to avoid re-subscripting to avoid going through that again.

To give an example:

- LogMeIn & SiriusXM Satellite Radio: Both make cancelling a huge pain in the butt. You have to call in, they bug you, and it take forever. Both I've considered re-subscribing to, and both I decided to go with a competitor (TeamViewer, and Play Music Unlimited respectively).

- Hulu+: I quit and rejoin Hulu several times a year. But they make it so easy to quit, I don't think twice about joining.

I think this whole "make it hard to quit" strategy is part of a bigger problem with businesses: short-term-ism. Meaning businesses only dwell on one quarter at a time, and ignore their own future. Often times with the management/CEO coming in, burning down a company's long term for short term profit, getting personally rewarded, and then jumping ship before the long term issues become evident.

Didn't TW grow by acquisition? It's 72.2% debt:

http://quicktake.morningstar.com/stocknet/bonds.aspx?symbol=...

Just cut the cord this weekend, after we realized we're paying $170/month for cable, and only watch about 8 shows. Was also paying monthly for Tivo. Already had Netflix & Amazon Prime. Subscribed to Hulu (eats the savings of canceling Tivo) and may add a few others. Still feels weird to not be able to turn on live TV in the background (haven't gotten the HD Antenna working yet). Only downside so far is - it was nice turning on the Tivo and having a small number of shows to watch that it had recorded for us. Now my wife and I have to think - what do we want to watch? Did it come on yet this week? And is it on Hulu or Netflix or Amazon or...

Mind reporting if you still obtain your Internet uplink from the same provider as your cable? Did you just ditch the TV service or drop the provider entirely?

Just dropped the TV service. Still have Cox for internet. $60/month for 50mb (not really). But, it's enough for my two kids to stream youtube while I stream from netflix, so I can live with it.

> Still feels weird to not be able to turn on live TV in the background

I think that even older generations are starting to realize that the cable bill is pretty much paying for a white noise generator at this point - computers and phones/tablets have so much to occupy attention and time that all it's going to take is a person saying aloud "Why am I paying $X to not watch TV?"

What's funny is my parents, in their 60s, cut the cord about 2 years ago - long before me. My father is technically savvy compared to most his age, but for them saving money was far more important.

> Now my wife and I have to think - what do we want to > watch? Did it come on yet this week? And is it on Hulu > or Netflix or Amazon or...

I feel like this is where streaming still fails to be better than piracy. I pay 16€/month for a dedicated server, pay nothing for an RSS feed of TV show torrents I'm interested in, spent a couple hours whipping up some scripts to automate transferring the shows to my home and putting them where Plex expects them to be...

And when we fire up the TV, it just tells us which shows have new episodes available to watch. Don't care what the schedule is, which service has it, doesn't matter if the Internet is being uncooperative, and I don't have to deal with DVRs sometimes missing a recording or having some other problem (I think I've gone through every DVR solution that isn't tied to a cable / satellite provider).

I keep paying for cable and streaming so that someone is getting paid for the content I'm consuming but I'm longing for the day that some box and combination of services can give me that level of just not having to give a crap about the details. After 10+ years of trying different things I finally have something that "just works" all the time, but I'm still responsible for it and I'd rather pay someone else $50/month so that I don't have to be.

I'm strongly considering this. I've experimented with Plex and it works very well. Haven't done the scripting bit yet, just manually adding some things to try it out.

I would also keep paying for Hulu/Netflix/etc, just so that the content creators get paid. But, if I went this route, I could also rip the bajijllion movies my daughters have and no longer worry about them getting their jelly covered fingers on them...

I have an old Silicon Dust device and a couple scripts that record the shows I watch each week, transcode them and put them on the plex server. It's a _really_ simple setup, but for the two or three OTA broadcast shows we watch, it's not bad.

I just have several shows in my personal collection that I rotate between for background shows. Because I've already seen them multiple times, I usually don't get too distracted by them and can do other things while they're on.

I just pop in a DVD or queue up a playlist and let it run for a couple hours.

Hunting for live TV that I can tolerate would take up so much more effort for me, and the commercials are basically designed to be distracting.

I've been TV free for about 10 years now (although I subscribe to Eurosport). I now find it strange when I go to someone's house and the TV is blaring away. The ads are just the worst, almost physically painful to experience.

I don't think it's too hyperbolic, even if it's a bit of a cliche, to liken TV to other addictive things. It's just too stimulating. Walk into a bar with a TV and you kind of find yourself watching it for no good reason. Watching a sport you don't like, with teams you don't support with the sounds off.

"TV viewers between the ages of 18 and 31 are signing up for cable in ever decreasing numbers"

The rationalization in the article was strange nonsense, but combined with long term economic trends

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/07/29/more-millennials-l...

If "grandpa" had a factory job paying $50/hr and "dad" got $25/hr in a cubicle and the kid living at home gets a couple bucks an hour as a bartender, you can express the staggering increase in the cost of cable in hours of labor per month. So in grandpa's generation, he only had to work an afternoon to pay for cable, but his grandkids would basically have to put in an entire part time work week to pay for cable, and I'm sure they'd rather eat or pay the rent..

Just this weekend I helped my mother change TV providers. She went to dish network from at&t uverse.

