
400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year - kemper
http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/02/cable-tv-subscriber-stats-q2-2012-satellite/
======
wave
One thing I missed after canceling pay TV is the way I used to watch news. You
just turn on the TV and there is news. So I created <http://tiltview.com> to
gather current news and play it without having to do any work.

~~~
naner
I'm the opposite, I loathe TV news. It is especially bad now during election
season. Drivel, platitudes, sensationalized crap, and one feel-good story
about the local kid who saved a puppy or whatever. I can do without.

~~~
notatoad
Tv news might be terrible, but there is definitely something to be said for
having a certain selection of stories pushed at you. If nothing else it gives
you perspective and context knowing what news everybody else is paying
attention to. I noticed a terrible confirmation bias seeping in to my news
when I got all my news from Internet sources.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Perspective?

I think quite the opposite, it gives you the illusion of being informed when
in reality you are just viewing a tiny slice of the world as through a soda
straw.

If you really want to be informed it takes a hell of a lot more leg work.

~~~
brc
I can't remember who said it, but a favourite saying of mine is "isn't funny
how the world only creates just enough news to fill 30 minutes every day".

I record the 6pm news on Tivo every night. Sometimes I watch it, mostly I
don't. If something big breaks, I can watch it on the news.

Generally being alert to blogs and twitter will let you find out all the
necessary to follow stories.

People waste far too much of their lives absorbing non-essential news items.
In retrospect, most of us would be flat out recalling 4 big news events from
the prior year.

~~~
justincormack
TV news can be good. Try watching Channel 4 news in the uk for an example. It
is an hour long.

------
sp332
Tempted to call this blogspam; the actual information is from
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-
idUSL2E8J29M...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/paytv-
idUSL2E8J29MJ20120802)

~~~
benologist
It's more than just blogspam, BGR also have a few HN accounts they dump links
here with.

~~~
jonursenbach
[Citation Needed]

~~~
benologist
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867616>

------
bradleyland
Looks like cable peaked in 2001, with increasing losses since then.

<http://www.ncta.com/Stats/BasicCableSubscribers.aspx>

It's also interesting to see that HSI over cable exploded around 2001.

<http://www.ncta.com/Stats/High-Speed-Internet-Customers.aspx>

EDIT: Posted a graph on my blog: [http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-
television-subsc...](http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/08/02/cable-television-
subscription-rates-falling-but-where-are-they-going/)

~~~
chaz
You're not counting satellite, which has been taking market share away from
cable. As of 2011, 60.4% of households have cable, and 31.1% of households
have "alternative distribution systems," almost all of which is satellite,
like DirecTV and DISH. Safe to assume that very few households have both cable
and satellite, so about 90% of households have pay TV.

Page 10: <http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf>

~~~
benmccann
According to the data in this article DirectTV and Dish Network both lost
subscribers as well this quarter (52,000 and 10,000 respectively). While the
losses historically were at the hands of the satellite operators, more
recently it has been lost to the internet.

------
stephengillie
From article:

 _A report from earlier this year suggested that more than 1 million U.S.
households disconnected their pay-TV services in 2011._
[http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-
subsc...](http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/over-1-million-u-s-cable-subscribers-
cut-the-cord-in-2011/)

From _that_ article in April:

 _Nearly 2.65 million cable or satellite TV subscribers have canceled their
service since 2008 to rely solely on Web-based services according to estimates
from the Convergence Consulting Group._ ... _It is estimated that roughly
930,000 customers will cut the cord in 2012, for a total of 3.58 million
subscribers since 2008. The group also estimates that traditional television
providers will add 185,000 accounts this year, up from 112,000 in 2011._

2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000
disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and
the holidays?

~~~
vonmoltke
_2/3 of the way through 2012, and less than half of April's predicted 930,000
disconnections have occurred. Will more people disconnect during the fall and
the holidays?_

I got the impression from the article that these are numbers through Q2, so
only half the year. If so, the pace would be about right.

------
geebee
I recently quit cable. I mainly watch sports, and I discovered that various
web feeds along with espn3 gives me enough coverage that I don't really need
cable (I'd say it's about 70% of what I want to watch). I do miss some
soccer/tennis, but overall it's worth it - coverage through official web feeds
is still good, and full digital cable is really expensive.

The big disappointment has been the olympics. But as a tennis fan, I'm not at
all surprised that NBC has been a disappointment. I was really delighted when
the finally lost their rights to wimbledon, because _finally_ things were
aired live and were accessible on line.

NBC has pretty much limited live web streaming to people who are paying for
expensive cable packages. Essentially, they'll let you watch on the web as
long as you aren't using the web to avoid paying for cable.

