TV, Cable Companies Convincing Themselves People Don't Want To Cut The Cable
from the the-self-delusion-of-the-damned dept
There's a NY Times article that appears to have a bunch of cable & TV companies congratulating themselves for beating the internet in getting people to keep paying high monthly premiums to get premium TV channels on their TV, rather than using some of the various internet solutions out there. Like so many awful NY Times "trend" pieces these days, it appears to key off of a single anecdote of one guy who tried to ditch cable, and then went back after a year. How many people are actually doing this? No idea. It's not like the reporters at the NY Times tell us. They do tell us that not too many people have dropped cable, but that's hardly surprising. What's much more amusing is the suggestion that the cable and TV companies have somehow "beat" the internet by restricting content:In part that is because the television business took action to avoid the same fate. Heavyweight distributors and producers have protected their business models by ensuring that some must-see shows and live sporting events cannot legally be seen online.Legally. Yes. But, just wait until you see what that enables on the less-than-legal side of the internet. As for the fact that people aren't dropping cable yet, this all really sounds like the cable companies not recognizing how trends accelerate. They do, indeed, start slow, and as Clayton Christensen has noted for years, the incumbents don't pay attention early on, because the other solutions just don't seem as good. And... here in the NY Times article we get:
Technology companies are pushing alternatives like Web-connected set-top boxes. But these are still not as easy as signing up for cable or satellite service, particularly for those who want to watch on a big flat-screen TV and not a computer.Classic innovator's dilemma statement. It's certainly true that, right now, it's not as easy to use these internet services as it is to sign up for cable, but it's getting easier all the time, and sooner or later, someone is going to create a breakthrough service that makes it really easy. We've seen it time and time again. Napster did it for music file sharing after we were told that people didn't want music online. Vonage did it for VoIP after telcos insisted that VoIP quality would never sell. Who knows who it will be, or when, but someone will figure it out, and then we'll see the cable and TV companies freak out, because the cable cutters will shift into high gear.
This is the problem we were discussing recently, where disrupted companies simply don't recognize the speed at which a disruptive offering catches on when it does finally catch on. They think that they're successfully "protecting" their existing business with things like Hulu's subscription plans, but that will cause them to miss the truly disruptive innovation.
At least the NY Times article hints at the growing undercurrent, in noting that the younger generation is four times as likely to go without a cable subscription. That number is just going to grow, and as new offerings come along that make it easier and easier to get what you want, when you want it, without silly restrictions, the idea that the legacy guys "beat" the internet by restricting access to content will seem laughable.
Update: And look... just as this is published, out comes the news that cable TV has suffered its first ever decline in subscribers. Nice work, NY Times, in pitching a whole story based on a single anecdote, about how cable has nothing to fear... just as the numbers come out to show that people are, in fact, cutting back on cable subscriptions. I'm sure stories like this will make the upcoming NY Times paywall that much more valuable.
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Filed Under: cable, disruptive innovation, trends, tv
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And here comes Google:
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Re: And here comes Google:
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There are just too many issues for some people with dial-up and slow DSL topping the list. Other principal issues are copyright and format.
Given that it is not supprising that some (actually most) find cable to be better than the internet for movies and non interactive content.
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Don't forget AT&T has its own Legacy TV offering now. Anemic bandwidth is epidemic in the U.S.
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Re: Cutters
Ah yes, life with just hi-speed internet is good.
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Re:
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no tv in the dorm rooms
At home the cable TV to my son's room was not working for weeks. I only found out when his Internet connection went out; he told me about that immediately.
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no more cable
Haven't looked back once.
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- Live sports. Football season is starting soon.
- Turning on the tv and picking something random. It's instantly on and I don't have to make active decisions about what to watch. There should be an internet version of flipping channels with something 'instantly on'.
- HD. It's 1080p or 1080i OTA which I still don't quite have access to instantly over the net, nor do I have the bandwidth currently.
- Multiple TVs. I just don't have all the hardware set up for 3 set-top boxes (1 HD and 2 SD) in the house configurations to get stuff over the net easily with a remote. It could be done, though. There's definitely not an easy out-of-the-box solution, but the pieces could be cobbled together. I have a PS3 in the living room and a PC with a media server on it, but that only works for one TV.