My original thought was to move internet from uverse to xfinity. But xfinity's web site was so sneaky about up front fees that I abandoned them and kept her internet with uverse.

Cable companies are blatant scammers. The industry deserves to die.

Once it gets bad enough, internet prices with skyrocket to compensate. or they'll link internet data caps to prices of cable tiers or some other such nonsense.

Just got this in my email, here's what I pay in Massachusetts for Comcast/Xfinity:

====================

Xfinity TV

Digital Starter $69.95

HD Technology Fee $9.95

DVR Service $10.00

Additional Outlet $9.95

Additional Outlet $2.99

Xfinity Internet

Performance $53.95

Modem Rental $10.00

Taxes, Surcharges and Fees $11.69

====================

The fact that I pay extra for a DVR/and HD made sense in 2005, not so much in 2015.

The fact that they charge for extra outlets always makes me facepalm. Charge for each box you are forced to rent, sure. It sucks but it at least makes logical sense. But the cable wiring in your house? That's yours! Why would you need to pay for that?

I have two "boxes". One is the DVR, the other is a "regular" box with guide and On Demand. I then have a couple other TV's in the kid's rooms with Comcast's most basic "box" (no guide, limited channels etc.).

I probably could kill one of them, and if I bought my modem I'd eventually save maybe $13/month (albeit after 6 months of paying off the modem/time to modify services)

You should call and badger comcast for a deal. I'm on a deal now for less than $200/month for nearly every channel x1, 2 room dvr, and 120Mb inet, and a phone line (yes, my wife still uses a fax machine).

The problem with the starter (unless you can get a $99 deal) is that you have to add HD and DVR. So you think you're on the cheap plan, but it makes more sense to move up where those are included if you need them. Comcast website is deliberately obtuse and dealing with them is pain, but it can be done. Tweeting at them seems to get the best response and can get you a personal service person who seems to have the power to fix things.

With that said, when this deal is up I'll evaluate again if I can cut the cord and still get shows I want to watch without much hassle and decent internet.

Do you work for Comcast? In all seriousness, spending more to get a lot more isn't what I'm looking for. Verizon (my wireless provider) also tries the same sales tactic - as the higher paid plans have a batter rate for data.

No, but you want HD and DVR which are not really basics. I was just pointing out that it makes more sense to spend the same money or a little more and get a package including those. The other option is drop those and use an antenna for great HD and then watch shows online after they come on. It is all about level of effort and what your time is worth.

Comcast is a huge pita company, but it is either them, DTV, or nothing for my area. So until I can cord cut completely, I want to at least get some value. For now instead of just complaining into the void I look for solutions, and if I must keep Comcast I might as well make it worthwhile from a value stand point. It is fine if you don't like the solution, but I was throwing it out there so you would check the other plans.

I cancelled Cable TV altogether. I don't want my children to see ads. Now I just have Netflix. When I want to watch the news (usually during elections) I plug an antenna.

In addition to OTA, I've found CBS has CBSN - a 24/7 news channel available on roku. I found their coverage of the Paris attacks to be pretty good, easily on par with what I'd be watching on CNN or something. That and Democracy Now feed my "cable news" need just fine. But mostly, I've learned to live without 24/7 "news" coverage and I'm happier for it.

Aside from sports there is no reason at all to pay for cable. Most paid services can get you the same content without also having to watch ads.

It just seems absurd to me that a business model can exist in the Internet age where you pay to see ads and still have no control over your content aside from switching channels.

I'm an old movie addict and have never had cable. The cost to value ratio never made much sense to me. Even back in 98 there was ways to get movies for free or cheap on the internet. Back then it was zero day ftp's and today its streaming sites like netflix. I wish cable died already.

I really like Cinemax, HBO, and Showtime original series. How do I cord cut without having to subscribe to these premium channels?

HBO NOW is great for Apple devices. I'm not sure if Cinemax and Showtime offer an equivalent but they should be soon if cable isn't paying them a big amount to stay exclusive.

HBO Now isn't only for Apple devices. For the first three months of its availability you had to sign up through iTunes. But it's now possible to subscribe through Google Play. In any case I've always watched it through a web browser, regardless of the subscription.

Cancelling the iTunes subscription was a disaster of an experience. If you've never tried finding your subscriptions in iTunes on an iPhone consider yourself lucky. It takes 5 clicks to find it:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings. 2. Tap App and iTunes Stores. 3. Tap your Apple ID. 4. Tap View Apple ID. You might need to sign in. 5. Under Subscriptions, tap Manage.

The moron who decided that subscriptions should be hidden behind tapping something completely unrelated like your AppleID should be fired. But seeing as this hasn't been addressed in the last 5 years I guess Apple likes it this way.

This looks like a decent one-stop guide. http://www.theverge.com/a/online-tv-stream-price-guide

Great guide. Now what about TV for a household with older parents?

They already have a hard enough time using the FIOS cable boxes to navigate TV. Is there an interface for Internet based TV that is easy enough for non-Tech people like my parents and my significant other?

My folks really like Apple TV. Seems to be a good GUI.

Showtime and Starz just recently partnered with Amazon Prime. You can do an add on subscription for Showtime to your Amazon Prime account for $9/month. Not sure about Cinemax though.

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