New Study Shows A Rise In Cord Cutting

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/23/new-study-shows-a-rise-in-cord-cutting-8-2-percent-ditched-pay-tv-in-2014-up-1-3-yoy/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

by lxm • 11 years ago

46 76 11 years ago

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jasondc• 11 years ago

I'm in this group, after recently dropping Comcast. We still wanted some passive TV, and found that in Sling TV. Now we have Sling, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, and have never missed Comcast (our total bill is also about one third of what we were paying Comcast, not counting Amazon Prime).

macNchz2• 11 years ago

I recently moved to my own place from an apartment I shared with a roommate who worked in TV and insisted we have a premium cable package. We had an absolutely immense number of channels, but when I moved out I didn't even have a second thought about dropping TV service altogether.

Most of the channels I may have been interested in watching have slowly descended into drivel: Discovery, History, TLC, Science...they all show total garbage reality shows 24/7 these days. A huge portion of the hundreds of other channels we got seemed to be essentially filler garbage to inflate the channel count.

Aside from the content, the UI/UX of the whole cable experience is terrible. Our cable box was brand new and 'top of the line', yet was so slow that I'd sometimes count the seconds between selecting something and seeing any sort of feedback. The 'cloud DVR' service–touted by our cable provider as a premium feature that would allow you to watch recorded shows in other rooms or on different devices–would regularly simply not function, or, especially on nights when a popular series was premiering (Breaking Bad comes to mind), would throw 503 errors when trying to watch the recording.

We were spending upwards of $150/month for service, and they kept trying to sneak in rate increases. Towards the end of our lease neither of us-even my TV industry roommate-watched anything on TV. Cable TV is a terrible service and I'm glad to see that it's getting shaken up.

bwy• 11 years ago

Yeah, I just moved into an apartment where the couple recently cut the cord as well. I think the only part where you're wrong is in saying cable TV is getting "shaken up." I'm pretty sure cable TV as we knew it is over.

gonehome• 11 years ago

It's truly amazing how terrible it is.

Extremely expensive, enormous amount of advertising, content is only available on a time schedule, DVR is slow and still has the ads you have to fast forward through (if it works at all).

I don't understand why anybody would pay for it (with the notable exception of sports).

My fear is that it'll shift into a service like Hulu where they ditch the time schedule, but you're still paying for tons of advertising. I hope the Netflix and HBO model win (or even Apple and Amazon). Better content, no advertising, better price. I hope the others fail and take all of their shitty content down with them.

gnoway2• 11 years ago

Don't underestimate sports. I think live sports are what keeps the industry afloat.

knicholes• 11 years ago

I receive advertising for Netflix Originals when viewing Netflix, now.

bps4484• 11 years ago

"Most of the channels I may have been interested in watching have slowly descended into drivel: Discovery, History, TLC, Science"

I completely agree. It's amazing how these once interesting channels have decided to go the reality TV route, and it's so far away from the type of programming you'd assume they would have. I remember being devastated when the History Channel started doing this.

bkjelden• 11 years ago

It's because the content people used to consume on those channels is now better consumed on the internet, and the audiences for that content have followed.

Given that, those channels can either go out of business, or pivot to provide content for the remaining audience.

imgabe• 11 years ago

I've had the same experience with Fios. I had no desire for TV service, but they offered it with HBO for less than Internet along, so it made sense.

I'd rather use HBO Go most of the time now that I have legit access to it, except logging in on it requires going through Verizon, which manages to screw it up about 50% of the time. It's also perpetually requiring me to re-register my TV with the service.

The On-Demand service is terribly slow to navigate. The cable box also routinely shows interstitial ads when trying to browse the program guide. It's like somehow the additional competition has actually made their service worse.

ChrisLTD• 11 years ago

You weren't paying $150 just for the TV package, I hope.

macNchz2• 11 years ago

It was internet, TV and phone. The unused phone service made it a package, netting out -$10 from the bill if it had been just TV and internet. Since moving I've replaced it with 50mbit internet for $35/month.

tzs• 11 years ago

Most of the channels I may have been interested in watching have slowly descended into drivel: Discovery, History, TLC, Science...they all show total garbage reality shows 24/7 these days.

