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Cable TV’s Customers Have Had Enough

By Rick Ackerman Posted on August 12, 2011, 7:07 am EDT Last Updated August 12, 2011, 11:09 am EDT

To hell with the stock market, which continues to jump around like a flea in a microwave. Our favorite story yesterday concerned how customers are deserting cable and satellite TV in droves. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.  Dippin’ Dots and $8 ballpark beer aside, pay TV may be the worst value one can get for one’s buck.  So why are subscribers canceling in record numbers? There are two apparent reasons: 1) The Great Recession; and 2) the availability of cheaper video entertainment online.

One might hope this trend would induce cable and satellite providers to do something they have never done before and have probably never even considered – i.e., lower their prices – but we’re not going to hold our breath.  Recall that back in the 1960s, for $9.95 a month, cable companies promised commercial-free television that would put network programming to shame.  Movie theaters felt so threatened by it that one local theater we can recall had a television set in the lobby with a bobble-head dragon and a sign that asked, “Would you let a monster into your living room?”  In retrospect, theater owners needn’t have feared the incursion of cable TV, since we all need an occasional night out.  People will continue to go to the movies no matter what, even with theaters charging $8 for a bucket of popcorn and showing movies that are getting worse and pricier by the year.

In retrospect, the premium programming that $9.95 bought in the 1960s was a great deal compared to what $70 buys today from the likes of Comcast.  Yes, there are 500 channels, just like futurists promised us back in the Sixties.  But about 400 of them are infomercials, and the rest – including such formerly commercial-free fare as AMC – are so heavily loaded with advertising  that only someone in a vegetative state could watch for more than an hour or so. We can’t imagine who is actually watching 90-minute films with 30 minutes’ worth of commercial interruptions. We should mention that Turner Classics sits apart from all of this, providing a selection of great movies, terrific commentary by Robert Osborne, and…no commercials! But if you want quality shows, it’ll cost you plenty more.  Premium channels like Home Box Office, Starz, Cinemax, and Showtime – the stuff you used to get for your $9.95 – can easily run a monthly TV bill above $150. And on top of that, the cable companies have the gall to charge an extra $10 per TV for high-definition decoders.

Monopoly Breeds Arrogance

Their monopoly pricing power has made cable companies so arrogant that they always turn up near the top of consumer gripe lists. The result is that last tear’s trickle of cancellations has turned into a torrent. America’s nine largest providers lost 195,700 customers in Q2 alone, according to an AP survey, socking cable and satellite providers with their first-ever quarterly loss. The losses across the entire industry were apparently much larger – as high as 450,000, according to one estimate. Customer research suggests that young, educated viewers who aren’t keen on sports or other live programs are finding it increasingly easy to go without cable. The inventory of streamed movies continues to grow, and many of the most popular TV shows are available free online within a day of their original broadcast. TV is too important a part of peoples lives for cable and satellite providers to go out of business, but they’re going to have to offer customers a much better deal if they hope to compete with new forms of video entertainment that are free and easily accessible on devices other than televisions.

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  • Mava August 14, 2011, 8:43 pm

    obvious,

    Brilliant analogy!

    With may-be an exception of TV-business not being an economy, since economy is there to satisfy demand, while whole purpose of TV is to advance pro-government mentality. TV business to it’s customers is what a chain is to a slave.

  • obvious August 14, 2011, 5:51 am

    Just like the US Economy.
    As more people Opt Out (Lost Jobs), the Prices must Increase (Taxes) or Increase advertising space (Interest rates). Eventually, when enough Jobs have been Lost, raising Taxes and Interest rates will no longer be able to support the Economy, then it just collapses in on itself.

  • signalfire August 13, 2011, 10:24 pm

    TeeVee makes you stupid. Stupid enough to pay ever-increasing amounts for TeeVee. ‘Nuff said.

  • Paulie August 13, 2011, 7:22 pm

    I have a fantacy…Ron Paul/Gary Johnson For President. Ah, well…the machine politico will surely stomp that fantacy to death.

