US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace
US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace
MoffettNathanson estimates that US pay-TV lost a total of about 900,000 subs in Q3 2023 – a worst-ever third quarter for the industry. That poor result left US pay-TV shrinking at a record pace of 7.3%.
US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace::undefined
It's been over 20 years since I last paid for cable TV. I'm frankly shocked it's made it this long, but I guess they can milk the boomers for another decade or two. Certainly seems to be working for the GOP anyway.
112Most of my steaming services are threatening ads now, it's absolutely no difference.
I guess I'm dusting off the ol' pirate hat.
17Arrrr me laddies !!
2
About 5 or 6 for me, but only because the package with TV was cheaper than internet only. Didn't actually use the TV service, but saved about $40/month and got free HBO with that package (which I just used the app for since it was HD there and only SD service for the TV subscription, that's how they expected to make money with that package I think - HD was an upgrade).
11Ten here, for the same reason. It was weird calling tech support when my internet went down and they’d say ‘Does your television still work?’ Bitch, I dunno, it’s not even connected to anything, I use streaming.
The funniest was when satellite television companies showed up at my door to pitch me, obviously based on lists of competitors’ customers they’d purchased. ‘We’re x dollars cheaper with less downtime.’ ‘Okay, but I don’t use the cable service, just the internet and I stream everything.’ ‘Oh… uh we’ll give you DVR for free.’ Bitch, do you know what streaming is? I don’t have to manage recording and saving shit that still has advertisements. Your model is dead, stop trying to sell me its corpse.
6
My mom loves TV and for some reason really enjoys commercials. I can't explain it. There must be some inaudible frequency in commercials that's repuslive to me, but appetitive to her.
6I had a good friend that loved infomercials. He’d stay up to watch the late night ones - the good ones. And he’d gleefully say that if he had a credit card and disposable income, he’d buy the garbage that they sold. Never understood that… hope you’re doing good Rojo!
1
Have they tried reducing their price or increasing the quality of their product?
No?
103Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
You gotta help us, doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
7
On a lark I hooked up an antenna to see what was on broadcast TV. There were like 5 pbs channels and a dedicated weather channel. For being free it was pretty good.
47PBS is actually better than ever and I prefer it over most of what gets shoved in my face on my PC.
257 bucks a month for "passport" access, so PBS's streaming platform. It's damn good. NOVA episodes all over the place, news, new shows, etc. I gotta up my contribution.
11PBS kids is awesome. Their shows are well made and educational and available for free on their app!
10
I love my antenna. I get like 20 channels. Local news, pbs, and old cartoons and sitcoms.
5
Coming up to 16 years since I cut the cord and hardly anyone I know that is younger has cable. It's internet and then streaming.
My father when he passed in 2013 was paying $160/mth for old HD cable for his old 35" RCA tube set before I bought him a LCD TV that required a upgrade to modern HD channels. He didn't have internet with that either. So while they were scamming him for this old 480p HD packages he wasn't alone I'm sure.
I will say at new year's I was at someone's place that only had internet and for the group of us he brought out a HD Amazon antenna to watch the ball drop at midnight on local broadcast TV.
The amount of commercials was jarring. I'm not looking forward to when they bring those to streaming services that are currently hemorrhaging billions.
44I watched Fargo last week via broadcast. 5 min to 5 min of commercial time. It's insane.
30
I'd subscribe if there were anything worth watching. Occupational reality shows on every channel. Streaming has gotten so bad lately that I don't think we're going to have a culture in the future just people setting themselves on fire for TikTok clout
40Why is cable TV service, and TV streaming different? Can't the cable service providers just be streaming TV providers? And compete globally?
20The distinction does seem a bit arbitrary, but I think it's the difference between being able to pick what you watch on demand, and having a lot of channels that are just playing whatever.
11Actually Disney’s CEO touched about that during that last town hall. They release the shows both on traditional TV and streaming. They realized that the demographics using either platforms don’t overlap so they decided to continue with a parallel release separately to increase their reach. (I was a camera operator filming the event, I’m not a Disney employee, nor do I support any of their opinions)
6They mostly are, or owned by the same companies. The consumer cable companies also deliver Internet access for streaming so they're still getting paid.
5Because content owners don't need cable providers to stream over the internet.
HBO doesn't need Comcast for streaming, they can (and do) stream themselves with HBO Go.
4That’s the main issue here. There used to be a law that studios were not allowed to own movie theaters and so they had to open their movies to be purchased or leased by other distributors. Now, that law is gone and this is why we’re screwed.
8
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20Its currently cheaper for me to collect used laserdiscs, dvds, and blurays.
People are dumping physical media, and its a firesale. For most discs its $1-5 if you know where to look.
21It's even cheaper to own a DVD burner. Less money spent on rent storing things.
1
But not as much as the high seas me heartie...
11
🏴☠😎
18There’s a guy on one of my FB groups who peddles those one time fee cable boxes. His an absolute legend in the group. People are probably buying those things up in cities all around the world. I only use YouTube TV for about 3 months of the year and Hulu year around otherwise I’d probably buy one.
Dude is probably going to get raided by the FBI at some point.
I hope not because fuck the cable companies, Netflix, Amazon.
Hulu’s a bro though.
11Such things are a popular malware vector too.
2
May it end with a whimper not a shout
5I feel like I've read this exact headline 20 times over the past couple of years.
2I'd pay for cable for the one/two (please God, two) months my team is in the playoffs.
2I think it will become that ..... cable TV will just become a live event channel for people .... sports, concerts, public events.
They'll stop using it to broadcast TV shows of any kind, including news programs because all of that can be streamed on the internet using modern systems and devices ..... why maintain old cable networks if people can just watch your programming when they want.
8There are methods to watch to games live online, for free.
2Yeah but not at the same quality. And my preferred game is hockey where high quality really makes a difference.
1
Millennials are killing the pay TV industry.
2