Sorry Debunkers, Cord Cutters Are Very Real

It's a risk in coming years, yes. However, the difference in net sat/telco adds and net cable losses could be the number of middle-aged women who got married or began cohabiting, and gave up their seperate homes. Not an official cableco opinion, I'm low man on the totem pole. But it's not time to get hysterical yet. It's time to fix the business model before hysteria arrives.

That is because they are the ones with jobs; houses; and HDTV's. Those under 30 are living in their parent's basements jobless or underemployed and using a PC screen to watch things.

Local TV comes in mighty handy when the mountains are on fire and you want to know where it's going next. I'm terrain sheilded and must use cable TV to watch my local channels.

There's a trend not mentioned of people in their late teens finding the internet quaint. Stuff goes in cycles. Plug and play rules.

are you being serious? or are you just trolling? I was being serious. I own my home. I choose to save over $1200/year not owning a tv and subscribing to cable. I do have an 1080p capable monitor that plays blu ray just fine. I know many under 30's that live on their own (condos, apartments, etc) that have hdtv's too. they just choose to watch ota.

hdtv's are not a status symbol.

can you get AM radio? i would imagine that there are plenty of emergency am stations that can announce that stuff.

Sounds like a lot of people are shifting to antennas to get their TV.

Like Karl said, it's not broadband. Rather, people are realizing that they mostly just need the big four and they can get that OTA, in full quality with an inexpensive antenna.

... my connection is EVDO Rev A, a frontier dsl box just went in up the road and comcast is almost here, but that does nothing for me today.

And even when I do get some land based solution there is still the sports problem. While watchable, sports streams (at my speeds at least) always suffer from some motion blur, and when the stream stutters, you miss game action.

Case in point - My Dish TV went out, the evening of the Super Bowl. We a heck of a winter and somehow the freeze thaws ate the connection to the ground block. Not that I knew that then, it was dark and the game was about to start. So I hit the net and the best quality I could find was a french stream, I don't care what language its in its football, I'll understand. The picture was good, just some motion blur, oh and NO COMMERCIALS. Seriously this is why it hasn't caught on in other places, 2/3 of the coverage was dudes just standing around. No wonder they think we are lazy.

There were typical stream problems, the occasional stutter, the need to reconnect, I enjoyed the game but keeping that feed up was more work than I wanted. With sports I want the easiest most thought free solution so I can enjoy the game, not wonder about the quality of the stream. My Dad bought access to college basketball games from CBS this year and that feed was total sh*t even over his office cable connection despite being a paid service.

So until they improve both my connection and the digital delivery of sports I'm keeping the cord.

And I know many that are not living on their own.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo ··· nerationThe Japanese have an interesting name for it: Parasite Single:
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa ··· e_singleIt appears to be a world wide situation in industrialized countries.

Apple and Google are making it pretty clear that they WON'T be providing an inexpensive, simple, ala carte alternative.

CableSatelCo has nothing to worry about, and they know well that the average 2+ person household is not going to disconnect at any price.

While Generation Y and Z will grow up watching streams on 15" laptop screens, when they graduate high school, they will attend colleges that have discovered new revenue streams: mandatory dorm residency - with one flavor of "basic cable" for everyone - you'll pay for it whether you watch or not.

ah. i forget about those people. I graduated years back with many many of them. Thanks for reminding me. Took me about a decade to forget that people are that unambitious.

I think of mom's and dad's that pay for every last thing for their kids. For christs sakes people teach your children some damn independence. sink or swim. whats it gunna be?

I echo some of the commenters here. I realized that most of what I was watching was from the "Big 4" and with DTV I have about 25 channels now OTA.

I canceled my Sat TV sub and now use TiVo to record OTA and stream Netflix. TiVo also has a great import/export program that allows me to convert other video and have it sit on the "Now Playing" list.

I was paying almost $100/mo for TV programming. The initial equipment purchase paid for itself in 4 months and I'm now paying $10/month to TiVo and $10/month to Netflix. The extra $70/mo goes right to the savings account. After six months, I still don't miss pay TV.

1999 said good buy aint looked back at cable or whatever

This week or next the cable tv box is going back. Only ever watch CNBC and Bloomberg TV. Burn Notice is going to local OTA this season in reruns.
Now turns out my broker's platfform TorS is offering CNBC in it. And Bloomberg TV has been free for years.
Just keeping roadrunner until there's a cheaper offer or alternative. No FIOS yet on west side midtown. Not sure if it offers just broadband standalone. DSL sucks the mighty pipe. Breaks & slow even for cheaps.
Once there's a dependable $20 decent broadband that's next & left step. Some people have a DISH on roof but that's not a real option for RT trading.
Glad for the competition but it sure hasn't impacted the monopoly of TWC. Bye bye to that in this economy.