Those reasons will fade with time. Providers need to get on board now to build cheap off-the-shelf solutions to those issues before someone else does.
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If you have a fast broadband connection and a suitable HTPC, you can just leave it on over night to download your shows so you have a collection of shows waiting to be watched. Then you can just look at your list of shows and pick one at random. Besides that, there's still streaming video and it's possible to make it work like that. Personally, I don't see the inability of "surfing" to be much of a loss when you gain so much with the internet.
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I disagree. One of the pleasures of TV in general, and surfing in particular, is the passivity. After a hard day at the office, you don't want to think any more, not even to select a particular show from a list of your favorites. Sometimes you just want to turn the TV on and veg.
That's why I think that, in the age of Internet TV, the role of surfing will be met by a "what's playing" stream, much like what you'd see when you turn the TV on at a hotel. You can sit on your couch after work and watch a compilation of brief snippets about what shows are available for that particular "channel". If you see something you like, hit the Watch button and you're set.
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The only problem I see with IPTV is it is still fragmented. I want to be able to move from Clicker to Miro to Netflix to OTA with one button press. It will happen in time. IPTV is still in it's infancy.
PS: I dropped cable almost a year ago. Comcast compressed the signal so much even a Hulu video looked better.
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Turning TV on and vegging out is a commendable trait?
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DTV over UHF Array
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Re: DTV over UHF Array
They are to short sighted to do this, it would cannibalize there existing business and force them to upgrade their network to run at higher bandwidth. A big problem with living quarter to quarter and having no competition is you end of with a frozen bureaucracy that can't compete and unwilling to spend money on upgrades. FIOS is going to win out big over the next few years because of this.
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I have been researching disruptive technologies for a while now. It started with the phrase technological singularity and grew outward. Here is a prediction, the cable companies will, with in the next year, begin seeing a reduction in the number of people subscribing to their services. People will use online services like Hulu, netflix, bit torrent, p2p, etc. Their predictions of their customer losses will be wrong and will happen twice as fast as they predict.
This is one of the reasons I want to see the Comcast-NBCU merger go through it will accelerate the failure of comcast.
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Okay I guess I am under estimating how fast cutting the cord is actually happening
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Just an observation.
Someone did. His name is Tim Berners-Lee and is credited as the Father of the Internet.
The connectivity to the PC and television has been around for several years now.
The only reason people aren't doing it is because it's the content providers pulling their plug.
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Re: Just an observation.
Dang it. I really wish we had an edit option.
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Re: Just an observation.
Vint Cerf might qualify as father of the internet, or one of the fathers anyway.
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:)
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The only time I had cable was when the building I was living in had that included in the rent.
But someday I'm going mobile.
http://steampunkworkshop.com/bus1.shtml
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/tiny-tra nsformer-camper.php
It is like living in your own spaceship, ok I'm a SF fan.
I guarantee you, cable connections are not in the plans for that.
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Besides things like on-demand and their ilk are just streaming video internet with horrendous lag, and crappy controls.
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When Internet data plan get cheaper, I will try again this for sure. One day all services will come on one cable and I bet the services used for that will be Internet. Providers will change pricing but at the end, I'm sure they will get a way to keep getting about the same money from your pocket :(
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That's why they do it. They don't want you to use the internet, they can't control it. What they can't control is their enemy.
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http://hackaday.com/2010/08/23/profit-less-space-program-launches-in-one-week/
Who said FOSS was not innovative?
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Disingenuously inflated numbers?
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Re: Disingenuously inflated numbers?
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Large numbers of lazy people want mindless diversion.
By the way, I doubt that the internet is going to pan out as "disruptive", as argued by my header, and supported by abundant evidence. For *now* it is, but it'll soon be just a *vaster* wasteland (a phrase originating in late 50's).
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Cable Free
Streamed the ESPN game last night. I did have to switch channels on Justin.tv once, but it was no big deal. It's a little better quality than the p2p streams and there were about 20 choices.
Quality keeps getting better all the time.
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Google TV
It happened to be installed on the 24Mb connex for Uverse and worked like a champ. we just surfed the net with it, no need for any pay TV service.
