Cable TV Companies Lost Nearly 5 Million Subscribers in 2021

Broadband

from the too-little-too-late dept

Remember when the cable and broadcast industry insisted that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional cable TV subscriptions) wasn’t actually a real trend? Or how, once they finally acknowledged it was a real thing, insisted that it was just a temporary fad that would abate once Millennials started having babies?

Years later and amazingly enough the very real trend shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data from Leichtman Research Group, major U.S. pay TV providers lost 4,700,000 subscribers in 2021. Just slightly less than the 4,870,000 subscribers they lost in 2020.

As has been consistently true in recent years, the losses have been much worse for satellite TV providers (Dish Network, DirecTV) that generally aren’t bundled with broadband in the way cable TV often is:

Top cable providers had a net loss of about 2,695,000 video subscribers in 2021 – compared to a loss of about 1,940,000 subscribers in 2020.

Other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 2,890,000 subscribers in 2021 – compared to a loss of about 3,845,000 subscribers in 2020.

Cable broadband continues to be financially shielded by the fact that the dominant cable TV companies (Charter/Spectrum, Comcast) enjoy a growing monopoly over fixed-line broadband access, with 83 million Americans still living under a broadband monopoly. Said monopoly means they can simply extract any lost TV revenues through things like sneaky fees or bullshit broadband usage caps.

The 7 biggest U.S. cable TV providers now “only” have a grand total of around 41.3 million video subscribers. Consider, for context, that Netflix now has about 37 million in the U.S. alone. And the trend the cable industry spent years trying to deny (in a bid to justify high prices and inflexible cable bundles) continues on with only a very tiny slowdown.

Filed Under: broadband, cable tv, cord cutting, pay tv, satellite tv
Companies: charter spectrum, comcast, directv, dish

AT&T/DirecTV Implosion Could Give Apple NFL Sunday Ticket

Failures

from the yeah-that-didn't-work dept

It’s really hard to overstate what a colossal failure AT&T’s $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV was. And if you’re an AT&T executive with a bruised ego in the wake of the implosion, the hits just keep on coming.

The megadeals were supposed to cement AT&T as a powerhouse in media and video advertising with HBO and the NFL as cornerstones. Instead, terrible leadership and hubris resulted in more than 50,000 layoffs, the closure of numerous loved brands (Mad Magazine, DC’s Vertigo imprint), the loss of millions of TV subscribers, and a mountain of debt AT&T’s still trying to climb its way out of.

Paying off that debt involved offloading a lot of acquired assets for a song. It has also involved AT&T spinning off DirecTV in a new partnership with private equity firm TPG Capital. One of DirecTV’s flagship properties has been the exclusive deal to distribute out of market NFL games via NFL Sunday Ticket.

But with that deal expiring in 2022, and DirecTV still hemorrhaging cash (not only from the megamerger spree but because of the continued pace of cord cutting), the rights will soon be up for auction. And two of the top suitors for the properties will be Apple or Disney:

Apple is exploring an audacious plan to scoop up the NFL’s available rights with a single, multibillion-dollar deal, sources tell Front Office Sports.

The NFL is currently fielding offers for three assets: an equity stake in NFL Media, the “NFL Sunday Ticket” package for out-of-market games, and livestreaming games on mobile devices. 

Apple wants to bundle them all into one sweeping deal, said sources. That would instantly make the tech giant, which has long avoided sports, one of the NFL’s biggest business partners. 

Again, AT&T’s entry into the media and video ad market was supposed to cement it as the preeminent name in media, sticking it to the traditional tech giants AT&T has long had a fraught relationship with. Instead, AT&T’s still scrambling to get its head above water and companies like Apple and Disney are becoming the very thing AT&T telecom executives dreamed they could be.

Not only does this deal probably bruise the ego of telecom executives that hungrily eyed media expansion but lacked the competency to execute, the broader, more competent distribution of live sports over the internet is likely to only accelerate the cord cutting shift away from traditional TV services (especially services like Dish and DirecTV, which will soon be on life support).