Unless you consider shows like "How it's Made", "Mythbusters", "Extreme Engineering", "Outrageous Acts of Science", "Engineering Disasters", "The Universe", "Ancient Impossible", "Ancient Discoveries", "How the Earth Was Made", and "Modern Marvels" to be "reality shows", I have to disagree. Those shows are all full of good and interesting history and science.

Yes, there is a lot of drivel in prime time and daytime to pay the bills, but with a DVR and a small amount of planning, you can extract quite a bit of good stuff from Discovery, History (I'm including H2 in this), and Science. TLC, though, is largely crap.

Similar for National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Animal Planet: a fair amount of crap, but some gems for science/engineering types you can DVR without much effort.

osi• 11 years ago

Or, if you're patient, just wait for them to show up on Netflix and watch there.

lobotryas• 11 years ago

I wish there was a "Cord Cutting" approach for the internet. It's easy to "Cord Cut" a TV - just don't buy one or don't subscribe to cable. The internet is much harder and, unfortunately, can be just as distracting. Even reading the day's news for an hour or more is rarely that beneficial (at least in my experience).

Unfortunately blocking sites by yourself via hosts doesn't work too well and I have yet to find a productive app that could live up to its promise.

sampl• 11 years ago

I do this by leave my laptop at work, leaving my smartphone in a drawer at home... and using a Nokia bar phone.

It might not be for everyone, but works for me.

http://www.amazon.com/NOKIA-301-2-FACTORY-UNLOCKED-QUADBAND/...

run4yourlives2• 11 years ago

rescuetime. Check it out.

jaydub• 11 years ago

It's coming hopefully...http://www.netblazr.com/

oconnore• 11 years ago

It's easy, it's just old school. Subscribe to high quality periodicals. Pay people who work full time to curate for you and you won't have to work part time to curate for yourself. Avoid rags that are willing to waste your time with filler.

The Economist is a good start, and I really enjoy the Baffler.

You don't have to entirely avoid "social curation" like HN or Reddit, but once you've replaced it with something less noisy, you can be more honest with yourself about how much that time is actually benefiting you.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

There is a building in your town (almost) dedicated to dead tree media. They might have a couple computers for occasions when that's insufficient.

usaphp• 11 years ago

The only thing I still need a cable TV subscription for is European Football. It seems that there is absolutely no way to watch it online other than signing up for a cable package...I wish we had something like twitch, netflix or youtube for live sport events...especially football(soccer as somebody call it here)

dhess2• 11 years ago

If you're in the US, Fox Soccer 2Go streams the Champions League, the Europa League, the English FA Cup, and (new this year) the full Bundesliga 2015-16 season, among other competitions. The quality isn't great, but it's reliable and pretty cheap ($99/year) compared to a US cable subscription that would carry the equivalent competitions. They also keep full match replays online for a few weeks after the live broadcast, for some competitions, anyway. You can watch on a PC/Mac in a browser with Flash (ugh), or use their Android or iOS app. I haven't used the Android app, but the iOS app, despite its awful UI, works fine and supports AirPlay to an Apple TV.

Also in the US, fubo.tv carries some matches in a few other top European leagues. It's a bit of a strange service, but it's cheap and worked well enough for me the few times I used it last season. The quality is slightly better than Fox Soccer 2Go, but still nowhere near broadcast HD. They appear to have a deal with BeIN Sports such that, if a match is being shown on TV on BeIN Sports USA, you can stream it online with just a subscription to fubo.tv (no TV service required). I can't figure out BeIN Sports USA; it seems like they show some Serie A matches, some Ligue 1 matches, and some La Liga matches, but not all. fubo.tv used to carry Bundesliga matches, as well, but as that's moving to Fox Soccer 2Go this season, I don't think fubo.tv will carry those anymore. In any case, I'm waiting until August to decide whether or not to renew my fubo.tv subscription, based on what they're offering for the upcoming European football season.

The Barclays Premier League is NBCSN-only in the US and requires a cable subscription -- for now, at least.

Links:

http://www.foxsoccer2go.com/competitions http://www.fubo.tv

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

After buying AOL/Techcrunch, now I'm reading all the relevant Techcrunch posts from the "what's in this for Verizon?" perspective.

