Cable Execs Now Falsely Claiming Cord Cutting Is Slowing Down

from the self-delusion dept

At no point has the cable industry or its executives been particularly keyed in to the "cord cutting" threat. As streaming video has chipped away at their subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast have responded by raising prices. And when confronted by growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting the TV cord but keeping broadband) was a growing trend, most of these same executives spent years first denying cord cutting was happening, then trying to claim the only people doing so were lame man-children living in their moms' basements.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge was a key part of this cable executive myopia, both failing to see the trend coming, then failing utterly to respond to it in any meaningful way. The result: Charter has been losing subscribers for years, last quarter losing 75,000 cable TV customers. That's not as bad as the 1.36 million pay TV customers lost by AT&T in the same period, but it's not what you'd advertise as "good," either.

Having no meaningful reputation on this subject to stand on, Rutledge last week tried to insist that the threat of users cancelling bloated, costly pay TV bundles and moving to streaming was a phenomenon that would soon slow down:

"I think in aggregate they’re going to slow down,” said Rutledge. “Because I think most single-family homes have big TVs in them and that’s where you get sports, that’s where you get news, that’s where you get live TV like this. It’s still going to be under price pressure. I’m not saying the category isn’t under pressure. But I think the rate of decline will slow."

But there's no actual evidence to support that conclusion. Cord cutting has only been accelerating and breaking records throughout 2019. And with a number of high profile streaming alternatives like Disney+ and Apple TV+ having launched this month, there's absolutely no indication that trend is going to change. That's something being made clear at research firms like UBS, which is actually predicting that things will be getting slightly better for AT&T, and marginally worse for cable giants like Charter:

"UBS predicted that the U.S. pay TV industry will lose another 6.2 million video subscribers in 2020, down slightly from the 6.4 million the analyst firm predicts will be lost in total this year. If that loss comes to bear it will represent a 6.7% rate of decline, ahead of 6.2% in 2019 and well ahead of 1.2% in 2018 when video subscriber losses totaled 1.2 million. “We now expect industry losses to remain in the 6-7% per year range for the medium term, suggesting worsening trends in domestic core affiliate into next year,” wrote UBS analyst John Hodulik in a research report. He said that improvement at AT&T will likely be offset by worsening trends for cable providers and other MVPDs."

The irony here is that Rutledge's prediction would actually be true if cable giants were willing to compete on price and customer service. But they're not, so the losses are likely to continue, especially with new services like Disney+ jumping into the fray at a measly $6 a month.

This is crazy, but maybe don't take predictions from a guy whose response to increased competition is to raise prices, repeatedly. Or from a guy whose company is so disliked, it literally has among the worst customer satisfaction rankings of any company, in any industry in America (pause and think about that accomplishment for a moment). Cable executives could respond to the cord cutting threat (read: cheaper, better competition) by fixing customer service and lowering prices. Instead, they'd rather stick their heads three feet underground, the very reason they're in this predicament in the first place.

Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, predictions, tom rutledge, tv, wishful thinking
Companies: charter

The Cable Industry Thinks Cord Cutting's A Fad That Will End Once Millennials Procreate

from the the-lies-we-tell-ourselves dept

One narrative that broadcast and cable industry execs use to comfort themselves late at night while sipping bourbon is that cord cutting is the realm of the foolish youngster, and that as these folks age they'll suddenly see the wisdom in paying an arm and a leg for traditional cable. Nielsen, the TV ratings company that goes out of its way to tell the cable industry what it wants to hear, has been pushing this narrative hard lately; arguing that as the 18-to-34 demographic begins having children, the idea of giving Comcast $150 a month for huge bundles of awful channels is going to suddenly, somehow become appealing:

"We think behaviors could change once the so-called millennials start having families,” said Glenn B. Enoch, senior vice president for audience insights at Nielsen. New parents’ desire for better programming for their children will help drive them to cable, media executives have predicted.

Nielsen's confidence appears based entirely on the fact that Millennials with kids are slightly more likely to subscribe to cable than their childless counterparts, for now:

About 80 percent of millennials with their own homes who have started families subscribe to cable, and an additional 14 percent get television with an antenna, according to Nielsen. Only 6 percent have just broadband connected to a television set. Among childless millennials who live in their own homes, about 75 percent subscribe to cable television, while 13 percent live in so-called broadband-only homes.

Of course, that doesn't mean much. When it comes to the ratings hit being seen by traditional cable channels, children's programming has led the charge, with parents being much happier with the flexibility of time-shifted viewing experiences like Netflix. Meanwhile, 2015 was really only the first year that skinny bundle streaming video services started to take off (Sling TV, Sony's Playstation Vue), and the rise of affordable streaming options is only going to improve as broadcasters release their iron-like grip on licensing rights.

It's also worth reminding readers that Nielsen is the same company that just a few years ago declared cord cutting to be "purely fiction," only recently realizing that maybe it would be a good idea to start tracking these users' viewing behaviors.

One major thing Nielsen's ignoring? The rise of the "cord never," or the customer who doesn't have cable and has absolutely no interest in getting it. A new study by Forrester Research makes the exact opposite claim Nielsen is trying to sell, predicting that by 2025, 50% of consumers under 35 won't pay for traditional cable. The survey of 32,000 U.S. adults found that 76% subscribe to cable. Of the 24% who don't, 6% are cord cutters. 18% however are cord nevers, which the firm declares "the next stage of evolution in TV viewing":

"Rather than inherit TV viewing expectations from a prior era and then consciously reject them, as cord cutters have done, these cord-never viewers have simply bypassed prior assumptions, exhibiting nearly the exact set of behaviors that cord cutters have pieced together for themselves over the past decade of viewing," wrote Forrester analyst James McQuivey."

In other words, there's a huge contingent of young consumers for whom "normal" is not paying an arm and a leg for cable. Why, exactly, would these users, used to the flexibility and lower costs of streaming video (or piracy, or YouTube "let's play" videos) suddenly, inexplicably decide that they want to throw money at a legacy cable industry that refuses to compete on price? Sure, older consumers are more likely to pay for cable now because that's all they know, but as streaming services get more established older audiences too are leaving the traditional cable wheelhouse.

So while it may upset the cable industry (and the folks that make their lives on the back of the cable industry) to hear it, no -- the trend of dropping ratings, dwindling subscriber losses and fierce new competition from Internet video is not something that's going to be magically fixed by waiting for Millennials to screw.

Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, millennials, wishful thinking