While it’s news to some consumers that they can, in fact, watch their local news without a pay-TV subscription, carriers like Dish know perfectly well that over-the-air antennas work. And the company, apparently sick of paying retransmission fees in one market, appears to be using those antennas to call a network’s bluff. [More]
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Discovery Communications, Scripps Networks Bring HGTV & TLC Together In $14.6B Deal
By 7.31.17
Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks are putting Shark Week, Guy Fieri, House Hunters, and Bizarre Foods all under the same umbrella in a $14.6 billion mega merger of hugely successful, moderately entertaining media companies.
[More]
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]
Why Aren’t More Cord-Cutters Flocking To Live-TV Streaming Services?
By 4.28.17 — Updated: 5.9.17
Millions of Americans have canceled their cable TV subscriptions in the last decade, choosing instead to get their video entertainment over the internet. A growing number of services have popped up in recent years that offer cable-like live-TV streaming for this audience: Sling TV, DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, with Hulu planning to launch a competitor soon, and Comcast reportedly looking to get into the fray. Yet, despite the multiple options and the large potential market of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, these platforms have yet to win over the masses. [More]
Apple May Offer Premium HBO/Showtime/Starz TV Bundle
By 4.3.17
One reason some TV fans are tempted to cut the cord? Having to pay for a whole slew of basic channels when all you really want to watch is a few. Those are the people Apple is after with a reported plan to sell HBO, Showtime, and Starz as a bundle. [More]
Dish Gets Into Another Contract Fight, Local Networks Go Off Air In 30 States
By 3.3.17
This is becoming a familiar refrain: Dish Network customers in dozens of markets are now unable to view their local networks, after their satellite provider and the conglomerate owning the networks were unable to agree on contract terms. [More]
Cable Company Can’t Reach Agreement With CBS, Tells Customers To Go Stream It Instead
By 1.18.17
There’s a contract dispute afoot in the Nutmeg State. Cable company Optimum has been unable to reach a retransmission agreement with the Hartford CBS affiliate, and as a result, thousands of Connecticut residents are left without access to the news and shows they’re paying for but can’t watch. It’s an irritatingly common story, but this time there’s a wrinkle: The cable company is still directing its customers to watch the network… they just want subscribers to do it online, instead. [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]
Is TV Sports Getting So Expensive That Customers Are Finally Cutting The Cord?
By 12.5.16
At this point, it’s a hoary old saw that sports networks and broadcasts of live sporting events are one of the main reasons your pay-TV bills continue to rise. We all kind of “know” that sports are expensive, and that the costs come through to everyone else… but as millions of dollars in charges and fees become billions, are consumers and viewers going to stick around? [More]
Many Time Warner Cable TV Customers Not Sticking Around With Charter
By 11.8.16
It’s the time of year when all publicly-traded companies announce their last quarter’s results. And over in Charter-land, something’s not looking so good: video subscribers are down, but it’s not a universal cord-cutting trend across the board. Instead, the loss is almost entirely concentrated in Time Warner Cable markets. [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]
FCC Delays Vote On Set-Top Box Proposal
By 9.29.16 — Updated: 10.3.16
After much hullaballoo and a number of eleventh-hour political plays, the FCC has scrapped its plan to vote today on a proposal that would upend the cable set-top box marketplace. [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]
Hulu Kills Off Free Streaming Service, Goes Subscription Only
By 8.8.16
Once upon a time, TV was mostly a thing you watched for free, over an antenna. Commercials and corporate sponsorships made up the cost for networks. Then TV became cable. Then cable became your internet, and TV was once again briefly free, through streaming services with commercials. But then came subscription internet TV, and that’s where we are today, with Hulu finally pulling the plug on its non-subscription service. [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]
NFL Network, RedZone Joining PlayStation Vue Lineup
By 7.26.16
Conventional wisdom still says that sports are the key to cable: people will stream their comedies and dramas, but will pay for their sports coverage, because Americans sure love their sports. So it is unsurprising, then, that over-the-top cable-alternative streaming services are lining up to add more sports channels to their programming, including PlayStation Vue. [More]
5 Times The Cable Industry Embarrassed Itself During Today’s Senate Hearing
By 6.23.16
As mentioned in the earlier story about Sen. Claire McCaskill’s customer disservice call to her pay-TV provider, the Missouri senator and others on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing today to talk to cable industry executives about their bad billing practices. Not surprisingly, the cable suits did a bang-up job of proving that these companies deserve their poor reputation. [More]
Survey Says: You Still Hate Your Cable Company, But Maybe A Little Less Than Before
By 6.1.16
A major annual consumer satisfaction survey is out, and it’s a mixed bag for the cable and telecom sector and all of us who use it. The bad: pay-TV, broadband, phone, and wireless companies still pretty much really suck, and most of us are very dissatisfied with them. The good: year over year, most of them are finally starting to suck less than they used to! [More]
