US Cable TV Industry Faces 'Dramatic Collapse' as Local Operators Shut Down - or Become ISPs (cordcuttersnews.com) 102
America's cable TV industry "is undergoing its most dramatic collapse in history," reports Cord Cutters News, "with operators large and small waving the white flag on traditional TV service and pointing their customers toward streaming platforms instead." Just in 2025 Comcast lost 1.25 million pay-TV subscribers (ending the year with just 11.3 million), while Charter Spectrum also lost hundreds of thousands of customers each quarter.
But "for smaller regional operators, who lack the scale and diversified revenue streams of giants like Comcast, those kinds of losses are simply unsurvivable," they write. And "the companies that once delivered hundreds of channels through coaxial cables are now either shutting down entirely or reinventing themselves as internet providers." Pay-TV subscriptions have plummeted from nearly 90% of U.S. households in the mid-2010s to roughly half by the end of 2025, resulting in billions in lost revenue and forcing many smaller operators to conclude that continuing linear TV services is no longer viable... [This year over U.S. 50 cable TV companies — primarily smaller and midsize providers — are "expected to cease operations entirely or shut down their television services," Cord Cutters News reported earlier.] YouTube TV's pricing is so competitive that the platform is projected to have close to 12.6 million subscribers by the end of 2026, positioning it to become the largest paid TV distributor in the United States. Exclusive content deals, such as YouTube TV's acquisition of NFL Sunday Ticket rights, have further eroded the value proposition of traditional cable at every level of the market... As older cable subscribers age out of the market, there is no new generation of customers waiting to replace them...
[Cable TV] operators like WOW! are betting that their physical infrastructure — now increasingly upgraded to fiber — is more valuable as an internet delivery system than as a cable TV platform. [WOW! serves customers across Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama — but is "phasing out its proprietary streaming live TV service and directing all customers toward YouTube TV," the article notes.] Industry observers see this as part of a broader trend: operators shedding unprofitable video segments to focus on broadband, where returns and network investments are prioritized.
By the end of 2026, non-pay-TV households are expected to surge to 80.7 million, outnumbering traditional pay-TV subscribers at 54.3 million — a milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. For the cable companies still standing, the math is now inescapable: the era of the cable bundle is ending, and the only real question left is how gracefully each operator manages its exit.
But "for smaller regional operators, who lack the scale and diversified revenue streams of giants like Comcast, those kinds of losses are simply unsurvivable," they write. And "the companies that once delivered hundreds of channels through coaxial cables are now either shutting down entirely or reinventing themselves as internet providers." Pay-TV subscriptions have plummeted from nearly 90% of U.S. households in the mid-2010s to roughly half by the end of 2025, resulting in billions in lost revenue and forcing many smaller operators to conclude that continuing linear TV services is no longer viable... [This year over U.S. 50 cable TV companies — primarily smaller and midsize providers — are "expected to cease operations entirely or shut down their television services," Cord Cutters News reported earlier.] YouTube TV's pricing is so competitive that the platform is projected to have close to 12.6 million subscribers by the end of 2026, positioning it to become the largest paid TV distributor in the United States. Exclusive content deals, such as YouTube TV's acquisition of NFL Sunday Ticket rights, have further eroded the value proposition of traditional cable at every level of the market... As older cable subscribers age out of the market, there is no new generation of customers waiting to replace them...
[Cable TV] operators like WOW! are betting that their physical infrastructure — now increasingly upgraded to fiber — is more valuable as an internet delivery system than as a cable TV platform. [WOW! serves customers across Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama — but is "phasing out its proprietary streaming live TV service and directing all customers toward YouTube TV," the article notes.] Industry observers see this as part of a broader trend: operators shedding unprofitable video segments to focus on broadband, where returns and network investments are prioritized.
By the end of 2026, non-pay-TV households are expected to surge to 80.7 million, outnumbering traditional pay-TV subscribers at 54.3 million — a milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. For the cable companies still standing, the math is now inescapable: the era of the cable bundle is ending, and the only real question left is how gracefully each operator manages its exit.
