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.
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.
Wow, this is really cool. I actually prefer this to watching broadcast news. You get the same feeling, but the ability to skip stories I'm not interested in makes the whole process way smoother.
I find listening to the news on the radio to be much more enjoyable than watching the news on TV. Really great to listen to while cooking/cleaning/doing laundry, etc. Plus the programming on my public radio station is just so damn good.
I don't bother with TV news but I did have a positive reaction to your site. I like how there's no screwing around - straight away it's giving you something to watch and easy buttons to skip ahead if you're not interested. Would be great if there were quick options to thumbs up/down a video to get more or less of that type of news (politics vs world vs sport, etc) or ignore a particular provider that has long, boring brand intros.
I'm sure it'd also be trivial to introduce skippable ads that were tailored and of interest (in an ideal world...) to viewers.
All the news you need can be heard for free on the BBC world service. It has a refreshingly internationalist perspective which is interesting to compare and contrast with countrys' national news bulletins.
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.
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?
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.
I mentioned on a previous thread that satellite/cable TV companies need to be adding 1.1% to their subscriber numbers ever year just to keep pace with the growth of the number of households in the US[1]. If you looked at the percentage of households that subscribe rather than raw subscriber numbers, we'd see an even steeper decline over the past 10 years or so.
Some people will disconnect when their contract is up. I signed a 2 year contract but it expires in January. My biggest apprehension is having to turn my 2 HD DVRs back in. Then realizing a few months later that I want 'real' service again. This would mean that I would to pay another upfront cost to rent the DVRs again.
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.
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.
Cable/Sat is great if you love sports. If you don't watch sports, it really sucks that this is where most of your subscription fees are going, plus you have to buy ever larger packages just to get a few more geeky channels.
Better just to buy from Amazon what you can't get on Netflix. Cheaper in the long run.
Too bad the cable/sat operators refuse to regroup their packages, lest they anger the sporting gods. Well, good riddance, jerks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
[+] [-] wave|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|13 years ago|reply
What is the matter with you people?
[+] [-] harpastum|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fletchowns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|13 years ago|reply
I'm sure it'd also be trivial to introduce skippable ads that were tailored and of interest (in an ideal world...) to viewers.
[+] [-] karanbhangui|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmariani|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|13 years ago|reply
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/
[+] [-] kzrdude|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CrankyPants|13 years ago|reply
Suggestion: consider adding youtube.com/stratforvideo to your mix.
[+] [-] chrischen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benologist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyland|13 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] chaz|13 years ago|reply
Page 10: http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TV_Basics.pdf
[+] [-] stephengillie|13 years ago|reply
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...
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|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rhplus|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf
[+] [-] jftuga|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geebee|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alirov|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Just wanted to point out that it's $100 for a whole season and not per month of course.
[+] [-] Roboprog|13 years ago|reply
Better just to buy from Amazon what you can't get on Netflix. Cheaper in the long run.
Too bad the cable/sat operators refuse to regroup their packages, lest they anger the sporting gods. Well, good riddance, jerks.
[+] [-] paul9290|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
The selection of free broadcast channels in the UK is really quite exceptional:
http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels
[+] [-] protolif|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RonMN580SR|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsz0|13 years ago|reply