
New Study Shows A Rise In Cord Cutting - prostoalex
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
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macNchz
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.

~~~
fossuser
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.

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

~~~
damoncali
I get cable for four months a year to watch college football. Then I cancel
it. Kind of a pain, but that's what it's come down to.

Incidentally, it is WAY easier to cancel a Cox account in person at the local
office than on the phone.

~~~
avn2109
Protip: If canceling telecom/tv/whatever crappy ossified subscription
business, tell them you are immediately moving to a very remote location. I
usually say I've joined the Peace Core and am leaving for Namibia next week.
After you repeat this a few times they stop nagging and escalating you and
just cancel the service.

~~~
pkulak
I usually just repeat the same exact phrase until they give up on the script.
Three times is usually the max times someone will listen to me repeat "I would
like to cancel my service" before they laugh and just do it.

------
rconti
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.

~~~
hodwik
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.

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

------
noconflict
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.

~~~
rconti
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.

~~~
cweiss
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).

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

~~~
loco5niner
And got replaced by kids without disposable income ;-)

------
dmfdmf
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.

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

------
usaphp
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)

~~~
dhess
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.foxsoccer2go.com/competitions)
[http://www.fubo.tv](http://www.fubo.tv)

------
mrgriscom
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
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.)

------
ryandrake
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
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.

~~~
ryandrake
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.

~~~
digisign
I prefer to watch on my iPad+standzout, and find it vastly simplifies one's
lifestyle. That it avoids commercials and TV FUD is icing on the cake.

------
johladam
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
> 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).

------
jasondc
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).

------
jlarocco
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...](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-
constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429)

------
higherpurpose
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...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/us-verizon-video-
idUSKBN0MM1YX20150326)

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

------
EdSharkey
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!

------
lobotryas
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.

~~~
oconnore
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.

------
dj_doh
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.

------
w8rbt
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.

------
Fjolsvith
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!).

