Cord Cutting Trend Cable Execs Once Called A Fad Keeps Breaking Records
from the keep-up-the-good-work dept
The cable and broadband industry spent the better part of a decade pretending that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional television in favor for streaming or antenna-based alternatives) either didn’t actually exist or was a fad that would end when Millennials started procreating.
Now, they like to pretend they saw the trend coming all along. With most of them still not competently adapting to shifting consumer demands.
The latest data from both Leichtman research and SambiaTV shows that 5.9 million Americans canceled cable TV in 2022, the equivalent of 16,000 American residents canceling cable TV every single day. Most are going to streaming, some are going to over the air antennas, and many are just getting bored with television entirely and spending more time on TikTok or YouTube.
While cord cutting storms forth, the cable industry has responded with some modest adaptation, but simply can’t help jacking up prices even further via an assortment of obnoxious and sneaky fees, accelerating the trend even further:
With the growth of fees and cable TV bills, it is easy to understand why. Recently it was announced that Comcast would be raising the fees on a wide range of plans. Comcast’s Xfinity Broadcast TV Fee is going up 11% this year to $21.30. Back in 2016, these fees were just $5 a month.
RSN fees are also going up in Philadelphia to $13.35 a month, a 5% jump. This is up from just $3 a month back in 2016.
Traditional cable TV is an unsustainable mess and has been for a long while.
As Cord Cutter News notes, there were 95.2 million Americans who paid for a pay-tv subscription in 20212. Even including live TV streaming services that number has dropped to 70.2 million in 2023. And while some cable execs tried to claim the trend was supposed to slow down dramatically by now, that’s not only not the case, it’s been accelerating in part due to their continued bad decisions.
Filed Under: broadcast tv fee, cable tv, cord cutting, fees, regional sports fee, regulatory recovery fee, streaming video, tv
Comments on “Cord Cutting Trend Cable Execs Once Called A Fad Keeps Breaking Records”
“adapting to shifting consumer demands”
Like what? I demand that I pay my bills?
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Yes.
Or demands for a la carte channel selections so that you can stop subsidizing useless dross, whether it be a channel you don’t care to watch or a channel you actively despise.
Or .
Whole point is that the cable execs refuse to meet actual demand, and so their product continues to drive people away.
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There is also the problem that there is a lack of flexibility in cable viewing as opposed to the video on demand alternatives. Working a rotating 3 shift 24/7/365 pattern meant that I never got the TV habit Watching episodes on a regular day and time was impossible.
Cable and over the air on a fixed schedule made sense when there was limited bandwidth, but now that it is possible to deliver multiple on demand channels to a residence, it is a dying legacy technology. Streaming service can provide for the fixed time viewing of live events, while recording, so if needs must, viewers can pauses and resume watching the game.
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I’ve soured on the a la carte channel idea. It’s still mostly useless. At this point I think it would be better to offer a la carte shows provided that the pricing wasn’t trying to be on par with a BluRay version but was instead based more along the lines of the few cents that a cable subscriber is paying per show per month.
So drop channels and networks altogether and switch to streaming services that function as middlemen so that a user only needs one account instead of one account per production house. Probably put up a couple episodes for free to try to hook people, and the rest are super cheap.
The risk would be that people like time based subscriptions that don’t nickel and dime them, but people also don’t like subsidizing things they don’t care about or having all of their options on such a subscription be awful. (Netflix streaming was terrible when it got started and often there’s still not much good on…)
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Just curious: Do you support public libraries?
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Just curious: Have you actually seen what’s in the cable-bundles many operators force upon you?
Also, false equivalence.
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Yes, absolutely. Libraries are extremely useful and are critical elements of a good society.
What does that have to do with useless cable channels?
That’s quite the look into the future!
Date typo. Not sure if that’s supposed to be 2012, 2021, or 2022.
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According to the linked article, it’s 2012.
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I’d be impressed if there’s still going to be anyone with cable TV in 20212!
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Telepathy should be a mature technology by then.
