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]
cord cutting
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]
Want ESPN Without Having To Buy Other Channels? Maybe In A Few Years
By 7.27.15
As some cable and live-streaming services take a step back from offering costly sports-filled channels in their bundles, the parent company of the biggest sports network on cable is looking at other ways to continue its dominance, namely by selling direct to consumers. [More]
Comcast’s Broadband Customers Officially Outnumber Its Cable Subscribers
By 7.23.15
The writing was on the wall last quarter when Comcast’s dropping pay-TV subscriber base was only 6,000 more than its growing pool of broadband customers, but with today’s release of the latest subscriber numbers it’s official: Comcast now has fewer cable customers than it does Internet subscribers. [More]
HBO Now Finally Launching On Android
By 7.16.15
Now that Apple’s exclusivity period has come and gone, users of Android devices will finally be able to access HBO Now, the standalone streaming service that lets users access HBO content online without having to pay for a basic cable package (or borrow a friend’s HBO Go password). [More]
Comcast’s “Stream” Online TV Service Is Basically Aereo With HBO
By 7.13.15
Comcast is, by far, the biggest cable TV provider in the country, but its pay-TV numbers is sinking while its Internet user base grows. In an effort to sell some sort of TV service to this increasingly large segment of the market, the folks at Kabletown are testing an online-only live-TV service dubbed Stream. [More]
Lifetime Bets On Cord-Cutters Willing To Pay $3.99/Month For Streaming Library Of Schlocky TV Movies
By 7.2.15
Are you thinking about getting rid of cable but simply can’t because you have to catch the next Lifetime Movie Network schlockfest starring actors from ’80s and ’90s TV shows alongside 20-something Canadian thespians pretending to be American high school students? Then you may be in luck, as Lifetime’s parent company is launching a $3.99 on-demand streaming subscription service just for you. [More]
FBI Investigating String Of Internet Cable-Cutting Attacks In California
By 7.1.15
If you live in the Sacramento area and experienced shoddy Internet service yesterday, there’s a chance it wasn’t your provider’s fault. Federal investigators say someone has been attacking high-capacity Internet cables for a least a year, with the most recent attack occurring on Tuesday.
[More]
Standalone Showtime Service Confirmed To Launch In Coming Months
By 5.7.15
While CBS Corp. didn’t provide any pricing details today on the long-hinted-at standalone Showtime streaming service (a la HBO Now), the company did confirm that it will indeed be giving consumers this new cable-free option at some point in the coming months. [More]
Cablevision Will Sell Hulu Plus Subscriptions Directly To Broadband Customers
By 4.28.15
New York-based Cablevision continues to make the case to its fellow pay-TV providers that there is money to be made from customers who don’t necessarily want a cable subscription. It was the first cable company to make HBO Now available to broadband customers, then it started offering free digital antennas to cord cutters. Now Cablevision will also sell Hulu Plus subscriptions directly to its Optimum Online users. [More]
Cablevision Now Offering Free Digital Antennas For Cord-Cutters
By 4.23.15
Most pay-TV providers don’t like to remind consumers that there is plenty of freely available over-the-air TV, but the folks at Cablevision seem to be taking a “if you can’t beat ’em, give ’em antennae” attitude by acknowledging that some customers are destined to cut the cord (or to never connect that cord in the first place). [More]
With Standalone Showtime Service, Will 2015 Be The Year Of The Cord-Cutter?
By 11.6.14
If you recently read the announcement that HBO and Starz would each soon be launching their own standalone streaming services and thought, “Well, I still can’t dump cable because then I wouldn’t be able to watch Showtime,” here’s some good news — the network is planning to launch its own online-only service at some point in 2015, which may remove the final barricade to cord-cutting for some consumers. [More]
Cable Companies Keep Adding Channels, But We’re Not Watching Any More Of Them
By 5.7.14
If you’re one of those TV viewers who knows exactly where on their vast channel list to find the few stations you watch regularly, or who frustratedly skims past screen after screen of channels you not only don’t watch but don’t even know the names of, you’re not alone. In fact, a new report confirms that the average TV watcher only looks at fewer than 1-in-10 of the channels that come into their homes. [More]
Aereo Expands To San Antonio, Runs Out Of Capacity In NYC
By 2.3.14
The loophole behind Aereo, the service that lets people watch broadcast TV from Internet-connected devices, is that for every streaming viewer, there’s one teeny antenna at Aereo HQ. This helps the company get around copyright restrictions, since each viewer of local broadcasts has their own antenna (just not in their home.) The company recently announced that it’s run out of capacity in New York City, the first area where it launched, and is expanding to the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan area. [More]
HBO’s Parent Company Doesn’t Predict Much Interest In HBO-Only Internet Package
By 11.7.13
Comcast recently announced a new package called Internet Plus that bundles broadband service and HBO (and perhaps more importantly HBO Go) along with a smattering of basic cable channels for $50-70/month, and some have predicted that this could push more people to ditch the pricier cable packages, but not the CEO of HBO’s parent company. [More]
Netflix Now Has More Paid U.S. Subscribers Than HBO
By 10.22.13
All that binge-watching at the swipe and a click of the mouse has proved successful for Netflix lately, as the company revealed yesterday in its letter to investors that it’s hit 29.3 million U.S. subscribers. Without even taking into account its trial customers, that’s a hop skip and jump over HBO’s last reported total of 28.7 million subscribers. Cord? What’s a cord? Something to be cut? [More]
