[Ipg-smz] "More than 1 million consumers canceled their cable-TV or satellite subscriptions in the past quarter" (WSJ)

[Christine Hall]

YouTube TV costs $35 per month and includes all of our local TV 
channels, so we can watch local news and local public affairs programs, 
plus over 60 popular "cable" channels including USA, FX, TBS, CNN, 
Disney, ESPN and 16 other sports channels, SyFy, CNN and all the cable 
news channels, plus the ability to add "premium" channels like Showtime 
and HBO for a fee.

The 60+ package from our local cable provider comes in at $73 monthly 
and provides basically the same channels. Since we have fiber to the 
door at a cheap rate from our local coop phone company, we opt for 
YouTube TV and use the money we save for Netflix, Amazon Prime and still 
come out paying less than we would with cable.

Christine Hall
Publisher & Editor
FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
http://fossforce.com

On 11/21/18 6:10 PM, Brian Santo wrote:
> I used to cover cable tech. The engineers really are trying to achieve 
> the best quality service they can. I spoke far less frequently to the 
> marketing/finance guys, but what they're dealing with is that margins on 
> video are low (and with content owners cranking up their prices at rates 
> you would not believe, getting lower -- some ops insist they are losing 
> money on video) while broadband margins are high. Meanwhile, Wall Street 
> analysts punish payTV providers who fail to regularly increase ARPU 
> (average revenue per user), and payTV ops can't increase ARPU with subs 
> who take basic packages. They never liked those subs anyway, as many of  
> them would flit from provider to provider each time their introductory 
> offer lapsed. If those subs came back, fine, take their money, but no 
> biggie when they leave again. So, yes, payTV customer service absolutely 
> does suck, but there is minimal incentive to improve it for anyone other 
> than  the most affluent customers who pay the highest monthly fees, and 
> Wall Street merits some of the blame for that.
> 
> Speaking as someone who cut the cord 15 years ago, pay TV packages are 
> still not a bad deal for people who watch a lot of TV, and that's why I 
> think there are still tens of millions of payTV subscribers, and will be 
> for some time. The industry may be losing subs, but for the short-term 
> future, they are subs the industry can afford to lose.
> 
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 2:45 PM Tom Henderson 
> <thenderson at extremelabs.com <mailto:thenderson at extremelabs.com>> wrote:
> 
>     +1
> 
>     On 11/21/18 5:22 PM, Patrick Corrigan wrote:
>>     > In a Comcast boardroom this week -
>>
>>     > Executive - "How can retain customers?"
>>
>>     > Jr. Executive - "How about if we don't treat or customers like
>>     dirt?"
>>
>>     And yet, Comcast makes Time Warner/Spectum look good!
>>
>>     On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 4:54 AM Phil Shapiro <pshapiro at his.com
>>     <mailto:pshapiro at his.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>         https://www.wsj.com/articles/outlook-for-traditional-tv-goes-from-bad-to-worse-1542632401
>>
>>
>>         In a Comcast boardroom this week -
>>
>>         Executive - "How can retain customers?"
>>
>>         Jr. Executive - "How about if we don't treat or customers like
>>         dirt?"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>         -- 
>>         --
>>         Phil Shapiro, pshapiro at his.com <mailto:pshapiro at his.com>
>>         http://www.his.com/pshapiro/briefbio.html
>>         http://www.twitter.com/philshapiro
>>         http://www.his.com/pshapiro/stories.menu.html
>>
>>         "Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates
>>         "Learning happens thru gentleness."
>>         "We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can
>>         choose from real options."  David Suzuki
>>
>>         -- 
>>         Ipg-smz mailing list
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>>         http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>
>>     Patrick Corrigan
>>     Email: phcorrigan at gmail.com <mailto:phcorrigan at gmail.com>
>>     LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-h-corrigan-61669422
>>     Member, Internet Press Guild http://www.netpress.org
>>
>>     "For every difficult and complex question there is an answer that
>>     is simple, easily understood and wrong."
>>           H.L. Mencken
>>
>     -- 
>     Tom Henderson
>     ExtremeLabs, Inc.
>     +1 317 250 4646
>     Twitter: @extremelabs
>     Skype: extremelabsinc
> 
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>