Verizon is about to launch a "cord-cutting" online video service, and it may even use AOL/Techcrunch's advertising network to power it:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/us-verizon-video-i...

noconflict• 11 years ago

I would love to cut the cord permanently, but as a huge sports fan, the alternatives to cable aren't quite there yet.

I spent the past year streaming streaming NFL Red Zone and TNT for the NBA Playoffs using my parents's cable login info online. I casted both to my television (didn't have an HDMI out adapter for my laptop) and the quality was not on-par with HD video from a cable box, despite a 100Mbps connection. This is mainly due to the transcoding happening when casting, however, even when using the WatchESPN app on the Amazon Fire TV, I experienced similar video quality. Further, the lag between "real-time" (when I see reactions on Twitter or from my friends watching on cable) and what I saw was about a minute or two. As a huge fan who craves content now, I find that lag unacceptable for me, and hardly consider it live television.

I understand I am likely in a small minority, even for sports fans, but the current cord-cutting options are just not adequate for me. I will be adding cable service in August in preparation for football season.

rconti2• 11 years ago

NHL has a $150/yr subscription where you can watch any of your team's games... as long as they're playing out-of-market! It makes you wonder what the point of it all is.

cweiss3• 11 years ago

And not on network TV. PQ is not nearly as good as regular TV, you can't easily time-shift or pause (spoiled by TiVo).

I've always started my NHL season trying NHL Gamecenter and always ended up canceling it within a few weeks and paying through the nose for Center Ice (which comes out to ~$90/mo with pre-requisite cable).

undershirt• 11 years ago

I watched the NBA playoffs on Sling TV, which had ESPN and TNT. But I couldn't watch the Finals because it was on NBC.

I wish I could watch local broadcast TV from my computer. But when broadcast TV went digital, it made it harder to get a decent signal. Partial signals on digital are a lot worse than it was with analog.

dmfdmf2• 11 years ago

Are you in the Bay Area? NBC is on VHF and very strong through out the bay. You could pick it up with an FM T-style antenna but not the UHF bow type antennas.

dj_doh• 11 years ago

Proud cord cutter since 2008. Hi-Speed internet providers like Webpass with Hulu+, Netflix or Amazon Prime has more than enough content to satisfy your idiot box cravings.

I used to be a netflix subscriber but then I moved to Hulu+. There some strange appeal about uncertainty of content line-up. With Netflix you layout your own lineup. But Hulu+ has some pseud-TV feel to it.

atourgates• 11 years ago

The other angle that would be interesting to look at is the number of TV & movie pirates that have converted to legitimate services.

In high school, university and through my early 20's, I pirated most of the music I listened to, and nearly all of the TV shows and movies I watched.

Now, even though pirating content is now easier than ever, and I still refuse to pay for cable, I now consume the vast majority of content legitimately via online streaming.

My personal reasons are twofold:

- As I've gotten older, my income has grown and I can afford to pay a reasonable amount for access to media.

- Nearly all the content I want to watch is covered by a combination of Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Now, Rdio and sports league network subscriptions.

I wonder if I'm part of a larger trend of pirates becoming legitimate online viewers/listeners as more content becomes available for legitimate online streaming, and how large that trend is.

StavrosK• 11 years ago

The other reason is simply that we grew up, got jobs and have disposable income to spend on entertainment.

loco5niner• 11 years ago

And got replaced by kids without disposable income ;-)

priyankc• 11 years ago

same here. to add to that list, as a tech entrepreneur, consuming pirated content hurts startups in that field, which indirectly hurts me.

saiko-chriskun• 11 years ago

I've never had a cable package in my life and never seen any reason to get one.

rconti2• 11 years ago

I'm a cord cutter since 2011... EXCEPT!

Except I am currently a cable TV subscriber. I have to call Comcast every 6-12 months when my "deal" expires. I used to have 150mbit service, but in the dark days of the Comcast vs Netflix battles, I could only stream at 240x120. So I said "screw it" and switched to 25mbit service for far less money -- my Netflix streams got better, too!

Then once that deal was up, they offered to double my speed to 50mbit and drop my price by $5/month.. if I was willing to become a cable TV subscriber again. Turns out the "limited basic" is really just lifeline these days, but they did throw in HBO for the first time in my life.

