In an exodus that would make Moses proud, cable customers are fleeing their costly monthly habit for greener pastures.
GigaOM cobbled together user numbers from four of the top five cable companies and estimated that more than half a million customers cut the coax in the third quarter of 2010. Comcast was the largest contributor to the defections, announcing it lost 275,000 subscribers in the quarter, while Time Warner Cable did its part to chip in by shedding 155,000 customers.
If you’ve ditched cable recently, how do you get your TV fix these days?
Big Cable Is Bleeding: 500K+ Subscribers Lost In Q3 [GigaOM via Engadget]
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Thats what I want to know too. Where are all of these people fleeing to? As far as speed goes I don’t think anyone can touch cable except for FiOS. Tv is a bit easier. You have a couple options with that but cable is pretty dead locked if you want decent speeds. I’m with Comcast because I have no choice. I pay 80$ for mid-grade internet and digital cable. Considering I was paying $156 for the same thing through Time Warner it’s not a bad deal for me.
Cable has increasingly become a poor value for the dollar in comparison to other options, and that becomes more so every year. Why should I have to pay so much for cable when the vast majority of the channels don’t even show anything I want to see, ever?
I was paying $40/month for internet and $60/month for cable. Left Concast in August of this year. That’s a $60/month savings right there. Then I bought a Kanex device to hook up the Mac to the HDTV. I stream what I can off of the network sites (e.g. Survivor, CSI, Glee, Fringe, etc.) There are less commercials and having to wait a day to watch my programs is totally worth it (we actually wait until Friday and then just veg out for hours after work to watch our shows). For the shows I can’t get via free streaming, or movies, I torrent or borrow. And then there’s the library. I can get shows like Dexter, Deadwood, etc. for free. FREE!!!!! Now if only I can get free internet from home . . .
I’m so glad that this topic was brought up (and I took the time to read this)…and am thankful for all of the comments.
I pay ~$200 a month for 2 HD Cable Boxes with DVR and Cable Internet, with an ESPN sports package…and I thought there was something wrong with me for thinking I’m paying WAY too much.
Cutting off Cox on Saturday. Add me to the numbers above…I’m a statistic now.
My solution? a) Watch less TV. I found more interesting things to do with my life than be a couch potato. b) Windows Media Center + ATSC tuner card + UHF antenna on my porch. c) Netflix $12 plan for two DVDs at a time PLUS streaming right from within Media Center. d) Mini keyboard for couch surfing to Hulu and the like. This is a heck of a lot better than $80 a month for pay TV.
TV producers make around $0.10 per viewer of their show. So why don’t the producers try and sell me their shows for say $0.20 ad free? iTunes charges me way the hell to much and hulu and the gang just don’t offer the shows I want.
I suspect that it has something to do with the way shows are financed. But the big networks are short of cash so this would be a huge investment opportunity for the hulus of the world to start to finance their own original programming.
AMC only recently got into TV financing and look where they started, MAD MEN!
Plus once you go to the internet you can leave the restrictions of the TV world behind. Such as the fractions of an hour format. Great script make it 93 minutes long. Not so great trim it down to 40.
I dropped my Comcast and switched to FiOS due to the 250gb limit. I kept going over it or coming close, and knew it was a matter of time before I was booted, so I left.
FiOS….
Not so much for the television as for the speed. I have a 25/25Mbps service.
I have all the movie packages, too, but I watch streaming netflix more than regular TV.
I had comcast. It was always a crappy experience.
I left Comcast because they’re stupid. I live in a duplex. They were unable to provide us and the neighbor with cable at the same time. It took them 4 tries and I gave up and got my internet somewhere else. I have a RoKu and the internet. They’re doing it to themselves.
Sorry, jerks. Let me have my a la carte and I’ll sign up again.
Because they charge you through the nose for 100 channels of crap, raise rates every year, run an absolute monopoly and have shitty customer service? Probably.
I like my Comcast and if I watched it more it would be well worth the money, but I watch very few shows but they are all in different “tiers”. I am seriously thinking of bagging it, because I am forced to pay for so much stuff I have no interest in. If I there were smaller more meaningful packages I could choose from – then I would not even consider getting rid of cable. It doesn’t need to be alacart (I could easily see that being too overwhelming to manage), but more flexility would be good.
Since DirecTV won’t give existing customers their HD Free for Life package I became an ex-subscriber! Their own stupidity of not knocking off $10/month lost them a customer, which in turn saved me $70/month. I grew up in the days where you only picked up a handful of channels with an antenna. Well, a new antenna and a small smattering of online programs saves me money and lets me get much more free time since I don’t park my butt in front of the tube.
Cable, satellite and phone company tv is in trouble with all the customers they piss off. Just vote with your wallet. I, for one, do not miss DirecTV and unless hell becomes as cold as the Arctic I have no plans on ever subscribing to them again. In fact I I smashed the crap out of my receiver in celebration of getting rid of a company that the Better Business Bureau rates with a big fat “F”
I ditched FIOS last month and now stream Hulu/CBS over my Roku and Playstation through Playon TV for $20 per year, and for movies I stream Netflix for $9 per month. Not the same quality TV wise, but good enough to save $1,000 per year!!!
Netflix ($9/mo) + Hulu + Podcasts for news (nbc, msnbc, abc, cbs, cnn)
Who needs expensive cable today?
Phooey, I need to count the shows I watch weekly and determine how much I could save using iTunes, Netflix and Amazon. I hate TimeWarner.
Most are moving to DirecTV or DishNetwork. In a few months they’ll move back. A few are going with just internet connects and streaming through Hulu est.