Third quarter earnings data indicates that a million more US pay TV subscribers cut the TV cord last quarter. Only five of the seven biggest pay TV providers have released their third quarter subscriber data, but collectively these companies saw a net loss of 632,000 pay TV subscribers during the period (385,000 for AT&T and DirecTV, 125,000 for Comcast, 104,000 for Charter, 18.000 for Verizon FiOS TV). Dish has yet to report its own cord cutting tallies, but the company is again expected to be among the hardest hit due to a high level of retransmission fee feuds and a lack of broadband bundles. Also yet to report is Altice Communications, which now owns Optimum (formerly Cablevision) and Suddenlink.
What will be the lesson learned by pay TV operators? Will they bend the knee and look for a better way to operate, or will the ISP use caps and charge more? Pay TV has long been a cash cow with a few hundred trash channels and 10 or less channels of real interest. People want to pay for what they watch instead of ever increasing rates for sports and endless copy-cat Reality TV.
It would be great to be able to do this with local government.
Hold back tax dollars/put into escrow if the elected/appointed screw with our already paid for infrastructure. Or receive subsidies like the corporealations...
I vote, but I will never get back the tax dollars that go to injust decisions.