9% have cut cable, another 11% are considering it | Hacker News Reader

9% have cut cable, another 11% are considering it

gigaom.com

17 pointsmbesto25 comments

Terrible questions. I don't know if that was due to laziness, ignorance or an agenda.

"I'm considering canceling my paid TV service, knowing that I can watch all/most of my favorite TV shows online."

That should be two questions, and the last part after the comma ignores many other reasons to cut cable, including cost, not watching it enough to justify, not enough flexibility, etc. You could be cutting cable because the very product, TV shows, just isn't worth the time.

I cut cable TV years ago, because there's no there there. I cut cable Internet last year due to cost, and use my building's inferior but free wifi.

"I've recently canceled my paid TV service because I can watch all/most of my favorite TV shows online."

Same problems.

It would be interesting to see numbers on how often people who tell pollsters they are "considering" a course of action in a survey actually follow through. I never know how seriously to take that sort of data. Based on what I know about how inertia affects most people's decision-making (mine included), I'm guessing the portion of people who act on their consideration is pretty low.

I cut cable, but now I'm going back to it. Not having cable has been expensive. For sports, the only viable alternative has been services like NFL Game Pass and NHL Game Center, both of which clock in at around $250 a season, and that's just for hockey and football (and BOTH services still have blackout games). On top of that I pay for a VPN account to get around geographic restrictions, otherwise both services would be close to useless. Add in a Netflix subscription on top of it and I'm up to about $700 just to watch football, hockey and Netflix; I'm still missing out on every other sport and anything that isn't available on Netflix.

"Cutting the cable" still isn't that viable an option for a lot of people, and traditional broadcasting and media companies are still very much in control of most media consumption.

I basically stopped following the NBA because there wasn't a pain-free way of watching it.

I bought the online seasons pass last year. It had a clunky video player and half the games I wanted to watch were blacked out.

They also had a scumbag cancellation process where the cancel button, that was buried on the NBA site, mysteriously had a 500 error for over a week and required talking to 3 different people on the phone.

NHL Game Center is even worse—there is NO online cancellation process and don't let you cancel your subscription partway through the season. I live in Canada an pretty much any game that is aired on TSN or TSN2 is blacked out for me.

Watching sports online could be such a great experience, but most sports leagues seem to have their hands tied by their traditional broadcasting contracts unfortunately.

Do you not root for your home team? If you do, you'll be able to get most of your teams' Football games OTA, on FOX, CBS or NBC. You'll just miss out on the odd NFLN or ESPN game. I mean, if you live out of market, you'll have to get a similar package anyway...

Otherwise, can I suggest going to a bar to watch games (if you root for your home team)? I thought I wouldn't be able to live without live sports when I cut my cable, but I was always able to go to a friend's house, a bar or somewhere else to catch a game.

Get ready for internet prices to go up for every several percent that quit.

My internet cost has doubled in five years (duopoly city).

I have Comcast for an Internet connection, whereby basic cable comes along "for free" because of the way they price things.

Last winter, in a series of roughly three major steps, my Comcast bill went up 24%. I didn't change a thing, and I was already beyond the end of all "introductory offers" and the like.

Of course, my state regulators have done nothing about this, and I don't expect any intervention from the FCC, either.

24% bump, over the course of about 4 months.

They aren't just a monopoly/duopoloy/oligarchy in content. That's the problem.

P.S. Actually, in the transition to digital-only TV service, I've lost service/content. Two out off three PBS stations and a few cable channels that they used to throw into the basic mix (obviously removed as part of their pressure to get basic subscribers to upgrade). And of the signal that remains, despite being delivered in analogue format, it is horribly full of digital compression artifacts due to what much be severe constraint upstream combined with piss-poor conversion.

In my mind, in this Comcast has failed to live up to its commitment to the FCC to maintain unchanged existing analogue service until... 2013, I believe is the year they ended up at during negotiations. Of course, no other regulatory authority nor the FCC is doing a thing about this.

Strangely, my internet speeds have increased, and costs have gone down for me just in the year I've used the service.

Frontier 35/35, $55 a month.

How many options are available where you live? Costs go down for sure if there's more than two options to choose from.

Frontier and Comcast to name two...