Greater awareness of what carriage fees are funding
This may be indicative of my own bias, but I have noticed that more people on social media have been calling out carriage fees which are funding networks that some people actively dislike. Between the inclusion on cable plans of hundreds of unwatched channels and a couple networks that push a narrow political point of view, a growing number of people are more aware that paying their cable tv bill is actively supporting things they do not agree with.
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This is usually Fox N*ws, which is the No. 1 network on all of cable television, or the networks that show what the youngsters call sportsball.
Alternative entertainment
I’d be curious to see what surveys and entertainment hours say about alternative entertainment as well, how many people just play more video games instead of watching shows, or just go out more or play sports or whatnot as compared to cable’s heyday.
Also doesn’t help that the Boomers are the primary consumer of cable, and they’re reaching their expiration dates more frequently at this point.
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Don’t forget about watching Youtube shows rather than TV shows. I have some family members who seem to watch little else, including one so-called “baby boomer” with a penchant for shows featuring angry hosts.
Cable, the new newspaper
Cable TV is in the same predicament newspapers are in and have been for decades.
Both are in secular decline with no path to subscriber growth, both are also laden with an older subscriber base, and both are monopoly media.
The peak circulation of all newspapers was in the early 1980s. Also, newspapers had been able to hold on for so long because most existed as monopolies. Many “gained” circulation by buying out their competition or cutting the evening edition and migrating everyone to mornings.
Newspapers also had the uh-oh moment throughout the 20th century when they realized each younger demographic was a smaller subscriber cohort than older cohorts. The baby boomers were the largest generation, but subscribed in fewer relative absolute numbers than the silent generation and their parents.
So few Generation Xers subscribed that the future of newspapers began to be in doubt.
Many millennials can’t even name the newspaper in their hometown.
I think millennials may be like the Xers to newspapers and take out the foundation of cable. They grew up in the peak cable era and lived in a household that had always had it. (If you had antenna TV and got cable, it was a magical experience).
They also watch less TV overall, and streaming gives them the a la carte option cable never offered.
Cable TV?
I haven’t had cable tv for over a decade. I haven’t missed it a bit.
Keep calling it ‘cable cutting’…
Keep paying the same cable company as you were before ‘cutting the cable’…
Keep paying increasing subscription fees for $treaming…
Keep breaking your elbow with the self-back-pattin’…
Whatever you gotta tell yourself
Re: There is no mom and pop telco
Yes, the cable company is the ISP is the phone company. Just like the phone company is the cable/satellite provider is the ISP.
I get that it’s easy to rage against the machine. But your only other option is to not even have a machine to rage against. That’s it’s own kind of hell.
When you’re dealing with network effects, you’re either going to have a government-decreed monopoly or a market-decreed one. Both are going to leverage their size and create path dependencies. That’s why you don’t see mom-and-pop telecom companies.
Re: There's a difference...
It may be “the same price as cable”…but there is a HUGE difference. I haven’t seen a TV ad in YEARS!
You can advertise to me, or charge me for content…NOT BOTH!
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It’s like you were heading towards making a point but then just… didn’t.
They shouldn't be surprised...
Comcast has a truly abhorrent amount of advertising infesting their programming. When I finally cut the cord for good a few years back, I told them, when returning my equipment, that they could either charge me a subscription OR advertise to me…NOT BOTH!
If I am paying over $100/mo for a service, I don’t want to have to sit through ads as well!
Not only that, but I refuse to subsidize trash like Fox News…and you don’t have a choice if you subscribe to cable.
Currently, I am looking into whether I can COMPLETELY cut off Comcast…I still pay them $100/mo for internet, and even then they still charged me extra for “exceeding my data cap”! Like they are running out of bits or something…yeah, I LOATHE this company!
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You’re also going to not want to watch NBC, buy a product or service advertising on NBC, stream anything on Peacock, watch any TV show or movie produced by Universal, go to a Universal Studios theme park …
Yeah, media consolidation is a cluster.
Re: Re: You are right...
I DONT watch NBC, or Peacock, nor do I have any desire to. I have no interest in subsidizing ANY part of Comcast, including their mediocre TV offerings. I am also uninterested in anything Universal makes. So yeah, not a huge loss.