I returned the cable box to them on day 1; all of my TV programming comes OTA from a Mohu Sky to my HDHomeRun and goes through my WMC7 DVR. I occasionally watch HBO Go on my AppleTV which is the only use I get out of my cable TV subscription.

But according to Comcast's numbers, I am a cable TV subscriber -- or at least will be, for the next 6 months. I'm actually willing to pay a bit extra per month to NOT be listed as a subscriber, but unfortunately very few internet-only deals seem to exist in ComcastLand.

Incidentally, they also bumped me to 100mbit from 50, and recently from 100 to 150. 150mbit for $60/mo is nothing to shake a stick at I suppose. I just wish they couldn't count me as one of their subscribers.

They're gaming their subscriber numbers the same way the NYTimes is when they basically make you throw away the dead tree edition to get a cheaper digital subscription.

dylz• 11 years ago

If you want a laugh, https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30111370-Content-comcast-i...

hodwik• 11 years ago

Wow, what market are you in that you're paying $60/mo for 150mbit?

I'm in the philly suburbs and paying that much for 20mbit and no TV.

mayneack2• 11 years ago

LA TWC I get 300mbit for $70. No TV etc.

LukeShu• 11 years ago

I'm in the same boat, kinda. When I was signing up for my Internet service when I moved into my place last August, Comcast refused to sell anything faster than 6Mb/s outside of a cable bundle. A couple of months later, they began offering a decent Internet outside of a bundle. I called about switching to that, but couldn't without my rate going way up because I was on an introductory rate. However, instead the rep did double my speed while keeping my bill the same, so I'm not too salty about it.

I at least took the cable box home, and plugged it in. I had to unplug it in October when I was moving some furniture around, and it was February before I got around to plugging it back in! (One of the players in my D&D group wanted to see if we could put the Puppy Bowl on; turns out I didn't get the channel)

shostack• 11 years ago

Yep, similar experience. Some promos on my account expired and the cheapest solution was to add a Basic bundle. My bill only increased $5 vs $15. They are such extortionists about it too...no internet only deals whatsoever.

I'd love to see their training on selling in bundles.

Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to switch to their competitor Sonic (Bay Area), similar speed isn't even offered let alone comparable.

Please Sonic, bring me 100-150Mb speeds for $70/mo and steal all of Comcast's business!

cwe• 11 years ago

I love these deals because they prove that cable is less than worthless: you're literally being paid to be a cable subscriber. It's worth is negative.

ryandrake2• 11 years ago

I don't watch TV but the rest of the family does, and there's no way they'd put up with cord cutting. Right now we have an overpriced TV package from Comcast but it's convenient because it's one service. My wife knows her channels and when to tune in, and can do it with a single remote control. Done.

The alternative is to subscribe to 4 or 5 of these streaming services, and have to explain: "Well, honey for this show you need to use this service and navigate it this way, use this HDMI input on the TV. For that show, you need to use this other service, on the media player (so different remote), and this input. For movies, you need to use Netflix and do it this way.. For cartoons for the kid, you need to use this service..." No way that's going to fly.

What I really want is a service where she can just memorize how and when to get to the already few things she wants to watch, be able to get to them by just turning on the TV, and not have to switch inputs, devices, remotes, UIs, etc. Hey, wait, that's called standard Cable TV service!

petersellers• 11 years ago

Sounds like you have too many devices. Couldn't you just have an HTPC hooked up to a single HDMI input on your TV?

As for the different streaming services, it doesn't sound like any more work than what she is doing now. Instead of memorizing which show is on which channel at what time, you just memorize which show is on which service.

ryandrake2• 11 years ago

So, (and I'm speculating because I don't have any of these streaming services)

Power TV, wake up media PC, navigate to Hulu+, navigate to or search for show, navigate to episode, hit play, wait while it buffers, watch show.

I'd argue that until it's as dead simple as cable: Power, 45, ENTER, ...it's not going to catch on in the mass market.

scrumper• 11 years ago

She's over it now, but my wife's biggest complaint when I unilaterally cut the cord 5 years ago was that she couldn't be a passive consumer: she had to actively choose what to watch at any moment. Hulu Plus's automatic next show thing was a help with that, but I eventually ditched that too (money for ads - no thanks).

The net out is that she reads a lot more.