  • warren August 13, 2011, 6:35 pm

    Nothing if not, diverse.

  • John Jay August 13, 2011, 6:05 pm

    I like Ron Paul a lot but since the MSM ignores him he will have to try a lot harder. There are enough enraged citizens to get him elected if he plays his cards right.
    He would need to go grass roots and promote a populist agenda a la TR’s Bull Moose party and stop being so damned polite. He could get a big start by organizing college students, campus by campus, they seem to like him. He needs to buy media time and get his name out there, in the last election run up I asked my mom what she thought of Ron Paul and she had never heard of him. There are plenty of senior organizations he could enlist. If he just created a position paper that told the proles how they were getting screwed and what he proposed and got that out he could pull it off. An anti war, anti fed, anti amnesty, anti free trade platform is what is needed. All of those things have a majority approval in the polls as far as I can see.
    Ron Paul just needs to get serious and spend the money he raises, last time I think he wound up with 17 million unspent. Teddy Roosevelt came in second in the 1912 election beating Taft losing to Wilson, so it is at least feasible. Ron Paul just needs to get busy and not count on any help from the MSM. If that doesn’t work it might be time for the Col. Kurtz/Maj. Kilgore slate.

  • Paulie August 13, 2011, 5:39 pm

    Great blog, Rick. I’d like to add to the mix, it idea the immense lobby the cable-cabal that has (so easily) infected our pathetic politicians over the years as this industry has whined about laying the infrastructure for their billing largess, as another causal factor in this whole mess. This industry needs whacked down to size and/or splattered into oblivion by new technology, and it can’t come soon enough. There was enough socialism built into the matrix by providing “cultural” programming, making instant billionaires out of certain ethnic programmers that didn’t want to be “Americanized” into the populace but wanted to create and hold onto their supposed ethnicism via giant subsidies that were billed to “trapped” consumers—who could care less about ethnic channels or your infomercial-in-perpetuity channels. This deserves to die a visible death in the marketplace. Whatever happened to the concept that I’ll pay for what I consume/desire? Being forced to subsidize channels that you have NO intention of EVER watching is hardly “capitalism”!!! I place the blame squarely at the bunion-ugly feet of our political class; they should all be denied their retirements asap, and left to fend for themselves, sans income. The same or similar arguements might be applied to phone service, which is entirely more expensive in the US than in places that might be really remote, such as the Philippines, where, if I remember correctly, a cell phone service contract is not nearly as expensive as in the US. In fact, you can google this issue and will find phone service to be much more affordable in countries other than the US. The drug industry is another whining pariah; the cost to the consumers in the US being more than many other countries, per pill. Of course, the new senior citizen drug subsidy bill will ensure profit margins for drugs that are cheaper in, say, Canada. When I hear the word “capitalism” being puked out of talking heads on ANY television network, I begin wretching. There is NO capitalism left in the US, given the bailouts to the banking industry, the subsidies to the Medical/Drug interests and the utter bullsh*t present in the cable-cabal, phone and even the insurance sectors. I digress. Again, I blame the political class and their proclivity to accepting the K Street money by the wheel barrow load for the coming crisis in finance and can only hope the fall is far and hard enough that the public sector does not recover for eons. The rat’s nest is so extensive, it’s going to take a jaw-dropping situation to effectively clean it out enough for the economy to climb out of Mordor. Brace yourselves if it happens, bend over if it doesn’t.

  • Mercurious August 13, 2011, 5:09 am

    As an inveterate TV avoider of approximately 12 years duration, I believe I can speak with some authority on the topic of conditions post-idiot box. Ahem…

    I cannot fathom how folks can spend so much time watching mind-destroying trash when a motivated person could use just free internet sites to gain an education that would rival the best university courses the world has to offer.

    Not wasting time watching TV has freed up time to learn investment truths that have enabled me to quintuple my money in a few short years. I am able to converse with ease on a broad range of topics and am usually the one the boss calls for an answer when he’s too damn lazy to think of effective search terms in Google.

