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US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace (www.lightreading.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace::undefined

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[–] 113 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's been over 20 years since I last paid for cable TV. I'm frankly shocked it's made it this long, but I guess they can milk the boomers for another decade or two. Certainly seems to be working for the GOP anyway.

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  • [+] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Ten here, for the same reason. It was weird calling tech support when my internet went down and they’d say ‘Does your television still work?’ Bitch, I dunno, it’s not even connected to anything, I use streaming.

    The funniest was when satellite television companies showed up at my door to pitch me, obviously based on lists of competitors’ customers they’d purchased. ‘We’re x dollars cheaper with less downtime.’ ‘Okay, but I don’t use the cable service, just the internet and I stream everything.’ ‘Oh… uh we’ll give you DVR for free.’ Bitch, do you know what streaming is? I don’t have to manage recording and saving shit that still has advertisements. Your model is dead, stop trying to sell me its corpse.

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    • [–] 107 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Have they tried reducing their price or increasing the quality of their product?

    No?

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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    • [–] 65 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's alright. They're fucking over internet subscribers just as if we still had a cable TV package.

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    • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    On a lark I hooked up an antenna to see what was on broadcast TV. There were like 5 pbs channels and a dedicated weather channel. For being free it was pretty good.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    PBS is actually better than ever and I prefer it over most of what gets shoved in my face on my PC.

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    • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Coming up to 16 years since I cut the cord and hardly anyone I know that is younger has cable. It's internet and then streaming.

    My father when he passed in 2013 was paying $160/mth for old HD cable for his old 35" RCA tube set before I bought him a LCD TV that required a upgrade to modern HD channels. He didn't have internet with that either. So while they were scamming him for this old 480p HD packages he wasn't alone I'm sure.

    I will say at new year's I was at someone's place that only had internet and for the group of us he brought out a HD Amazon antenna to watch the ball drop at midnight on local broadcast TV.

    The amount of commercials was jarring. I'm not looking forward to when they bring those to streaming services that are currently hemorrhaging billions.

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  • [+] 30 points 2 years ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I would watch about 16 minutes before giving up.

    In the old days flow TV was max 25-30% ads, how can people live with 50% ads? At that rate it will be "Find the content" so in a few years with 90% ads watching a 45 minute show would take 7.5 hours.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There won't be 45 minute shows. It'll be "Ow, my balls!" and cut to commercial.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Remember when broadcast TV showed commercials on the 15 minute mark, 2-3 at a time for 30 minutes each, maybe more between shows? Commercials seemed like a reasonable tradeoff, plus were predictable so you could fit it in with other things. They dug their own grave, making commercials more intrusive, harder to skip, more frequent. …. Pepperidge Farms remembers

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    • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'd subscribe if there were anything worth watching. Occupational reality shows on every channel. Streaming has gotten so bad lately that I don't think we're going to have a culture in the future just people setting themselves on fire for TikTok clout

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why would I pay $120-140 for cable every month and be forced to watch tons of ads when. I can pay <$20 for Hulu or NFLX a month and watch none?

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    • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Why is cable TV service, and TV streaming different? Can't the cable service providers just be streaming TV providers? And compete globally?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Actually Disney’s CEO touched about that during that last town hall. They release the shows both on traditional TV and streaming. They realized that the demographics using either platforms don’t overlap so they decided to continue with a parallel release separately to increase their reach. (I was a camera operator filming the event, I’m not a Disney employee, nor do I support any of their opinions)

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Because content owners don't need cable providers to stream over the internet.

    HBO doesn't need Comcast for streaming, they can (and do) stream themselves with HBO Go.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    That’s the main issue here. There used to be a law that studios were not allowed to own movie theaters and so they had to open their movies to be purchased or leased by other distributors. Now, that law is gone and this is why we’re screwed.

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    • [–] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    deleted

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    • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    🏴‍☠😎

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    [+] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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    [–] 5 points 2 years ago*

    May it end with a whimper not a shout

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    [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Millennials are killing the pay TV industry.

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    [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I feel like I've read this exact headline 20 times over the past couple of years.

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