I think you may find a correlation between the numer of 'parasite singles' and the size/cost of government. In the old days, it was possible to own a home, nice car and have the wife stay home and raise the children, all while having enough left over to save for the future. Oh, eh, income tax back then was less than one percent and property taxes... $12/year.

It's still no comparison to broadcast HD game coverage. It's great in a pinch, but it is only an acceptable alternative to broadcast HD if your standards are very low.

Was on TWC paying $140+ for 7mbps cable/mid-range package and two boxes. Stepped down to $75 with one cable box, basic cable with about 40 "free" HD - no internet. Got Clearwire (10-15Mbps) with Netflix/Hulu/Playon, dumped cable entirely and now pay about $50/month. Two friends saw my setup asking me to set them up - they are now officially cord cutters.

I can afford cable but can't justify paying $75/month when only interested in about 4 channels. I do miss Disc/NatGeo/History but just not worth it (many shows end up on Hulu or DVD rentals eventually). I'd go back to cable if they could figure out how to bundle just the channels I'm interested in at lower price.

Blackouts is the biggest reason why I am not going to cut the cord. When the sports leagues decide to drop their stupid blackout rules and put more of the games online. I'll cut it.

This is the same for every stream I have found. Yes, I can watch Lost in HD right on ABC's website. No, I can't put it on my HDTV without getting some kind of TV out card or cable from my PC. As you said, its great in a pinch, but not where it needs to be.

The real cord cutting will happen eventually, but it will probably take 10-20 years.

$100/month? Yeah right. My cable bill exceeds $300/month on a regular basis depending on what sports are in season. Digital cable with HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, Encore, Sports Tier, HD Tier, Latino Tier, NHL Center Ice, MLB Extra Innings, ESPN Game Plan, 2 HD DVRs, Road Runner Turbo and Digital Phone. Disney On Demand, Stern On Demand, the gay channel, the Russian channel, NBA League Pass, MLS Direct Kick and ESPN Full Court are the only services I don’t subscribe to.

quote:

---

Extra box fees.

---

Cable companies lease out hardware. They don't get the terminals free from Motorola or Cisco thus they charge a fee.

quote:

---

Almost bi-monthy channel re-org (under the guise WE ARE ADDING MORE CHANNELS).

---

quote:

---

Moving good channels to higher-cost tier.

---

For every one analog channel that is removed on put on digital, two HD channels can be added. That is a good thing for three reasons. 1) Bandwidth is used more efficiently 2) More HD channels 3) No more fuzzy analog channels. How and why people can want analog cable is beyond me. Plus this is 2010, the word 'analog' should be removed from the dictionary.

Analog removal and requiring digital terminals is a very good thing.

quote:

---

Charging more per hour/per household.

---

????

The expectation of getting everything for FREE is the biggest hinderance to getting more content online.I live out of market. So for me $2 a game does not seem that outrageous.

So what if you have to spend less than $100 on a card and HDMI cord? People pay that for just ONE month of cable. Also last time I checked ABC is a BROADCAST network surely you have a ABC station near you.

No my standards are not low. If paying $1000 a year or more in cable bills is worth getting hockey in the "HD" that is acceptable to you then more power to you.

This is why people need to research about their broadband options BEFORE moving into a place. I'm not sure why they don't.

You're quite wrong about that. I see plenty of OTA in your area. You're not going to get it in with rabbit ears on the TV but OTA is doable.

You'll wait forever.

The purpose of the blackout rules is to insure that they have fans in the stadium to watch the game live.

That's only the NFL. MLB's policy is based on protecting local broadcasters.

I can't watch the Cubs on either Extra Innings or MLB.tv because MLB wants to protect CSN Chicago but the thing is that Time Warner in Terre Haute doesn't carry CSN Chicago; and all my attempts to get my parents to switch to satellite have failed.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma ··· t_policy

On a 60" display the NueLion feeds are flat out painful to watch.

Between DirecTV and Shaw Direct (Canadian satellite) my bills are a bit north of $1k/year, but considering the cost of my Wild season tickets, even paying for Center Ice and basic service for both providers is the best value in the world.

Somewhat the same for the NHL, except they also use it to protect a team's territory. Without Center Ice, you can't watch most games that aren't national broadcasts (exempt from regional blackouts) or involve the team who's broadcast region you're in.

The economy sucks right now. How many of those 216k people made cut backs to do things like pay the light bill, or put food on the table? They probably have the lowest tier of internet so watching video is probably not the top of their list.

That's what AT&T was saying about VoIP back in the year 2000. Four years later they exited the consumer voice business and a few months later were gobbled up by SBC.