    My home is serene, and nourishes me rather than becoming the background scenery for Brad and Jennifer and God knows who else to be seen waving from a red carpet. I can get the info that interests me at any time and either print it out or just read online. I put the $110 a month that these bandits want into precious metals, give a fat middle finger to the taxing authorities that want me to pay to string fiber optic to East Estonia free to the inhabitants…and enjoy real life more.

    On the downside, I am never in high demand at the coffee machine the day after a series season closer is shown. God, how I miss those dumb asses.

  • Mava August 13, 2011, 3:37 am

    Chris T.,

    You’re right. It’s like doing drugs while being aware of the deed – it is still going to affect you! The best thing is to deny them the access to your brain.

    And, yeah, I noticed that too, that when I am a guest where people still are on TV, I just “don’t get it”, it’s like they watch something in a foreign language. I just go and do something else.

    It is also funny to watch people watching the TV. You can see that they are in the “download” mode.

    Weird, but yes.

  • Chris T. August 12, 2011, 9:25 pm

    Well,

    I like the common thread here of the posts above.
    Myself, haven’t owned a TV set for the last 4 years, and of course, no cable TV (the local terrestrial is so poor, a no-cable TV becomes a dust collector).

    Once you go without for a while, you rarely miss it.
    And, when you do get into where someone has it on as background chatter, all the talking head blah blah, or the BS reality show, etc are simply an annoyance to be turned off!

    >> As the economy tanks and more boomers retire it is
    >>a perfect solution for someone who doen’t need a
    >>land line at $30 a month or a cell phone plan at

    For us (meaning the above 20s, assuming most here are) that is probably true, but for that generation (and coming) being not-permanently connected is like going without oxygen or at least like a crank-head without the meth– they are addicted to it.
    Which is why it’s so easy for the data about the dangers of cell and wi-fi radiation to be poh-pohed by the industry: no one wants to hear it, because the consequences, shutting of, are so unpalatable.

    As to Maya’s post above:

    Not only is the indoctrination / propaganda constantly there, it is also insidious:
    Even when people like us here are 100% aware of being propagandized, its been shown many times, that even then, the propaganda works as intended.
    Thus the only way not to be affected is not to watch/listen/read at all — the: “‘m a critical partaker, I question” attitude does not work.

    Plus, even without TV, newspapers, mags, etc, you are still propagandized enough, when consuming the same media through the new channels:
    TV shows & movies streamed work no differently than via the old distribution method.

    BTW:
    Just the other day, a study, for whatever its worth, determined, that as much as 1/3 of net traffic is now due to Netlix and streaming of that stuff. Soon, someone is going to demand “they” pay their “fair’ share for use of this “public” infrastructure

  • mikeck August 12, 2011, 6:32 pm

    I do not watch TV, but my wife does so sometimes I get spillover…she had the morning “news” on this morning and I overheard them talking about the GOP debates…they only had Bachmann, Pawlenty, and Romney.

    Well, I thought that was weird so I decided to check out a poll on the debates. One more time now, who is it that (s)elects our, so called, leaders?
    http://www.topix.com/issue/fox/gop-debate-aug11

    Mike

    • Mava August 12, 2011, 8:27 pm

      mikeck,

      Wow, thanks for the link! I’d love to see Ron Paul to be (s)elected, but something tells me this will never happen, and we’ll get the usual “Fearless Leader”.

    • Benjamin August 12, 2011, 8:27 pm

      The reason Paul can’t win is because Paul won’t run as anything but GOP. That guarantees he won’t even be on the ballot, come election day. But even if he were to run as an independent in 2012…

      Well, since the truism that 3rd parties cannot win has _such_ a grip on the voter psyche, they won’t vote for him. They’ll flock to vote for the GOP candidate, just to get Obama out. But because the GOP candidate will suck, they will waste their vote anyway.

    • fallingman August 12, 2011, 8:43 pm

      Yeah, Mikeck, Ron Paul is a non-person as far as the media is concerned. Very Soviet.