Filed Under: failed merger, football, pay tv, streaming, tv
Companies: apple, at&t, directv, disney, nfl

DirecTV Finally Dumps OAN, Limiting The Conspiracy And Propaganda Channel's Reach

Failures

from the good-luck-out-there dept

Back in October, reports emerged indicating that AT&T had not only funded much of the creation of the popular conspiracy and fantasy channel OAN, AT&T executives had actually come up with the original idea. The channel, which routinely traffics in false election fraud, COVID, and other right-wing conspiracy theories, had seen most of its reach come courtesy of a partnership with DirecTV. As of last week, DirecTV executives informed OAN it wouldn’t be having its contract renewed:

“The satellite-TV provider has notified OAN?s owner, Herring Networks Inc., that it plans to stop carrying the company?s two channels when their contract expires. Herring Networks also owns AWE, a lifestyle channel that stands for ?A Wealth of Entertainment.”

What changed? After its disastrous $200 billion Time Warner and DirecTV megamerger spree resulted in layoffs, lost customers, and general carnage, AT&T had to not only backtrack from its ambitions to be an online video and ad giant, it had to sell anything that wasn’t nailed down to recoup the massive debt created from the deals. That included spinning off DirecTV into its own, new entity in a partnership with private equity firm TPG Capital. While AT&T still has a 70% stake in the venture, it now has other executives with a vested interest in calling the shots.

I’d wager that while Dallas-based right wing AT&T executives had no problem being associated with the conspiracy theory channel, AT&T’s new partners at TPG likely weren’t keen on the bad press. Especially in the wake of last October’s reporting so closely linking AT&T to a channel that routinely traffics in dangerous gibberish like claims that COVID was created in a North Carolina lab.

As of last year, estimates pegged OAN’s total subscriber count (people who have the channel in their cable lineup) at somewhere around 23 million, far lower than Fox News (78.6 million) or even Newsmax (58.2 million). But estimates of how many people actually watch the channel consistently is notably lower than that:

Without DirecTV’s help, the channel’s reach is curtailed even further. Now the channel is only carried by a small handful of cable TV providers, the biggest being Verizon’s FiOS TV. Granted the channel’s gibberish still gets traction online as part of the far right propaganda ecosystem (which includes both sharing by people who believe what the channel has to say, and outrage retweets from those who don’t) but in terms of traditional distribution the move significantly restricts the propaganda bullhorn’s impact all the same.

Filed Under: cable tv, carriage, conspiracy theories, oan, pay tv, propaganda
Companies: at&t, directv, herring networks, oan

America's Struggling Satellite TV Companies Once Again Propose A Terrible MegaMerger

Deals

from the when-in-doubt,-repeat-your-mistakes dept

For decades, like clockwork, somebody at Dish or DirecTV will try and float the idea that the two satellite TV companies should merge. Usually they’ll do this by seeding the idea at trusted news outlets that additional consolidation is just what the U.S. media sector needs. Granted regulators have always balked at the idea of a Dish and DirecTV merger, given that it would only reduce competition in the pay TV space, leading to more layoffs, more price hikes, and even worse customer service (cable TV customer service is among the worst in any industry anywhere thanks to this “growth for growth’s sake” mindset).

Like clockwork, somebody involved in the deal-making has leaked word of yet another attempt to merge the two companies to the New York Post:

“DirecTV and Dish Network are in fresh talks to merge after years of on-again, off-again wrangling and multiple clampdowns from federal antitrust officials, The Post has learned.”

Both companies have been losing TV subscribers hand over fist to streaming competitors, so the argument being seeded in the press is that the merger makes sense now because both companies are flailing, and streaming competitors now exist:

“Now, however, insiders are optimistic a Dish-DirecTV deal could pass regulatory muster as concerns about the market power of the struggling companies have waned, sources said. Some executives likewise argue that a merger could give a surprise boost to the US?s troubled rollout of 5G wireless services.”

The problem, of course, is that every time the telecom and cable industry proposes a deal like this, absolutely none of the promised synergies ever actually arrive, and the end result is almost uniformly more problems, more layoffs, and more price hikes. We just got done watching a megagermer clusterfuck for the ages in the $200 billion AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers, which promised American consumers the sun, Earth, and sky. Instead we saw 50,000 layoffs, record TV defections, higher prices, and absolute chaos, forcing AT&T to recently spin off DirecTV.