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On the other hand, technically, internet transmitted TV is not quite there, for the average Joe (you know..the types that still have problems programming a vcr) it is still very complicated and in many cases beyond them to use…even if they have someone else set it up for them
But i defiantly would not invest much in cable/Satellite companies any more, their market will continue to shrink and if/when someone solves the technical complexity of internet delivered audio/visual content they will be left with only the sports fans (and even that will not last).
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I just wish they would stop futzing with Netflix and mlb streams (OK, I'll blame MLB on MLB... give me BITS dammit!)
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OTR HDTV
PPV is a waste of money, and cable is becoming more of a luxury with the current economic climate.
Right now the only reason I have cable is that it is the fastest internet access available to me.
Something better comes along and it goes too.
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nobody has wanted cable for 5+ years
I don't even watch TV but maybe once a month.
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Since we're talking anecdotal evidence....
We had a little withdrawal when broadcast TV went HD - but we still haven't purchased a HD converter box.
I do miss the NFL - but not so much that I need to pay $1000/year for it.
We are fortunate to live where FiOS (Verizon) and Cable (Cox) compete - so we do an Internet/Phone combo - but no cable.
I've noticed that many of my friends have noted via Facebook that they are trying to live sans TV or sans Cable. The idea that they are even trying it should be enough to scare the Cable companies.
Also - it should be noted that the Times owns a number of TV and radio outlest - and
"On August 25, 2006 – The company acquired Baseline StudioSystems, a leading online database and research service for information on the film and television industries for $35 million."
I'm sure that has nothing to do with the articles stance though.....
- CF
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FTA
Sorry for the off topic but I think it's kind of related.
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Stop bitchin'
You keep bringing to our attention the shoddy articles published by the NY Times.
Do you mind explaining why you still read such an unreliable source of information? Isn't it a waste of time for an intelligent man?
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Re: Stop bitchin'
I think the idea is that the benefits gained from the discussion of the topic outweigh the drawbacks of directing traffic to those sites.
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Re: Stop bitchin'
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CORRECTION!
Shouldn't that be:
How many people are actually going this way?
or
How many people are actually doing this?
Just asking.
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But some people need cable...
I don't think cable is going away because it's the infrastructure for the internet in many neighborhoods.
They actually benefit from the internet. If they didn't offer internet I know a lot more people would cut the cord.
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I have a 60" LCD 'monitor' connected to my HDMI computer, and get better 1080p quality from newsgroups than I do from any 'channel'.
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Secondly, what are the chances that the general customer will learn this before there's a solution that's chartered by the Cable-TV industry?
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What are the chances that customers will learn that "60 inch Computer Monitors" can function like "60-inch Televisions"?
Secondly, what are the chances that the general customer will learn this before there's a solution that's chartered by the Cable-TV industry?
Thirdly, How will the Cable-TV solution be enforced?
If you can answer two out of the three of these questions you can answer the third.
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Pricing
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torrents n newsgroups
whats cable tv , and what is a television?
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I still have a cable connection, although I don't know why I keep it. I hardly ever turn the TV on any more. I guess I'm just afraid of change, or that AT&T will institute data caps the day after I ditch cable.
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The trend started a long time ago
I have cable internet, but it's business-class so it's truly unlimited (static address, no ports blocked, no monthly caps, etc). For folks in my area with consumer-class internet from the local cable company, it's actually cheaper (about $5 a month) to get internet service with basic cable TV than without cable TV.
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charge for content OR show commercials NOT BOTH
Similarly I am disinterested in paying for the "privilege" of watching content I do not want to see in the theater.
.
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Not if you also have their U-Verse TV service. It may be delivered via the network, but for all intents and purposes, it's considered "cable".
In other words, you're paying for a TV package that includes lots of channels you'll probably never watch, not to mention the monthly box/DVR rental fee.
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Gotta be fair...
To be fair, SNL Kagan, the company that reported the subscriber loss, didn't think it was due to Internet options. From the original Hollywood Reporter article:
SNL Kagan doesn't believe that increased availability of broadband Internet content has driven the bad quarter for TV providers.
"Although it is tempting to point to over-the-top video as a potential culprit, we believe economic factors such as low housing formation and a high unemployment rate contributed to subscriber declines in the second quarter," said analyst Mariam Rondeli. "We are also seeing churn resulting from the broadcast digital transition, which boosted video uptake early last year, as many have abandoned their paid subscriptions once initial promotional contracts expired."
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Choosing a service
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