ESPN is still be a little crappy about this - you do have to get your web
through a particular provider (though if you have a military or university
account, you'll also get through). But nowhere near as bad as NBC, and no
surprise there.

------
juddlyon
I can't give up my habit until I can watch basketball and boxing online. Ain't
happening anytime soon.

~~~
alirov
I don't know about boxing but to watch the NBA (I know that's not going to
cover college sports), you can get NBA League Pass for around $100. It's not
necessarily cheap but it's cheaper than paying the $64 a month I used to with
DirecTV (the cheapest option in my area).

Edit: Just wanted to point out that it's $100 for a whole season and not per
month of course.

~~~
9999
The online version of NBA league pass is basically useless.

1) All nationally televised games are blacked out (anything on ABC, TNT, ESPN,
etc.)

2) Locally televised games are blacked out on a by region basis. So if you
want to watch the Heat play, but they're broadcasting the game on Fox Sports
East or whatever and you live in Florida, you can't watch it.

3) The video quality is incredibly low. It's an SD stream at less than 1 mbps.
Godawful. To be fair though, the Cable version of League Pass also sports some
awful video quality (super compressed HD when that's even available, and it
frequently isn't).

~~~
antidaily
I could never get it to run correctly on OS X. And they wouldnt refund my
money. They need to hire the MLB at bat guys.

------
paul9290
Oh great! Here comes the bandwidth caps and overages for going over your cap.

Google Fiber needs to deploy nationally to stop these cable TV/ISP providers
from making up their losses thru bandwidth overages!

That said for me, once I found EDonkey2000/Sharereactor I cut the cord. Cable
TV sucks, specifically it's business model!

~~~
MartinCron
I don't have pay TV and use netflix/amazon/iTunes streaming a lot. I sometimes
have multiple kids watching distinct video streams on different devices at the
same time.

I haven't hit the bandwidth cap with my comcast internet-only service yet. I
can imagine you need to get seriously into torrenting HD movies to go over the
edge.

~~~
pyre
I think that the parent post was suggesting that the ISPs might increase
overage charges, and reduce the bandwidth caps (as in smaller amount before
overage charges) as a way of offsetting customers dropping their cable tv
subscription (i.e. lost revenue) and streaming more video over their internet
connection (i.e. more strain on the ISP's network + maintenance costs).

------
SwellJoe
I think this is really interesting in the context of the HBO story:
[http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-
geniuses...](http://allthingsd.com/20120801/hbo-ignores-internet-geniuses-
sells-more-hbo/)

Will companies like HBO make the necessary changes to their business to
survive the end of pay TV, or will they go down with the ship, stubbornly
clinging to their high margins and tightly controlled distribution channel? Of
course, cable companies have, in collusion with telcos, locked down the
Internet last mile in most markets by putting independent ISPs out of
business...so they may not suffer much in the next few years, unless and until
Google fiber comes along and makes them utterly irrelevant.

~~~
catweasel
This is very much the reason Rupert Murdoch (and by extension News Limited
papers) is so opposed to the NBN in Australia.

------
nicholassmith
I moved house recently and decided to no longer pay for a TV subscription
(which as I'm in the UK would be Sky). I don't watch much in the way of TV, my
girlfriend watches a bit more so it was a tricky choice.

We've ended up with NetFlix through an Apple TV as our primary source of
content, it's not perfect but there's enough stuff on their that we have an
interest in to keep us entertained.

I'd be interested in seeing the stats for how many in the UK are going down
this route, we've got slightly less services available, and as far as I can
tell we have much less choice than over the pond.

~~~
goatforce5
Do you get Freeview?

The selection of free broadcast channels in the UK is really quite
exceptional:

<http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels>

~~~
nicholassmith
Yeah we do, which covers our 'lets just put the TV on'.

------
protolif
This number would be a lot larger, were it not for Comcast (and probably
others) bundling Cable TV service in with their Internet packages, for
considerably less money than you can get Internet alone. I don't know if
they're inflating their numbers to show their investors or what, but I can't
wait for Google fiber. Even though I don't really trust Google anymore,
they're the lesser evil here.

------
RonMN580SR
As wave pointed out a lot of news videos are available on the internet. We at
Metadata Labs have a web services which finds and plays internet videos on a
variety of subjects including News. Take a look at <http://debsnews.com>

------
jsz0
Sounds impressive until you realize that just Comcast and TWC alone have about
35 million subscribers. I couldn't find a total number for all pay TV
subscribers but I would guess it's above 100 million.