Maybe, just maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
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The actual loss is to local governments.... (Score:2)
It's interesting how local governments are addicted to the 40 year revenue stream of cable TV franchise fees. Now that major cable TV companies like Comcast losing 10% of its paying customers last year, there is a lot less money for local governments to spend.
We have seen this before with AT&T being the only phone company choice for decades, and a choice of AT&T DSL (phone line internet) or coax (cable TV company) for internet.
Predict: That the most valuable asset of cable TV companies will be the
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not only overcharge us but monopolize markets, spam us with unethical ads, force us to buy bundles of crap, no quality content, no customer service
good riddence, indeed, i can't wait for corporate hollywood to sink under the weight of its own greed and incomptence too
Re:Maybe, just maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
It all comes down to wallstreet wrecking everything it takes over. They are a big factor in housing prices too. Hollywood is no different. You can be an upstart that maybe somehow makes it by miracle but you'll be assimilated into the system eventually.
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It all comes down to wallstreet wrecking everything it takes over. They are a big factor in housing prices too
The large institutional, corporate home investment buyers are a tiny portion of the market, something like 3% of home ownership (https://econofact.org/factbrief/do-private-equity-firms-own-20-of-single-family-homes). The vast majority of owned-to-rent homes are owned by local, small investors. Banning large institutional investors will do hardly anything on local home prices. The only solution is to build more housing.
But that faces lots of barriers, primarily from those who currently own homes and are af
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1) Comparing with all home ownership is improper. The only part that matters is % of buying in the active market or constraining the active market. It only needs to be in certain market segments to have a big impact as well. By # of people and not the $ amount within a range; so if they did 100% of mansions it doesn't impact normal people much and if you counted that by # it would be relatively tiny % too. Rental stock is not everything. They also just sit on things too; also they flip and sell in various
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The bundles are driven by the cable TV broadcasters rather than the cable TV companies themselves, so I find it... gratifying they're killing their own lifeblood by doing that.
If you subscribe to cable, chances are $3ish of your cable bill goes to Fox News. Do you want to fund Fox News? Probably not, but the cable company isn't allowed to give you the Fox broadcast network without including Fox News in basic cable, and they charge for providing Fox News (because if it were exclusively advertising supported
Exclude sports and what is there on cable TV? (Score:2)
Went to our local cable TV providers web site and ran through the basic, premium and get everything channel list.
Taking their basic package, if you don't watch sports, there is very little in the way of TV channels which have watchable content.
I'd expect to see this same trend of a aging out and declining customer count for other long-standing industries.
Surcharging and increasing rates year after year counting on an aging customer base of high income and high net worth customers is not a sustainable long-t
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not to even mention how corrupt, overly-expensive and unentertaining 'professional' sports actually is
modern gladiators in moderm colosseums creating spectacles to keep the masses entertained
Re: Maybe, just maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
You pay just to get served ads.
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If they didnâ(TM)t enshittify and overcharge to the moon people would have been satisfied with the service.
Everyone involved choked that goose to death. The cable companies did overcharge and underdeliver, but the corporations providing them with the content were choking them in turn.
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Choice of Comcast or Xfinity? I thought they were both from the same company
At the place I last lived, I had only one broadband option - Comcast. Nothing else was available - not Spectrum (which was far superior, in my experience), not FIOS, not Cox. So I signed up for their broadband, which was pretty expensive (definitely compared to Spectrum) and was okay w/ it. Except that I'd get periodic calls and flyers in the mail inviting me to sign up for one of their cable TV services. This despite my tell
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Choice of Comcast or Xfinity? I thought they were both from the same company
Yes, that’s my attempt at duopoly humor but it’s too soon I fear.
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'en$(#@tify'
'overcharge'
'zero choice'
'rid myself of that filth'
Keywords that others use to excoriate the streaming services. Good luck with your fiber Internet service.
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'en$(#@tify' 'overcharge' 'zero choice' 'rid myself of that filth'
Keywords that others use to excoriate the streaming services. Good luck with your fiber Internet service.
