Your best bet to see today’s total eclipse if you live in an area where it isn’t visible is to stream NASA’s cross-country broadcast. It’s available from some cable providers and to stream on your computer, but what if you want it on your TV screen and you’re a cord-cutter? Roku users might download a NASA channel available in their channel store, but they’re in for a bad experience if they do. [More]
cord cutters
Cord-Cutting Will Only Continue As Cable Prices Rise
By 6.14.17 — Updated: 6.18.17
Nearly half of Americans with pay-TV packages are nearing the point of saying goodbye to traditional cable, including those few are actually satisfied with their service. Why? Because their cable bills just keep going up. [More]
If Cord-Cutters All Cut Cable, Where Do The Networks Go?
By 12.29.16
The so-called “golden age of TV” may only be just now dawning for viewers, completely inundated with high-quality shows on every screen we own, but it’s more of a turbulent era for the companies that make our shows. With “cable TV” still morphing into “on-demand content anywhere,” programmers and distribution companies are struggling to adapt — and the smallest content companies may be the ones most likely to collapse or sell out as cord-cutters continue changing their habits. [More]
Analyst: How Much Does Comcast Lose If You Cut The Cord? Less Than $6 A Month
By 12.1.16 — Updated: 12.2.16
With services like DirecTV Now, Dish’s Sling TV, and PlayStation Vue proliferating everywhere, it seems as if finally the age of the cord-cutter is going mainstream. A subscriber who cuts out their pay-TV service could see their bill drop by $50 or $100 in a month — but does that mean your cable company is losing that much revenue from you? One major industry analyst thinks it’s not even close. [More]
How Much Does Cord-Cutting Actually Cost Big Cable?
By 9.30.16
Cord-cutting is, as we know, a real trend. It’s not what the majority of viewers do — huge numbers of consumers subscribe to cable, satellite, or fiber TV service — but it’s definitely on the rise. And one new analysis thinks the cable industry could be losing at least $1 billion a year in revenue from customers who say “so long.” [More]
Survey Says: Your Bills Are Going Up, But 82% Of Households Still Pay For Cable
By 9.27.16
It may seem like the golden age of cable and the age of internet TV is upon us, but when you get right down to it, a whole lot of households still subscribe to monthly pay-TV. That said, the latest edition of an annual survey does indeed find that both cable prices and cord-cutting are on the rise — a completely coincidental pair of facts, we’re sure. [More]
TV Networks Giving You More On-Demand Options To Combat Netflix, Cord-Cutting
By 8.22.16
Broadcast TV networks are freely available over the air, so you might think that they wouldn’t care too much about the growing number of people ditching cable in favor of streaming services. After all, viewers can still get the network shows and local news for the price of a decent antenna. Then you realize that networks are raking in billions of dollars each year from pay-TV providers and you see they have an incentive to try to keep you from cutting the cord. [More]
Comcast Excited To Have Lost 4,000 TV Subscribers This Spring
By 7.27.16
Comcast is just so happy this morning, you guys! Their second quarter results are out and they are thrilled, just thrilled, to announce that they lost 4,000 TV subscribers in the last three months. [More]
Pay-TV Subscriptions Continue To Drop As Cord-Cutters Do Their Thing
By 7.26.16
It’s been clear for a few years now that our model of what “TV” actually means is changing. The rise of Netflix, joined later by Hulu and Amazon, made on-demand internet-based viewing a household standard. Then PlayStation Vue, Dish Sling, and other internet-based services and networks started coming online through 2015 and 2016, while cable bills kept climbing. And all that adds up to cord-cutting speeding up and running away with the industry. [More]
Thursday Night Football Is Coming Live To A Twitter Near You This Fall
By 4.5.16
It’s no secret that the NFL has been looking for streaming partners for its Thursday night games. A month ago, the rumor mill said that Facebook was looking to be the victor on that field. But today the news has broken about what streaming service will be getting the games, and it’s not Facebook — nor is it Amazon, Netflix, or any big streaming suspect you might suspect. It’s Twitter. Yes, that Twitter. [More]
NBC Exec: Viewers Always Come Back From Binges, Netflix Not A “Consistent” Threat
By 1.15.16
There’s obviously some disruption afoot in the TV marketplace of late. Broadcast and cable networks continue to think that they represent TV. Netflix, Amazon, and an up-and-coming generation of cord-cutters seem to disagree. And yet for all money the young whippersnapper businesses seem to get from the young whippersnapper audiences, at least one member of the old guard thinks it’s all so much chaff in the wind. [More]
A Message From The Year 2026 About The Future Of Your TV
By 1.4.16
Thirty years ago, in 1996, you actually used your TV to watch broadcast or cable signals — live, as things aired. Twenty years ago, in 2006, you probably still had cable, but you probably also had a DVR, freeing you to watch programming at your leisure (much to the chagrin of advertisers). Ten years ago, in 2016, you may or may not have decided to cut the coaxial cord — but even if you had cable, odds were high you complemented it with some kind of streaming service. But by today, Jan. 4, 2026, if you even remember what “cable” was, that’s probably because you only see it at your grandparents’ house. [More]
Dispute May Kill AMC On Small Cable Provider; CEO Hints That Maybe Bundles Are The Real Zombie
By 12.30.15
Disputes between cable networks (or their parent companies) and the distribution companies that carry them are nothing new. It seems like we see at least a half-dozen channel blackouts happen every year, when the contract negotiations between the two break down. [More]
There’s A New Streaming Option In Town For MLB Games… But You Still Need Cable To Use It
By 11.24.15
Keeping current with your hometown baseball team can be, well, a giant pain in the butt. Even if you live in the local market, the easy, ubiquitous over-the-air local broadcasts of games have been fading away over the years in favor of cable. In the streaming-enabled, mobile-friendly, broadband-based world of the 21st century it feels like watching your local sluggers should be easy… but somehow, there’s always still a catch. [More]
Time Warner Cable’s Cable-Free Cable Is Still Basically Cable, Just On A Roku
By 11.10.15
Reports dropped a couple of weeks ago that Time Warner Cable was planning to roll out a cable-free streaming option to bring in more TV subscribers. The company has now confirmed that they’re definitely doing that… but not in as flexible a way as consumers had hoped. [More]
Time Warner Cable Launching Pilot Program To Sell Cable-Free Cable To Cord-Cutters
By 10.29.15
As it has often been foretold, so it is coming to pass: another major cable company is planning to sell cable-free, internet-based cable to its cord-cutting customers, starting with a pilot program in New York City. [More]
Time Warner CEO Isn’t Worried About Cable TV’s Fate: “Netflix Is Good, But Not That Good”
By 8.28.15
While cable companies’ investors might be shaking in their boots whenever the word “Netflix” pops up, the streaming video service isn’t the giant slayer it’s been made out to be — at least according to Time Warner Inc. Jeff Bewkes, who says his HBO is better than Netflix. [More]
Investors Decide Cord-Cutting Is Real And Worrisome, Cable Network Stocks Drop All Around
By 8.6.15
Cord-cutting, in which (usually younger) pay-TV subscribers walk away from cable and embrace new ways of accessing media, has been a known phenomenon since at least 2011. But it’s been a slow-rolling snowball, even as services like Netflix soar into the stratosphere. This year, however, it seems that Wall Street traditionalists have finally caught on to the change, and they’re not happy. [More]