      And yeah Benjamin. Dr. Paul ran as the Libertarian Party candidate once. The whole indy thing is pointless. The system is hopelessly rigged against any third party bid. By the time you gather the necessary signatures, you’ve run a marathon and you’ve exhausted your energy and money…and then you have to run another marathon against the subsidized monopoly party. Electoral politics is a sideshow and a complete con.

      The fascists rule. Goldman uber alles.

    • Benjamin August 12, 2011, 9:20 pm

      fallingman: “Dr. Paul ran as the Libertarian Party candidate once. The whole indy thing is pointless.”

      Pointless or not, he’s not going win the presidency through his ongoing strategy. Besides, this isn’t 1988. More people know and stand behind what Paul stands for. So, why not? What has he to lose?

    • Chris T. August 12, 2011, 9:33 pm

      3rd parties in the US, no matter what, are a non-starter at this time.
      Which is why the Reps so manipulated the primaries last time around: they knew that’s where the door-keeping function is best applied.

      So, on balance, even if the within-party approach won’t work (will be manipulated, diluted, ignored away, etc), it is still more promising than the third party approach.

      As far as business as usual, Romney and Gingrich stand as proof.
      Worst of all:
      Rick Perry!
      Hasn’t ONE Texas governor in the White House been ample proof that we shouldn’t go there AGAIN?

      What the Republican party needs is another loser like McCain, whom people who would support Ron Paul or someone like him to stay home in disgust, and NOT vote for the supposed lessor of two evils.
      Then they will learn that they can NOT take their “safe” base for granted, only viying for the undecided swing vote.

      Obama may/will find this out next fall, when HIS safe base, the black vote, will stay home in droves, for general disappointment, and the few, but honest supporters, who have turned away in disgust. There will be more over the next 15 months.

    • fallingman August 12, 2011, 10:20 pm

      B…Here’s guessing you’ve never run or managed a quixotic 3rd party campaign. I have. It’s exhausting and dispiriting.

      Dr. Paul has no chance regardless of what he does.

      He’s a good man. He deserves better. He won’t be allowed to make any real difference in this system. The fascists have completed their silent coup.

      Most people are clueless and the game is rigged. Electoral politics are not worth paying much attention to. Just enough to note what vermin the rest of the Republican candidates are.

    • mikeck August 12, 2011, 11:11 pm

      If the R’s are too stupid again to nominate RP and instead nominate another neocon, I would support him as a 3rd party candidate in the hope that the R’s would get what they deserve…another loss. Dr. Paul and Jesse V. might wake some folks up as a third party ticket…at least it would assure the defeat of the R branch of the neocon party.

      Sad to say I used to call myself a D, then an R, then an L…I may still be partly L, but really I’m more A now…not the flame throwing type…those are agent provocateurs. BTW, I did not change all that much. The parties changed or I learned to ignore their rhetoric and watch what they were doing.

      What Dr. Paul has managed to do is to educate the public about the damage the banking system is doing to our country. If he were elected I doubt the bankers would let him live long enough to serve one day…unlike with Kennedy, they already know what he wants to do.

    • Benjamin August 13, 2011, 2:09 am

      fallingman,

      No, I haven’t ever managed a campaign. But I have been beyond mere dispirited exhaustion. If you’ve ever wondered what it is like to lay at the gates to hell and damnation itself, to not know life from death, and to not be able to decide which is better, I can show you exactly how to get to that point. Untreated botulinum toxicity is as nasty as that.

      And I’ve been through a heck of a lot more than that in my 35 years. But I’m not going to compare sticks and stones, nor bore anyone with stories of my past. It is what it is, just as I’m sure you did give it your all and found the experience of futility to be brutal. The point is…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHh9Wb–J0M

      http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10977/

      That’s why we’re called men.

    • Mava August 13, 2011, 3:29 am

      mikeck,

      You said: “…unlike with Kennedy, they already know what he wants to do”.