(No particular lesson, just another piece of anecdata to join the growing pile that always ends up on threads on this subject.)

mrgriscom• 11 years ago

I'm sure there is some huge technical hurdle that someone will educate me about, but how is bittorrent streaming of live content not a thing yet? All these would-be cord-cutters say that sports is the only thing holding them back. Why can't content be made available for torrenting in small chunks as they become available, with the swarm prioritizing the chunks chronologically biased way? Seems achievable that you'd only be lagging a few minutes behind live.

eru• 11 years ago

You could do bittorrent-like streaming of live content. The bittorrent protocol itself isn't aimed at getting the content of a file in any particular order. (In fact, it works best in random order.)

dhess2• 11 years ago

There is Acestream, which the authors claim is based on BitTorrent. Unfortunately, the client software is allegedly a bit dodgy, and nobody can tell for sure as it's all closed-source.

johladam• 11 years ago

I recently graduated and moved out on my own. I moved to a decently large city in the Midwest, where my apartment company had signed an exclusive with AT&T. To get cable is quite expensive, but the AT&T contract here means they don't do any sort of packaging. I've got neighbors who are paying 50-60 a month for basic cable... Which would be fine, except that you can buy a $50 antenna from Amazon and get channels with much, MUCH better quality than what you can get with cable. Plus, it's free.

I also thing a major part of this might be that colleges don't really have cable... So students spend a year without cable, realize that they don't really need it and that it's expensive. I definitely think that not having cable at Universities causes some of "I can live without" attitude you're seeing here.

prewett• 11 years ago

Which would be fine, except that you can buy a $50 antenna from Amazon and get channels with much, MUCH better quality than what you can get with cable.

Which is funny, because back in The Day, the selling point for cable was that it was better quality than broadcast (plus a few extra channels).

dmfdmf2• 11 years ago

If anyone is interested, go to tvfool.com and plug in your address and get a TV Fool report. It will tell you what broadcast (over-the-air or OTA) TV stations are possible to receive at your location. If you live near any metro area you should be able to get most of the major networks; ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, CW, ION and many independent stations. I am getting 80+ stations in the SF Bay Area with an antenna system that costs less than $200 to feed the whole house with 4 TVs. The quality of OTA digital is BETTER than what you get via cable for local stations. That plus streaming is all I need unless someone wants to pay me to be a content consumer.

jlarocco• 11 years ago

I haven't owned a TV in almost 10 years, and don't miss it or cable.

Some nights I'll watch an old TV show or a documentary on Amazon Prime while I'm eating dinner. The selection isn't the greatest, but it's only something to do for 20 minutes while I eat dinner, so I don't really care. It's essentially "free" because I already had Prime for the free 2 day shipping.

This is somewhat related and hilarious: http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioni...

w8rbt• 11 years ago

There are too many commercials on satellite/cable TV. When I'm paying 80 to 100 dollars each month for the service, why do I also have to view commercials every eight minutes? That's why I cancelled.

kijin• 11 years ago

I never had a "cord" to cut.

I grew up in a family that didn't watch cable TV, because cable was not even available in the neighborhood. Then I went to college and got my own apartment in the city, but didn't have money for cable. (Technically, I got cable, but with the internet-only plan. I ditched that as well when I found that dry-loop DSL was cheaper.)

Nowadays, I could easily get cable if I wanted, but I don't see why I should. Since I never had it, I don't know what I'm missing, so I don't miss it.

Retra• 11 years ago

You are missing out on an endless stream of bland and repetitive cable advertisements.

EdSharkey• 11 years ago

TV gets an hour of our time. Not because I wouldn't like to give it more time, but now that we have work and hobbies and chores AND kids, that's all the time that's left.

So, we got Netflix streaming on my aging PS3, Clearwire for internet, and over-the-air broadcast HDTV for the public television shows. Yeah, I miss not having DVR, but this was the cheapest option in my area, and I still get pretty decent entertainment out of that mix.

Haven't had Comcast since 2012, and it feels good. Not having cable might be permanent for us!

Fjolsvith• 11 years ago

I hate cable too. I've installed Kodi boxes on each of our three TV's but still cannot get the wife to give up LMN (gack!).

New Study Shows A Rise In Cord Cutting

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