It’s less bad and after all, how much worst could it get?
black mirror intensifies
So there's a huge shift in the economy (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically businesses have run the numbers and figured out that they can make a lot more money over charging the handful of customers who can still pay then they can servicing a lot of customers. Big Data made it possible to actually confirm that. There's an interview with somebody out of Las Vegas talking about how empty the strip is and how despite that they were making
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It's called the "Apple" model versus the "PC" model.
Apple generally serves the higher end of the market. If you can't afford an Apple product, Apple doesn't want you. They served the very profitable "whale" market.
PC model tries to serve everyone, but started chasing the lower and lower end of the market producing stupidly cheap PCs. To the point everything was basically crap, but people were making money.
The real truth to the matter is, you need both sides of the market in order to survive. Apple alone can
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No, you really don't need both sides of the market to survive as a business. You can 100% cater to one segment or the other. Apple doesn't make affordable stuff. They are doing just fine. In fact, they are doing better then fine.
There are plenty of businesses that only cater to the well off or otherwise those willing to spend a lot of money. High end restaurants exist and thrive. They don't need the general population.
Why is this such a big deal to some of you on here? I understand hating on a monopoly cab
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For a long time Apple had the education market to get people hooked, both students and their parents who bought what their kids used. That seems to be mostly gone so now they have released a relatively cheap laptop which is a big seller. So they do seem to agree with you.
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Except I can buy a Dell workstation that is *WAY* more expensive than the most expensive Mac. Need more than 192GB of RAM and with Apple you are stuffed with current gen models. Even ignoring the current bubble in RAM prices you can easily spec a PC workstation with 512GB of RAM, making it way more expensive than any Mac.
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It's not about leaving money on the table (Score:3)
That's the second big change in the economy nobody talks about.
My original post didn't really make it clear that there were two changes I was talking about and I should have.
The first change is large businesses only care about high margin affluent c
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What you're basically describing is a consequence of free market capitalism (perhaps a bit simplified), but fundamentally you have companies that desire to 1) optimize revenue (leading to less diversification of the "served market") and 2) a desire to suppress any competition that can/will arise to serve the under served market segment.
A well regulated market would encourage and allow the first one, while preventing the second one to ensure that competition is available to serve all market segments. Your
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Depends on the business but most markets have plenty of competition and are not essential. Eateries should charge whatever they think the market will tolerate. Let McDs chase after the broke folks if they want. Let Chipolte charge double. There are countless places to buy prepared junk food.
Heck, even Apple has itself setup as a luxury device seller. The iphone isn't competing with $200 handsets. They have zero interest in that. And that's totally their prerogative.
If all these places are charging to much,
So just because you see a lot of businesses (Score:2)
One of the side effects of having a system of ownership built around stocks is that if only a few people can afford to buy large numbers of stocks that only a few people can afford to buy meaning
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Considering all these places get their slop from the same source, no, McDs won't double their prices to match Chipolte. It's called price discrimination. Branding is another way to look at it.
Here, I'll use the grocery store setup as another example. Go over to the Peanut Butter section. You'll see Jiffy, Skippy, the store brand, some almond options and even some I'm forgetting about. Focusing on just the Store brand option for a moment here. Do you really think the grocery store has it's own peanut butter
You're missing the point (Score:2)
Every small business and large business alike has understood for at least 30 maybe 40 years that high maintenance customers ar
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Wrong! I have two friends that produce very niche, high end products made from wood. One makes really expensive, very nice guitars with various hard to source wood from around the globe. He's doing okay but he doesn't do budget shit. Another friend makes these hand-made customer fishing net things that he charges a lot for and has had some fairly well off people buy from him. He's also doing okay but once again, he doesn't make cheap stuff.
Both of these folks are small businesses that cater to a very niche
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Streaming is just better.
Re: Maybe, just maybe (Score:2)
Xfinity is Comcastâ(TM)s ISP so you have one choice
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Xfinity is Comcastâ(TM)s ISP so you have one choice
Yes, that is the joke.
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"I have the choice of Comcast or Xfinity"
They are the same company.
Re: Maybe, just maybe (Score:2)
Xfinity *is* Comcast.
Re: Maybe, just maybe (Score:2)
Do they charge for cable TV?