      I think you have explained precisely why fallingman is correct. We have reached the stage where to have a chance, one needs to tell everybody exactly how he is going to stop the bankers. Which would immediately put him on a banker’s “Kennedy” list.

      In other words, to get any traction from followers, one must announce that he is plotting to kill the Hitler.

      They have screwed up our country so much, that nothing short of extraordinary measures can save us.

      Goldman Uber Alles!

    • signalfire August 13, 2011, 10:11 pm

      Please check out Gary Johnson who is running for president on the Republican ticket. He’s a breath of fresh air and there’s a reason he’s been refused admission to the debates. He makes sense!

      http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/

    • Patrick August 14, 2011, 4:55 pm

      Mike ,please help me out here? Is this ,Fox poll map broken? I clicked city after city and ,Ron Paul had it hands down. Then , I clicked the state wide tab and clicked at least 20 states and ,Paul had every one of them.
      Does fox use another poll other than their own for the results?

    • mikeck August 14, 2011, 5:33 pm

      Patrick,

      In a word, YES! They have been caught doing so more than once, including denying the results of their own broadcast in real time.

      Mike

  • Mava August 12, 2011, 5:24 pm

    For me it wasn’t even o much the cost as the cost of wasted time. One day I just realized that there are at least 2 hours of my life everyday, that are stolen by the cable. Over one’s life time, it add up! Many object. However, offer them to spend an extra hour going to work, and another coming back, and they immediately realize the waste. It is only the fact that they do not recognize TV time as waste.

    What is TV? Lenin said once: “Of all arts, the motion picture is the major tool of communist”. Because it lies so convincingly! They don’t call it “programming” for nothing! TV is a tool of shaping human thought.

    I think that yes, if you want to be rich, you can keep the TV habit. But, if your goal is to become free, you can not allow yourself to be programmed.

    As far as content, they only content I ever wanted was History, Discovery channels and may-be a couple of others, pretty much like all I know of my age. I want none of the dumb shows, biased news, sports or movies. Movies belong to a theater. Sports never interested me unless I am betting.

    This was one of the major mistakes of the cable: failing to understand that we do not want crappy content. I don’t care about HBO my dad might have adored or Red Sox. But what the cable does? They want me to pay in bulk to subsidize the Sports and News with Shows! How many times do we need to say NO!? Only Discovery, Military, History, Technology channels, please! If cable offered those 4-5 channels separate, I might still have cable.

    The advertisement is an entirely different subject. Many people already understand that the advertisement to paid cable is the same as the inflation to tax collection. It is simply a hidden theft beyond and above of what the product worth.

    I simply refuse to have even one microsecond of advertisement if I am funding the channel. May-be TV for poor should be stuffed with ads? I don’t care, but I will not pay and watch ads at the same time.

    So, I quit cold turkey. Several years later I can tell you that there is no residual habitual addiction as with cigarettes, for instance. You simply have more money, time, and much, much clearer mind!

    I still have a huge LCD TV on the wall but, I only use it to stream movies from WDHDTV, play a game when I have time, and roll music videos if I am having a party.

    Quit your TV today, feel the freedom from the crowd control media! They are much more pissed when you stop paying for their programming of your brain.

  • charles August 12, 2011, 3:48 pm

    I part owned a cable system in the early days.(70’s) Exciting time. Some of us even strung cable wires ourselves and went door to door selling subs. Those were the good old days. Sold out to Norman Lear and his group in the 80’s and never looked back. Certainly wouldn’t want to be in the business now. Capitalism just isn’t working these days. You tell me why not! Greed???

  • Michael J August 12, 2011, 3:04 pm

    People are leaving because they now have the option to do so. There are plenty of online offerings to choose from, and almost all of them cost less than just the add-on services cable companies push, like “digital channels.” (a suspicious offering when you consider that all channels are digital nowadays)

    My wife are packing up and moving to a new home in a few weeks. Here in New York City, we pay Time Warner the princely sum of $160 each month to receive “High Speed” cable modem service with severely restricted upload speeds; basic cable + HBO, almost none of which is worth watching; and a DVR box with a user interface so poor it is clear that those who designed it never actually used it themselves.

