Have you cut the cord yet? Why? Why not?

http://gigaom.com/video/cord-cutters-are-young-educated-and-employed/

by chadp • 16 years ago

14 21 16 years ago

ashedryden• 16 years ago

Traditional tv is going the way of the newspaper. Had they been smart, they would have seen it coming instead of trying to scramble in the coming couple years like the newspaper industry has been doing for the past 5.

greyfade2• 16 years ago

If they were smart, they'd already be streaming everything on the web.

auxbuss• 16 years ago

The tv went completely this year. The only time it's missed is for sports' events. But if it's a must-watch, there's always somewhere showing it, and that often turns into a fun social event.

Here in the UK, we do have the wonderful BBC, which has the fabulous iPlayer service for free. (A licence fee must be paid to watch programs live, though.) It's an innovative service -- more than just tv on the web -- and it's interesting that a licence funded organisation is the one doing the innovating, and not its commercial brethren.

jasonkester2• 16 years ago

I moved to England, which essentially made the decision for me:

  - TV license costs about $300/yr, which gets you...
  - something like 3 channels, which will show you...
  - one reality show
  - one popular soap opera
  - one admittedly good show about cars
  - lots of documentaries about cheese.  in Welsh.

TV is essentially not an option here.

Still, though, I get angry letters from the TV Licensing people several times per week. Different ones each time, with new creative threats about what will happen to me if I don't disclose the hidden TV they know I must have and pay up. If they'd simply put the people writing that stuff to work making television programs, they might be able to come up with something worth watching, thus prompting me to buy a TV and pay them money.

old-gregg• 16 years ago

In other words you can't own a TV? I have one and use it primarily as a monitor hooked up to PS2/BlueRay or a laptop every once in a while. It also has built-in Ethernet with Netflix. Just a tool to watch movies. I don't have cable and never use antenna. Just curious: if I lived in UK, sounds like I would have to pay someone $300/year for crap I don't use?

Thanks!

samstokes• 16 years ago

You can own one without a license, so long as you don't receive live broadcasts.

However, the TV licensing authority operates in a paramilitary fashion, so they try to scare you into paying for a license even if you don't need one (as the GP describes).

corin_• 16 years ago

Can't disagree enough. Rather than making arguments to defend the BBC, I'll leave that to Stephen Fry who does it significantly better than I would do.

Check out this speech he made on the subject: http://www.corincole.com/misc/Briefings_Stephen_fry.avi

(Also: s/$300/$233/)

petercooper2• 16 years ago

I'm against the TV licence, but your points are flat out incorrect. The TV licence costs £145.50 (about $233) per year and gets you approximately 50 TV channels (some in HD!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_terrestrial_tel... (all those listed as "Free to view"). The BBC's output is typically high quality (BBC 4 being nearly entirely high brow documentaries) and is commercial free.

You're certainly welcome not to pay the licence fee and not watch TV, but spreading lies about how supposedly bad the British TV system is is disingenuous and perpetuates a silly North American myth similar to that about British food or teeth.

Now, I'm off to clean myself as I've just defended the licence fee, something I'm not entirely keen on myself ;-)

jasonkester2• 16 years ago

To be a little more correct, that $233 doesn't actually buy you those 50 channels. You still need to get a cable or satellite subscription, since all you can pick up off the air are the aforementioned cheese documentaries.

All you're buying for the license fee is a break from the constant stream of anger and threats from the TV Licensing people.

chime• 16 years ago

I cancelled my landline when ADT offered to upgrade my security system to GSM for free. I cancelled my Verizon TV once I got Roku HD / Netflix. Now all I have is a FiOS internet connection and I'm very happy. Finally, I'm at a point where I no longer rely on any of the traditional media/communication technologies.

I listen to music on my iDevices using Zumocast (streamed over 3G/Wifi from my home PC). I have unlimited Netflix on my TV/iDevices and so does my wife. I don't have to sync my music or videos anywhere. I drove from Florida to Utah and back this past fortnight and I was able to stream my media almost everywhere (except Chaco Canyon, NM). I took a 3 mile trail down the Grand Canyon and was streaming music from my home PC. Technology is finally where I want it to be. And hopefully, things will continue to get better.

jfb• 16 years ago

No. Sports. Tivo ameliorates having to use the cableco's godawful services. If I could get the EPL, UEFA and FIFA games over the 'net (as I currently do for MLB), I'd cut the cord immediately.

philwelch• 16 years ago

EPL and UEFA Champions League are available on foxsoccer.tv. FIFA World Cup matches were streamed for free in Canada, so for a $15/mo Canadian proxy server I got those too.

losvedir• 16 years ago

It makes me a tiny bit sad that for the purposes of these stats I'm counted as someone with cable. However, I never watch it; I only keep it because the $8/month basic cable subscription gets me a $15/month discount on my cable internet...