Last time I complained about my internet price they offered me a discount for a package with cable too (as in internet alone was $70/month internet + extended basic cable was $50/month).
Eventually I complained enough that they gave me the internet alone for $50 (this was close to 10 years ago and they seemed to already recognize that cable TV had negative value using an HDMI hole and taking up cabinet space.
Duh! (Score:2)
Of course, now that Google Fiber is being bought by private equity, the enshitification will began anew.
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It's indeed a "Duh" moment for sure. We remember this happened to the printed news and the musical industry who refused to embrace the new digital format.
It's always like that with anything old, it will cling onto it's old ways and old times, because it's their business model, when a business model no longer is viable and they failed to find a new way to create a new model, this is inevitable.
The same happens to broadcast media, here in our country they finally moved to "forced pay via taxes" because their
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so emigrate to america or south america from denmark to escape those dastardly taxes and give up on the famous danish quality of life?
no? this is like maga who live in like, massachussets, or socialists who also live in safe, liberal states. you risk nothing so complains are easy.
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But contrary to the USA we still have pretty good public and commercial stations and the majority of the population still pays for the network instead of going streaming only.
Btw, the detector vans were a scam and with a modern TV there is no oscillator anyway.
Hate (Score:2)
These small providers probably aren't terrible.
But Comcast and Charter are evil and shit companies that deserve to die. The fully deserve the hate they create.
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Dear cable operators: Please stay on the line... (Score:2)
until you drop dead. Your call is "Important" to us!
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They dare not let you speak the truth, Rotsa Ruck telling the captives they are imprisoned. They were born there.
Oh no, it's the world's smallest open-source violi (Score:2)
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Yeah, at my previous residence, I was stuck w/ them. And they'd keep trying to get me to sign on to one of their TV packages, even though I didn't have a TV
There were a couple of places I lived where Charter/Spectrum was the only option, but there, I used to get a great package of $55/month for something like 60Mbps, iirc
Re: Oh no, it's the world's smallest open-source v (Score:2)
They were charging $60 for 200/6 internet.
If I wanted to get a reasonable work from home 20mbps up I had to pay $150 for 800/20.
I switched to TMobile and it definitely sucked (carrier level NAT and not IPv6 passthrough to get around it on IPv6), but getting 75/50 internet for $50/month was a huge win for work.
Verizon came through selling 300/300 fiber for $50/month and now Comcast is offering 400/100 for the same price to compete.
I was amazed at the huge difference, but also that before competition Comcast
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Old enough to remember (Score:4, Interesting)
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"I'm old enough to remember when the selling point of cable TV was that you could pay for the content on the front end, and then not have ads constantly interrupting your viewing. "
Not only did cable companies not offer this, it is not technically feasible to offer this. The add slots are already in the feed transmitted to the cable companies, where the local ads are inserted in the slots allocated for that. There's no way to get the ads slots back out without eventually getting ahead of the transmitted fee
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Wasn't HBO, Showtime, and whatever the other one was called considered "cable" back in the 80s? You could obviously setup your antenna back then and get free OTA. Usually the bottom 10 channels or some such.
Those channels were premium but they had zero ads. At some point it seems like "cable" just became any service paid for and not necessarily those premium channels.
Someone jump in and correct me here, as I was only born in 1984, so I may be conflating things here.
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The ad-free nature of HBO et al. is a property of those specific channels, not cable TV.
Cable TV originated as community antenna television. Network feeds were received by large central antennas and the last-mile distribution was by wire. The network feeds could be over-the-air broadcast networks, satellite networks, or pay TV like HBO or Showtime. The first two categories are transmitted with ad slots in situ, the last does not have any ad slots*. The term "cable channel" was used for the later two categor
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Ahh okay. Thank you for that clarity. I never was the one paying for anything back then and once I was on my own, decided it wasn't worth having at all. I didn't even bother getting cable when I moved out because the Internet offered plenty to do and I was always more a gamer then a passive watcher. This was also before streaming was even a thing. That, and I use to buy a lot of dvds back then. I hated ads from a young age.
Re: Old enough to remember (Score:2)
Later cable channels were created then with ads though, correct?