Dish and DirecTV policy nerds are going to try and justify the deal this time by claiming it’s the only way to get Dish’s promised 5G network off the ground. That network, if you recall, was a half-baked Trump-era “fix” to the problems already created by the T-Mobile Sprint merger. Based on recent events that network doesn’t appear destined to succeed any way you slice it. But with Dish hemorrhaging both pay TV and wireless subscribers already, it’s short of cash. DirecTV’s fortunes aren’t looking so hot in the TikTok era either.

So instead of letting terrible companies just die at the hands of the market and shifting trends, we turn to regulators to approve terrible deals under the Charlie Brown and Lucy football type promise that this time the deal will solve everybody’s problems. But it won’t. A deal like this will just reduce competition, raise rates, and result in tens of thousands of additional layoffs. As such it’s unlikely the Biden FCC or DOJ approves it, but given this country’s severe allergy to learning from history or experience when it comes to megadeals, you can never quite be sure.

Filed Under: competition, ftc, mergers, pay tv, tv
Companies: directv, dish

Another 1.2 Million Consumers Ditched Traditional Cable TV Last Quarter

Failures

from the evolutionary-inevitability dept

Surprising nobody, the traditional cable TV industry lost another 1.2 million paying subscribers last quarter as users flee to other alternatives. Largely those alternatives consist of streaming video services that are cheaper, more flexible, and feature better customer service. Many others are rediscovering free over the air broadcasts. Others have simply shifted away from TV entirely, choosing to embrace YouTube or TikTok.

According to Leichtman Research, the top cable companies lost 587,649 customers in just the last quarter, compared to 698,000 for telco and satellite providers. Over the last year, traditional pay TV providers saw a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,460,000 over the year prior (impressive for a trend that the industry spent years pretending wasn’t actually happening). Fortunately for the industry, the cord cutting revolution appears to be slowing somewhat:

“Pay-TV net losses of 1,230,000 in 2Q 2021 were about 275,000 fewer than in 2Q 2020 on a pro forma basis,? said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. ?Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,460,000 over the prior year.”

While the rate of decline is slowing there’s still a lot of room to fall. The top traditional pay TV providers still serve roughly 77.6 million subscribers in the US, many of which stick around thanks to sports programming. As sports increasingly shifts away from traditional cable providers and toward streaming alternatives you can expect subscriber counts to follow suit.

Users continue to flee traditional cable for the usual reasons: high prices, terrible customer service, and bloated and inflexible cable channel bundles. There continues to be some headway in these arena by entrenched cable TV providers, but there’s a contingent of execs that simply refuse to seriously compete on price. In large part because many of these companies (Comcast) enjoy regional monopolies over broadband access, allowing them to squeeze those subscribers tighter than ever with bizarre fees and broadband usage caps and surcharges.

Meanwhile increased competition in the streaming TV space has also made things a bit rougher on sector leader Netflix as well, which has been bleeding subscribers in both the US and Canada thanks to growing new entrants like Disney Plus. All in all the shift away from dominant cable TV providers toward more flexible, cheaper alternatives and actual competition (instead of the “wink wink, nod nod” non-price competition we saw between satellite TV and traditional cable TV for years) continues to be a great thing.

Filed Under: cable, cable tv, cord cutting, internet, pay tv, streaming

AT&T Is Sad Because Nobody Wants To Overpay For DirecTV

Failures

from the synergies,-yo dept

U.S. Telecom providers, as companies that have spent the better part of the last century as government-pampered monopolies, are adorable when they try to innovate or seriously compete in more normal, competitive markets. Verizon’s attempt to pivot from curmudgeonly old phone company to sexy new ad media darling, for example, has been a cavalcade of clumsy errors, missteps, and wasted money.

AT&T has seen similar issues. Under CEO Randall Stephenson, AT&T spent roughly $200 billion on mergers with DirecTV and Time Warner, hoping this would secure its ability to dominate the pay TV space through brute force. But the exact opposite happened. Saddled with so much debt from the deal, AT&T passed on annoying price hikes to its consumers. It also embraced a branding strategy so damn confusing — with so many different product names — it even confused its own employees.