Why does the bottom one say 'recently'? I have never owned cable and have watched all of my media online. I wouldn't consider 14 years ago (When I graduated highschool and moved out of my mothers house heh) recent... there should be a check box there for people who are way ahead of the trend otherwise it is giving an incorrect trend.

I cut cable out several years ago, to save money, and have found that rather than desperately missing it, we just...watch less TV. When we do want to watch something, there's Hulu or Netflix (in fact, we've had to cut back our household Netflix usage, as it was threatening to blow our monthly bandwidth cap!). Sure, they don't have everything, but they certainly have more than enough to keep me entertained.

It's always football that holds me back, which is silly because I'd probably have more fun watching it with a group of friends at a bar.

I recently added cable, first time I have ever had it or satellite (I'm 34 BTW, and this includes growing up). Prior to that, I had Netflix, Blockbuster Online, used RedBox, Hulu, Amazon, etc. and bought DVDs and Blu-rays. On the rare occasion when I needed to watch TV (e.g. for the Olympics), I had an external antenna box.

We now have AT&T U-Verse, and I must say, I'm loving it. Cost wasn't really an issue, so we have the "biggest" plan. I just finished watching the first season of Game of Thrones, and NFL RedZone has made football on Sunday a lot more productive (and removed the commercials). We've DVR'd a bunch of random movies that had been on our Netflix queue for what seems like years, using their handy iOS app (we can even DVR something when we're not at home...)

Bottom line: I'm new to cable and so far, I'm loving it. The cost vs. benefit analysis, at least for me, means I'll be keeping it.

It's pretty safe to say that if the cost of the highest cable package is a non-issue to you, you're in the top 10% of earners in the country. Keep that in mind.

Is being a high earner really relevant?

My cable package is less per day than the cost of a latte at Starbucks. I could have gotten this at any point after I started working at 16, when I was nowhere close to being one of the top 10% of earners in the country.

I'd argue that even the most expensive cable/satellite package is a "non-issue" to everyone but the bottom quintile .

The cost of cable is something I've heard everyone I know, every relative, every acquaintance complain about at some point. A typical high-end cable TV and internet bundle costs more than most people spend on electricity, heating, water, sewer, cell or landline phone. Only 61% of American households have wired cable television service at all.

If that cost doesn't affect you at all (and you think comparing to a daily latte from Starbucks, something else most people can't afford, is a useful analogy), yeah, it's something to keep in mind when evaluating this article and the comments. Your perspective may be a little different than the respondents.

I have 3 1080p displays in my house. None of them are connected to my satellite box. Two are on my computer (including a 47" TV), and the projector is connected to a Roku for streaming videos. The satellite is only used for DVRing shows that we like to watch as a family, and it goes to a smallish TV in the living room.

Why would I cut cable? That's where I get my home internet access...

(Oh, you mean television.)

I live in a house with two adults (42,31) and five kids (20,17,16,6,4). I think we cover several different demographics but are pretty typical otherwise.

Everyone in the house streams their media (Netflix, iTunes, downloaded TV series). I also pay for a VPN account that gives me unrestricted access to US and UK media not otherwise available in Canada.

We do still pay for cable but, honestly, it is only used three or four hours a month for when we're looking for something to act as background noise (and, even then, we're just as likely to put on Pandora or Spotify).

The one reason that I've been hesitant to cancel cable is because I DO download TV. It assuages my guilt, somewhat, at what is effectively piracy because I _could_ get the downloaded content through my cable subscription.

What VPN service do you use that gives you access to both US and UK endpoints?

VyperVPN (purchased as part of a package through Giganews). It gives me an endpoint in the US, UK, France, EU (unspecified) and Hong Kong. It's possible there are others but I haven't bothered checking in a while.

I'm the same boat as you, paying for a VPN so that I can consume the content of my choice on the internet. I even pay for a few services abroad that normally wouldn't take my money, due to IP restrictions.

I'm also in Canada, and unfortunately you really can't get everything you want on cable here, given the CRTC's restrictions on foreign competition.

Why does the bottom one say 'recently'? I have never owned cable and have watched all of my media online. I wouldn't consider 14 years ago recent... there should be a check box there for people who are way ahead of the trend otherwise it is giving an incorrect trend.

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