Like Comedy Centeal was never a pay channel (that I'm aware of) and I think started on cable.
The so called extended basic (in my area) channels always had ads.
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The problem faced by cable TV networks is more fundamental. People just aren't watching much linear TV anymore. The days when they could feed you 499 channels of crap and 1 occasionally interesting one are long gone, because there is so much choice now. Streaming sites, both commercial and user content based, social media, gaming.
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OTOH, the streaming services face a problem of discovery that cable does not. With 500 cable channels, the only opportunity cost of trying a new show is time. To try a new streaming show, I have to add the whole price of the subscription to try one show. For example, I enjoy Star Trek shows and saw every episode that came out while I was alive on its first showing until the second episode of Discovery because it was streaming only (the first episode was broadcast on CBS) and exclusive to Paramount+. Since S
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For discoverability some of the streaming services release an episode or three for free over multiple platforms, including YouTube.
I think you are right though, there will be a lot of network consolidation.
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I'm old enough to remember that cable was basically some antennas on the highest hill so you get the more distant stations on your TV and that was it.
If you have to say "dramatic" (Score:3)
The story probably isn't as dramatic as the headline.
It's probably more like the "dramatic" decline of the pay phone industry. It's so dramatic, nobody cares. And, it more like a long-slow whimper than a big bang.
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I don't have a TV at all, but I have Cable and use it for Internet access at around 350 Mbps. It is far cheaper than any of the prices I've seen mentioned here (as in around $60 a month), no reason to change.
I Enjoyed My Cable (Score:5, Informative)
Cable is easier than streaming. I could find programming 2 weeks in advance thru their catalog of programming, I had their DVR's in 3 rooms and almost all the premium channels that they offered. I miss the convenience. I hate turning on the TV and having to make the Roku navigate to Sling, then my favorite channel. Turn off the TV while watching my favorite channel on cable, and when turning it on again, my favorite channel is right there on the screen.
With me, it's just a money thing. Cable was freakin' expensive. $310 a month. As stated, 3 DVR's in 3 different rooms, nearly all the premiums. Plus high speed internet service which was actually pretty good, except they were particularly inept at keeping it working. Between having it go down... and up... and down... and up to the point I had to have my Verizon "MiFI" hotspot ready while playing online poker because the cable's internet dropped out so often, and then an outrageous 10 hour interruption for scheduled maintenance on a Sunday morning - yes, I was using the cable that Sunday morning - I did what I really didn't want to do, and went streaming.
Again, I miss cable. I just don't miss $300+ per month, I think I have most of the streaming services I want and fiber internet provided by the power company and all comes in the low $200's. They haven't yet had a 10 hour scheduled maintenance interruption. But its harder to use, and I actually tried and failed to find the Coca Cola 600 the evening of the Indy 500 that I did find and watch. I think it was on Paramount+ which I had, and just didn't know to look there. Or it may have been on Peacock, I get those two mixed up sometimes. But what I didn't get was the Coca Cola 600. I wouldn't have missed the Coca Cola 600 on cable.
And cable's technical changes that nuked Tivo also was a downer. The cable company I had before moving to Texas, in King George County, Virginia was implemented with Tivo provided by the cable company itself. It was a dream of a system with a main receiver and 2 satellites for the 3 rooms I wanted TV's in. You could be watching a movie, switch rooms, turn on the TV, and continue watching the same movie from the same position in it that you left it where you 1st turned it on. Fabulous system.
Not sure cable can ever come back, it's just frightfully expensive. Stringing expensive wire on poles you have to pay rent on and with greedy local TV channels charging the cable company for their signal I think just doesn't work for the average person's wallet. I _could_ afford it, I just don't want to while there's the alternative of streaming. I just wish streaming was as convenient as cable.
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If cable had something where I could pick only and exactly the channels I wanted, and pay only a certain rate per channel, I'd happily take it. Say, just as an example, Disney, HGTV and TBN, and pay for just those 3. And not have to channel surf through 375 channels
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Yes, someone should work on making that possible. They do it with the premium channels, but not the standard ones or the local broadcast stations. They're going to continue to oblivion unless they think of something like that, but the hardware to get it done might also be too expensive.