As a result, AT&T lost 3,190,000 pay TV subscribers last year alone and roughly 7 million since 2017. Not exactly the kind of “domination” the company envisioned. Despite a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for literally doing less than nothing (42,000 layoffs, in fact), AT&T’s now being forced to consider low ball offers for DirecTV after investors finally got tired of the company’s merger-mania. It’s not going particularly well:

“AT&T?s attempt to unload ?DirecTV has been thrown into doubt, as the telecom giant has signaled it?s unhappy with the offers it has received for the struggling satellite TV service, The Post has learned…insiders tell The Post that AT&T ? dissatisfied with those offers ? has invited private equity giant TPG Capital to study the books in hopes that it will make a binding offer that props up the price.

Other participants include Apollo Global Management, which, according to sources, offered less than $15 billion including debt; and investing tycoon Michael Klein?s blank-check company Churchill Capital Corp. IV.

More to the point: AT&T paid $66 billion just five years ago for DirecTV, and now it can barely net $15 billion for the assets. Everybody from consumer advocates to Wall Street stock jocks thought it was stupid that AT&T bought a satellite TV provider on the eve of the cord cutting and streaming revolution. While AT&T did get to enjoy slightly less competition from traditional TV providers via the acquisition, it’s hard to argue the deal was anything other than a disastrous dud.

And while the acquisition may have proven stupid and pointless, the debt from both the DirecTV and Time Warner deals persists. And it’s not AT&T executives that have to pay for it. It’s the company’s consumers, who’ve faced a steady parade of rate hikes. And the company’s competitors, who face higher rates for content than ever. And it’s the company’s employees, 47,000 of whom have been fired since 2017 despite AT&T nabbing a $42 billion Trump tax cut and billions more in regulatory favors from the FCC.

Of course this was all spelled out very clearly by economists, consumer groups, and other experts, but the FCC, DOJ, and U.S. courts couldn’t have possibly cared less. Especially when it comes to the Time Warner merger, which saw absolutely zero conditions affixed to the deal. When we talk about the U.S. having flimsy and pathetic antitrust scrutiny and a relentless obsession with idiotic, “growth for growth’s sake” mergers, AT&T’s last five years remains exhibit A. instead of promised innovation, we got rate hikes and layoffs. And the next time AT&T proposes a merger, folks will pretend none of this ever happened.

Filed Under: competition, cord cutting, pay tv, tv
Companies: at&t, directv, time warner

AT&T's Attempt To Dominate The Pay TV Sector Continues To Go…Poorly

Failures

from the not-according-to-plan dept

AT&T’s attempt to buy its way to TV sector domination isn’t going so well. In 2015 you’ll recall that AT&T spent $67 billion to buy DirecTV, eliminating a direct competitor in the TV space. In 2018 it spent another $89 billion to acquire Time Warner, one of the biggest broadcasters in America. Both acquisitions were designed to propel AT&T toward supremacy in the TV sector. Neither acquisition is actually doing so. In fact, to recoup the massive debt incurred from both deals, AT&T started raising rates hand over fist despite the growing competitive threat posed by streaming video providers.

It’s not exactly going according to plan. AT&T’s latest earnings report (pdf) indicates that the company lost a whopping 4 million TV subscribers last year alone; not exactly the market domination AT&T envisioned:

Meanwhile AT&T’s fixed-line broadband subscriptions, generally seen as the backup plan for users who “cut the cord” on traditional television, also continue to slowly but steadily erode:

And things aren’t getting better for AT&T anytime soon.

Wall Street stock jocks are worried that the company is facing a large number of programming contract expirations this year, which will require that AT&T (read: AT&T customers) shell out even more money for the exact same programming. That’s before you get to the rising tide of competitors including Disney and Apple that intend to also try and dominate the sector by throwing money at it over the next few years. Profit margins are going to drop like a stone on TV, and AT&T, still saddled with some of the highest debt loads of any company on Earth, isn’t particularly well equipped for it, even with the FCC effectively in its pocket.

It’s a major reason why AT&T has been facing a bit of an investor revolt lately by “activist” investors who feel like AT&T’s obsession with mindless merger mania is actually harming the company’s attempts to gain inroads in the TV sector. AT&T hopes to rekindle some growth by adding yet another new streaming TV service to its already insanely confusing roster of video brands, but there’s no indication that the company’s path will get easier anytime soon.