Makes me wonder if there are others in my situation and what real numbers might look like.

mmphosis• 16 years ago

I had cable for a short period of time in the 1990's. I thought that the quality was never as good as free over the air broadcast TV. Where I grew up we had a very big TV antenna on a tall mast with a rotor that could be positioned with a dial that sat beside the TV. We could pick up a lot of channels, and we could even get different broadcasts on the same channel depending on the position of the antenna. I know that there were way more unique broadcasters than what you find today on 500-channel satellite TV. By the way, I think that most digital flat screens can receive free over the air digital high-definition TV.

For quite a while, I have not had a TV. I don't miss TV. And, when I do see TV somewhere else, I marvel at how inane the content is.

venturebros• 16 years ago

I have no choice but to keep it because tv + internet is apparently cheaper than just internet.

greyfade2• 16 years ago

I've never owned a TV. So, I've never had any motivation to get cable television or an antenna for viewing local broadcasts. I don't even know what channels there are locally.

But, I do watch a couple TV shows.... On the Internet. I can count them on one hand, and have no motivation to pay for a Cable service that delivers programming I'm not interested in, and makes it hard to access what little programming I am interested in.

If I could get something like Cable TV, and only had to pay for what little material I actually watched, I might perhaps be interested in considering it.

Pyrodogg• 16 years ago

I lived 3 out of 4 years in college without cable, I just couldn't afford it. Couple that with not being a big sports fan and never having had things like HBO it was actually pretty easy to keep from jumping back in an buying cable.

Hulu, Netflix, and other network specific outlets (ComedyCentral) provide 99% of the content I care to consume.

Sure I miss some of the programs that play on channels like Discovery, and History. However, I've also realized that most of the time the return on watching TV is nothing or negative. I'd rather spend my time making things.

ben1040• 16 years ago

I rarely sit in my living room, so why should I pay for tv service that I can only use there? I canceled my video service and bought a cable modem so I don't have to pay a rental fee that's equivalent to buying a new modem every year.

There are so many good shows that I am behind on, that it doesn't bother me that the most recent season isn't available for streaming on Netflix. There's enough content already available to keep me occupied for years, and I can watch it on my phone or iPad wherever I am.

petercooper2• 16 years ago

On top of the £12/mo licence fee, we pay £49/mo for Sky TV (the main, Murdoch-owned premium TV service in the UK - cable is not so big here) with all channels except sport.

I'm just about to downgrade it to the minimum (but still keep Sky, terrestrial reception here is crap) but not for the reason all these examples provide. We've got a kid. And 99% of the time, the TV is stuck on CBeebies (the BBC's under 5's channel) so there's no need for all those other channels ;-) I never thought a kid would lead to lower expenditures in some areas..

gamble• 16 years ago

I cancelled my satellite service last week. We were paying $100/month for hundreds of channels, and all it amounted to was a backlog of DVR'd Family Guy and Simpson's reruns. I'm much happier so far with Netflix and AppleTV, with the occasional torrent or Blu-ray for the things they don't carry. It takes a lot of AppleTV rentals to match what were spending on satellite.

silverlight• 16 years ago

Yep, we got rid of it about 8 months ago. All of the programming we watch is, for the most part, available on the public TV stations (NBC, ABC, etc.), or on Hulu. I set up a Windows Media Center PC to DVR our shows on broadcast TV, although we could just as easily rely on Hulu if we were willing to wait a day or two to see the shows. We also have Netflix.

We are also serial Pay Per View watchers, but now that $5/movie is going to either Playstation Network or Xbox Live/Zune, depending on which TV we want to watch it on, for about the same price. We have also been known on occasion to pay for TV series on iTunes (such as Tudors) that aren't available anywhere else.

For sports, we have ESPN3, which is also coming to Xbox Live shortly.

We are a 2 income household making a 6-figure income, so it is most decidedly not that we can't afford it -- it is simply that we got tired of paying for something so worthless.

What would get us to come back? Reasonable, a la carte channel ordering. I would, for example, shell out $2 or $3 per month for Bravo and a half dozen other stations that feature content we actually watched. But we had 300 channels and I didn't watch 297 of them -- why should I pay for them?

Also, I've never understood why everything isn't just available on-demand (like Hulu). If I have access to Bravo, I should be able to see any already-shown episode of Top Chef that I want, without having "recorded" it -- that should just be part of the subscription. Live TV should only be used if you want to watch sports, or the premier of an episode. Makes no sense not to provide this and make your customers happier.

Have you cut the cord yet? Why? Why not?

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