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If cable had something where I could pick only and exactly the channels I wanted, and pay only a certain rate per channel, I'd happily take it. Say, just as an example, Disney, HGTV and TBN, and pay for just those 3. And not have to channel surf through 375 channels
Problem is many of the smaller channels would not survive unless they charge a high rate, and people wouldn't subscribe. They only make financial sense as part of a bundle where they get a few pennies per subscriber but it is enough to make them viable.
In your example, that bundle would be anywhere from ~23-28$/month, depending on your tolerance for ads, plus ISP fees.
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The bundles tend to be all of a specific broadcasters offering. So you pay for the Disney channel, but Disney also comes with an umbrella of stuff they own. I could see Disney saying, find, $30 for just that 1 channel, and here are 30 more channels for free.
They don't care if you watch the other 30 channels and spend all your time on the Disney Channel itself, since they own all those other properties anyway. It doesn't cost them anything extra.
You'll never get the best channel that drags everyone to them f
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Not sure cable can ever come back, it's just frightfully expensive. Stringing expensive wire on poles you have to pay rent on and with greedy local TV channels charging the cable company for their signal I think just doesn't work for the average person's wallet. I _could_ afford it, I just don't want to while there's the alternative of streaming. I just wish streaming was as convenient as cable.
I doubt cable will come back, not because of cable companies but content owners. The model now seems to be for content owners to stream their content rather rthan bundle it with other services, and more and more keeping their content exclusive to their streaming service. They'd rather be a separate subscription than on multiple streaming/cable services. As a result, all cord cutting may accomplish is instead of having one expensive cable service you have multiple expensive streams; with one advantage is
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It's an issue of finances. Which comes down to advertising. Big national brands can hang their ad spots anywhere. But local content providers have the advantage of reaching a known geographic area that neigborhood businesses want to reach. Bob's plumbing doesn't need to reach viewers in NYC. Or have to pay for ads shown there. And ISP location services are crap. But advertising on the local news generally gets businesses customers in the correct geogrphic area. Even if that local news is streamed.
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It's an issue of finances. Which comes down to advertising. Big national brands can hang their ad spots anywhere. But local content providers have the advantage of reaching a known geographic area that neigborhood businesses want to reach. Bob's plumbing doesn't need to reach viewers in NYC. Or have to pay for ads shown there. And ISP location services are crap. But advertising on the local news generally gets businesses customers in the correct geogrphic area. Even if that local news is streamed.
Local stations can survive because of its niche, it’s the small networks showing specialty fare that would likely have problems going it alone; primarily, as you point out, the have now way of targeting local viewers with local adds due to the difficulty in targeting those ads.
Re: I Enjoyed My Cable (Score:2)
I get at least as many local ads streaming as I did on broadcast network.
Not super local (a lot of PA elections when I live in Delaware, just like broadcast), but in my metro area.
I would think they should be able to auction ads even more locally with streaming though. Similar to how Google does it.
Local retransmission fees and forced ESPN need to (Score:2)
Local retransmission fees and forced ESPN need to go or be made opt in.
People with there own OTA hook ups don't need to pay $30/mo for local tv.
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Many local programming OTA stations stream their stuff as well. Since it's their own content, no fees are required.
This is a pretty good solution for local news, which is the primary value of OTA.
Once the cable operators become ISPs*, everyone who wants to capture the eyeballs of the viewers is on their own. Since the whole concept of "broadcast" goes away.
"You want to watch your local football team? Just go to their streaming site and don't bother us."
All the issues of retransmission fees and bundles of "crap" channels go away.
*At this point, these outfits become common carriers for all intents and
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Many local programming OTA stations stream their stuff as well. Since it's their own content, no fees are required.
This is a pretty good solution for local news, which is the primary value of OTA.
Many stations primarily only produce their local news/events, as everything else is acquired via syndication or the network affiliation in the evening (none of which they have a license to redistribute to those outside their DMA).
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Local retransmission fees and forced ESPN need to go or be made opt in. People with there own OTA hook ups don't need to pay $30/mo for local tv.