Filed Under: competition, cord cutting, pay tv
Companies: at&t

Traditional TV Enters Its Final Death Spiral

Predictions

from the dysfunction-junction dept

For the better part of the decade, even Wall Street stock jocks have acknowledged that the current pay TV ecosystem simply isn’t sustainable. Broadcasters continue to demand higher and higher rates for the same programming, driving up costs for consumers. Those consumers are then fleeing to the exits in record numbers; either migrating to new streaming video alternatives or over the air antennas. Many executives’ response to the problem? Mindlessly double down on most of the behaviors that brought them here, namely, mindless consolidation and price hikes.

Most cable and broadcast executives seem to believe they can just nurse this dying cash cow until retirement, at which point it’s somebody else’s problem. But the problem itself remains, and analysts like Doug Dawson quite correctly note that 2020 may be the year the entire fracas finally starts to unravel and the real “death spiral” truly begins:

“As a whole, traditional cable TV has probably now entered what economists call a death spiral. Most programming contracts are for 3 ? 5 years and the cable TV companies already know of the big programming cost increases coming for the next few years. As cable companies keep raising rates they will lose more customers. The programmers will likely try to compensate by raising their rates even higher, and within a short number of years, cable TV will cost more than what most homes are willing to pay.”

AT&T, for example, has already been losing customers hand over fist, and things are about to get worse. Despite having spent hundreds of billions on DirecTV and Time Warner mergers with an eye on dominating the TV sector, AT&T began 2020 with 15% fewer TV subscribers than it started with in 2019.

It now has to strike new contracts with a large number of programmers that will collectively trigger prices to soar even higher. At the same time, companies like AT&T now face growing competitive pressure from broadcasters themselves, who are all rushing to offer their programming direct to consumer via their own streaming platforms. Meanwhile, AT&T’s saddled with so much debt from its mindless mega-mergers, the company has been forced to drive up consumer costs to even try and maintain equilibrium. Again, you can probably see how this entire mess isn’t sustainable.

As Dawson notes, the need for quarter over quarter improvements has trapped both cable providers and broadcasters (often one and the same) between a rock and a hard place:

“It?s no longer good enough for corporations to make money, they are expected to increase bottom line quarter after quarter, year after year. We?ve only been talking about cord cutting for a few years, but the industry has been declining for over a decade. In 2010 there were nearly 105 million subscribers of traditional cable TV, and that number dropped to just over 83 million by the third quarter of 2019. It?s easy to think of cord cutting as a recent phenomenon, but the industry has been quietly bleeding customers for years. Sadly, the programmers are still denying the reality that they exist in a dying industry and are likely to continue to raise rates like Fox just did.”

Of course while many see streaming improving things, the same problems still exist. Programmers still demand their pound of flesh (aka more money for the same content), so they’re slowly driving up the cost of streaming services as well, driving even more viewers (especially younger) to platforms like YouTube or TikTok where production costs are negligible. In turn, cable providers who are starting to lose money on traditional TV are either leaving the TV business or just abusing their monopoly over broadband to jack up the costs of basic connectivity.

It’s a mess, and if the cycle of dysfunction continues unabated, people might even start reading books again.

Filed Under: cable, death spiral, pay tv, tv

AT&T Loses Another 1.36 Million Pay TV Subscribers Thanks To Relentless Price Hikes

Failures

from the ill-communication dept

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go for AT&T. In AT&T executives heads, the 2015, $67 billion acquisition of DirecTV and the 2018 $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner were supposed to be the cornerstones of the company’s efforts to dominate video and online video advertising. Instead, the megadeals made AT&T possibly one of the most heavily indebted companies in the world. To recoup that debt, AT&T has increased its efforts to nickel-and-dime users at every opportunity, recently imposing the second rate hike in just a year on its streaming TV subscribers.

Not too surprisingly, these price hikes are now driving subscribers to the exits.

AT&T’s latest earnings report indicates that the company lost another 1.16 million video subscribers from its traditional DirecTV and IPTV TV services. The company also lost another 195,000 subscribers from its streaming TV platform, creatively dubbed AT&T TV. All told, AT&T lost another 1.36 million TV subscribers in a single quarter; again not the kind of domination AT&T expected when it decided to merge its way to sector dominance.