    We’ve had enough. So when we move, we’re dropping off the box at the local office (try canceling your cable service over the phone.) We’ll get FIOS for Internet, and TV via a roof antenna. We won’t miss all the commercials, the need to scroll through hundreds of channels not in our package which, suspiciously, can’t be easily removed from the channel guide; the inscrutable remote control with its 55 tiny little buttons; and least of all, we won’t miss the feeling we now have, that we’re spending over $100 each month just to watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond that we could see over-the-air for free.

    The cable companies are in a tough spot. They are watching the beginnings of the end of their local monopolies. With the Internet, anyone can theoretically offer programming; location of the source and of the viewer are immaterial. In the face of it, companies like Time Warner and Comcast, are contemplating or instituting bandwidth caps carefully calibrated to restrict the number of online programs a customer can watch before paying bandwidth over-charges. And would anyone be surprised to note that these so-called bandwidth overage fees make their cable package suddenly attractive?

    The only way to prevent this may be regulation. In so many places around the US, the consumer has no choice but to take what the local cable monopoly is pushing.

  • Carol August 12, 2011, 3:00 pm

    Rick -> “Customer research suggests that young, educated viewers who aren’t keen on sports or other live programs are finding it increasingly easy to go without cable.”

    Well I am not young, and I am worst than not keen on watching sports – I hate them – and I could care less about watching American Idol or any of those other crappy shows especially the night they are broadcast. So 3 years ago when I moved I did cancel my cable TV service because it was too expensive for my tastes. Initially I thought it would be difficult to not have cable – it was not. I got used to not having a TV and now I am so happy I learned to live without one. What a time waster! I do stream some TV shows using sites like HULU and I also use Netflix. Unfortunately Netflix just upped their prices 60% (effective Sept 1) if you want both streaming and DVDs mailed to your house. They are starting to do what the cable/satellite companies have been doing – gouge their customers. I might now cancel Netflix!

    I would love to see the Satellite/Cable companies get a wake up call and start offering better (bundle the channels people actually watch) service at a cheaper price but I am not going to hold my breath.

  • John Jay August 12, 2011, 2:56 pm

    Next to suffer may be cell phone service.
    I just bought my mom one of those grocery store cell phones from ATT in case her car breaks down or something. It cost about $25 plus the $25 minutes card.
    Any day she uses it it costs $2 but she has unlimited use for that day, the card hours are good for 90 days.
    The quality of the phone was fine it has the same features as a $200 phone. As the economy tanks and more boomers retire it is a perfect solution for someone who doen’t need a land line at $30 a month or a cell phone plan at $40 a month. Life can get real simple when you get right down to it, the only way left to beat the system is to disengage.

  • Benjamin August 12, 2011, 2:30 pm

    “In retrospect, theater owners needn’t have feared the incursion of cable TV, since we all need an occasional night out.”

    For an even better night out, take a camoflage wallet and throw it out into the back yard, preferably before lawn-cutting day. Then, go hunting for it. Wallet hunting is 23 times better than a modern-made movie, 11 times better than cow-tipping, and it’ll _save you money_ (proportional to how much you put into the camo wallet)!

    Anyway, yeah… for my needs, premium cable is definitely not worth the cost. It’s been maybe close to 12 years since I’ve had premium. Thank god for Netflix! The only problem with that is that darned supply and demand thing; they don’t always have available what you want. And you do have to wait for it to be delivered. But I guess that’s why it’s so cheap, eh? So, if we want commercial-free basic and always-available premium movies… price has to go up. Barring that, we pay less, for less. So I wonder if there really is this great, big competition going on between various options. Seems to me that economic law is doing just what it always has… quitely exist 🙂

    But none the less a nice, different, and completely unexpected topic, Rick!