The local broadcasters claim (and they are probably not wrong), that they could not survive without the re-transmission fees they receive from the TV companies, because they built their business finances around those fees (and those fees are only going to continue to go up).
However, one should ask if the local broadcasters need to survive in their current form. And their continued fee increases may eventually price themselves out of a business.
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That's an interesting point. In my case I'm out of range of broadcast TV and there is no cable service either. It's satellite, streaming, or nothing.
I chose nothing.
The TV station is 120 miles away, the advertising on that station is of no value, I'm not driving a 240 mile trip for shopping in some store in that city. Do the advertisers know that the audience numbers the station claims include people who are not ever going to visit the store? Are the advertising rates adjusted appropriately?
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See...this all dates back to the 80's.
Back in the 60's cable operators were required to carry local broadcasts. They could carry distant ones...both in the form of microwave relay and just big towers with antennas; but they were required to carry all the significant local channels. Well...that ultimately got overturned in the 80's as a first amendment violation. This meant cable operators were under no obligation to carry...any locals...and many smaller local channels got dropped. I do believe there was als
Refresh my memory: (Score:3)
what's 'cable'?
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Sports (Score:1)
Probably reflective of the slashdot audience, not a single person here mentioned a big reason why cable TV is so expensive.
Sports.
Anyone with cable, especially a premium package, is paying for sports. Live sports is among the biggest drivers of TV cost, if not THE biggest.
We are this close to finally ditching cable TV. I can live without the live sports. The problem for me is that mountain of garbage that comes along with it, especially the advertising.
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On the upside, the regional sports networks are disappearing up their own asses.
Simply Put: Times Change (Score:3)
Then that generation got enslaved by greedy cable prices, especially as things went exclusive like NFL Football on select days and adding 1 channel to watch a hit series was about a quarter of the cost of cable.
People turned to streaming because it was cheaper and in many cases, free. People also rediscovered broadcast over-the-air TV. The pandemic helped with this.
Now that people are already moving on from rising streaming prices and looking for alternatives, Cable is now a relic of the 00's. The generation that loved it has either moved on or died off. I hope the suits that raised prices have their Golden Parachutes ready if they haven't used them already..
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"less FCC-moderated content "
These days, Brendan Carr is trying to police your speech anyway.
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And after streaming, am sure there will be something else new coming along.
Just don't know what that will be.
Comcast is becoming an ISP anyway (Score:3)
Especially once they started to use DOCSIS technology to push faster Internet services. And they were able to keep up (mostly) with fiber Internet, They now offer symmetric 1.2 gigabit speed Internet with DOCSIS 4.0, which has started its national rollout. I expect Comcast once it achieves near-natonal coverage of DOCSIS 4.0 to push it to 4 gigabit symmetric access.
In short, I expect Comcast to be less in the cable TV business and more in the cable modem Internet business. And very likely they may widely offer a cloud storage DVR with effectively unlimited storage to save video from cable TV channels and streaming services for later viewing.
Arrrrr! (Score:2)
Age out? (Score:2)
As older cable subscribers age out of the market
That's a very nice euphemism for people dying.
Re: (Score:2)
Boohoo (Score:2)
I dropped Pay-TV...Dish TV over 20 years ago... (Score:2)
regional cable stands no chance (Score:2)
Smart TVs themselves use dark ux patterns to push users toward streaming and away from anything coming in through the antenna port. This is especially bad in google TV.
How to fix the Cable industry (Score:2)
People left because of one thing - the required package deals. Are you a single, unmarried 30 year old woman? Tough crap you have to get the cartoon network and the sports channels, neither of which you want.
You want to bring everyone back? Offer this deal:
Categories of prices:
Small package: $20/month, 20 points.
Medium package: $50/month, 50 points
Large Package: $100/month, all channels.
Then you pick which channels you want to spend points on, cheap ones for 1 point, medium for 2 points, etc.
Change them a
Fact (Score:2)
In the eighties, when cable tv was really just getting going, *all* of them advertised that if you bought cable, you'd never have to watch commercials again.
Really.
Maybe people wouldn't be dropping it if they didn't have, oh, at least 22 min of commercials/hour.