Like Verizon, AT&T got bored with simply running quality networks and lobbying to crush competition; both have eyed Google and Facebook ad revenues as they push harder into the video advertising space. But competition there has not been easy going for either government-pampered monopoly, Verizon’s own fusion of Yahoo and AOL doing repeated face plants, mostly notably the failure of its Go90 Millennial-focused streaming platform. And while AT&T’s had better luck making streaming TV and advertising inroads, these numbers clearly indicate slow sledding.

Even AT&T investors have started to grow impatient with AT&T’s obsession with growth for growth’s sake. After a bit of an investor revolt, AT&T had to promise it would make no major mergers or acquisitions in the next three years.

AT&T, meanwhile, has been busy trying to hype its upcoming HBO Max streaming service, the latest in an AT&T TV streaming branding effort that’s so convoluted, it has confused the company’s own employees. Undaunted by recent issues, AT&T’s telling anybody who’ll listen that the service should grab somewhere around 50 million subscribers by 2025:

“This is going to be a meaningful business for us over the next four or five years and we’re talking a 50 million subscriber business and we’re really enthusiastic about this,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said during an analyst call. The AT&T boss clarified his domestic forecast of 50 million subscribers was for five years to 2025.”

The problem, for AT&T, is that it’s already proven incapable of retaining or adding subscribers in the current market. With Apple and Disney poised to join the crowded field in November, the battle for streaming domination is only going to get harder for ma bell.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, pay tv, price hikes, subscribers, tv
Companies: at&t

Shockingly, Streaming Providers Are Dominating Cable At Customer Satisfaction

Studies

from the innovation-nation dept

It’s really no secret that traditional cable and broadband providers have some of the worst customer satisfaction of any companies in America. Comcast and Charter (Spectrum) in particular can usually be found stumbling around in last place in most satisfaction and support rankings. That’s been particularly true of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which routinely shows cable and broadband providers rank consistently worse than nearly any other company in any industry in America. In fact, these companies even tend to be ranked worse than Americans’ experiences with government agencies like the IRS.

And despite seemingly bi-annual promises by these companies that customer service is their top priority (remember when Comcast promised a new “Customer Experience VP” would fix everything?), it’s actually getting worse.

According to the latest ACSI report, high prices, bloated cable bundles, and terrible customer service continue to leave customers angry and frustrated:

“Customer satisfaction with subscription television service falls 3.1 percent to an ACSI score of 62, an 11-year low as the industry faces a seismic shift of subscribers defecting to lower-cost online video streaming services. In response, many cable and telecom companies are offering new Internet TV streaming in addition to legacy pay TV, but cord cutting continues.”

While some cable companies have finally realized the error of their ways and begun offering less expensive, more flexible streaming alternatives (Dish’s SlingTV and AT&T’s DirecTV Now), by and large the mindset of the cable industry remains focused on doubling down on a lot of the dumb ideas (predominately aggressive price hikes) that brought them to this point in the first place.

For example Charter Communications, which has been pummeling consumers with price hikes in the wake of its $89 billion merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, took a particularly steep tumble during these latest satisfaction ratings for traditional cable providers:

The same story is playing out with broadband ISP satisfaction ratings, where limited competition often results in high prices as well:

It’s worth noting that this year was the first year the index ranked streaming video alternatives, and (shockingly) the companies that are now offering lower prices, more flexible and innovative services, and better customer service are doing significantly better than traditional cable. Netflix, Sony PlayStation Vue, and Twitch all saw scores of 78, and the lowest rated streaming provider (Crackle at 68) was still rated better than nearly all traditional TV providers:

And while cord cutting is expected to break records this year, that’s not to say that cable providers can’t turn things around. Industry executives simply have to stop pretending that the traditional TV cash cow will live forever, and begin to compete by offering cheaper, more flexible options with better customer support. The bottom line many cable executives can’t acknowledge is: competition simply means TV isn’t going to be as profitable as it used to be, and they’re going to have to actually try now. You can either get out ahead of this phenomenon now through adaptation, or continue doubling down on the same bad ideas that resulted in record cable TV customer defections in the first place.

Filed Under: acsi, cord cutting, customer satisfaction, internet, pay tv, streaming
Companies: charter, comcast, netflix, time warner