  • bob August 12, 2011, 2:22 pm

    Reggie, don’t forget the execrable “E” channel. Go to a library, they have lots of films and DVD’s. even books. Many are better than any programming. Or buy a commercial-free Kindle.

  • Reggie August 12, 2011, 1:22 pm

    I recently cancelled my DirecTV after 15 years of service.
    Once I actually looked at the billing statement and saw the level of larceny taking place on a monthly basis, it made the decision rather easy.
    Being charged for each additional receiver, HD service, premium channels, city-county-state-federal taxes, and I think there was even a charge to provide poor people with free TV, made my decision pretty easy. To pay $150 each month to watch commercials had run its course on this household.
    Pay TV has morphed into a horrible amalgam of moments of actual broadcasting interspersed with hours of that hideous Progressive Insurance saleswoman, erection control drugs, dozens of drugs that treat depression, and canned foods I wouldn’t give my dogs. I’ve had enough. I’m going outside to breath the fresh air.

    • Benjamin August 12, 2011, 2:37 pm

      “…and I think there was even a charge to provide poor people with free TV”

      I think you’re right. It was part of the ARRA, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, of 2009. But that may have been a business stimulus thing, not for poor people (but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were included).

    • Patrick August 13, 2011, 5:26 pm

      My family is sick of all the crap being shown on on TV as well and this article has re-enforced our decision to send ,Dish Network a “NOTICE TO DISCONNECT FOR LACK OF SERVICE”.

      Reggie , your comments about the billing are right on and paying for poor people to watch TV is not what , I wanna be responsible for. Maybe the reason they’re poor is because of TV. I’m all for shrinking any taxes the government gets. “DIS-ENGAGE”!!!

  • Paul August 12, 2011, 8:48 am

    I’m not sure how satellite TV is going to survive, long term. It’s costly to build and put satellites into orbit. But with cheaper internet based TV a reality now, either they find away or they’re going to vanish. As a Canadian who used to watch American TV over grey market & Free 2 Air satellite receivers, I missed it when the game pretty much ended due to increased signal security. But I’ve found everything I want from multiple sources online now and won’t miss the old, obsolete way of getting my programming once my Canadian satellite TV contract expires. I rarely even watch my satellite TV service anymore, the programming is nothing special and loaded with commercials. As mentioned in the article above, AMC has become unwatchable because of the intense commercial load. The last movie I watched on that channel was about 50/50 commercials during the last 1/2 of the movie. It used to be a favorite channel a few years back.
    In comparison, downloads are commercial free and ready when I want to watch it. Bit Torrent sites are loaded with TV shows both current & classic. Entire series. Commercial free. Add in Netflix and digital OTA broadcast TV. Cheap & legal. Satellite is doomed.
    Cable companies have morphed into ISP’s with television service as an increasingly smaller part of their business, but satellite is going to go away as a stand alone business model, IMHO.
    The tide has finally turned now, with customers sliding into the driver’s seat. No more paying $100/month for hundreds of channels when you only watch a dozen or less. I’m not sure satellite TV providers could stay alive if they ever actually get to the point of offering people only the channels they want at a reasonable price. With Netflix at around $10/month, the bar is pretty low for them.
    After decades of frustration, it’s nice to see the satellite / cable giants starting to squirm.
    Yeah baby….

    • Kevin August 12, 2011, 3:38 pm

      I would say your response is partially correct, in an urban environment. The problem is, what about all the people that live in the “boonie’s” or cottage country? These are area’s that for the most part is pretty much impossible to get high speed internet.
      Is this customer base enough to keep the satellite companies going? I’m not sure. That’s the good thing with satellite, you can pretty much access it from anywhere (well so long as it’s not pouring rain or there is a snow storm). In the cities and larger towns – I think you are totally correct. People will just be watching their TV over the internet. Pretty certain that’s why Bell/Rogers are going to the CRTC to try and impose internet user pay based on amount of data downloaded – they can likely smell the blood in the water. Bunch of leeches.


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