Posted on 08/12/2019 5:04:35 PM PDT by EdnaMode
Pay-TV keeps taking hits in subscribers, with Leichtman Research Group finding in its latest quarterly report that about 1.53 million people dropped their pay-TV subscriptions during the second quarter of 2019. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of decline, per Leichtman, and more than a million of subscribers cutting their service from the same time period in 2018 (420,000).
Consisting of the top 14 pay-TV services in the U.S. making up about 93% of the market, which includes satellite, cable, phone and vMVPDs. Satellite companies lost about 855,000 subscribers during Q2, with DirecTV accounting for 778,000 alone in its fifth straight quarter of net losses; Dish’s losses of 79,000 resulted in its best quarter since Q2 2014.
Cable, meanwhile, had its worst quarter since Q2 2014, experiencing a net loss among the top seven companies of 455,000. Comcast took the biggest hit, but is still the top cable provider by a wide margin.
The top telephone providers lost about 100,000 video subscribers—more than double its Q2 2018 numbers—and vMVPD services even suffered a loss of 120,000 subscribers; they experienced a net add of 385,000 in Q2 2018.
In the past year, the top pay-TV providers have lost about 5,015,000 subscribers; the year prior saw a loss of 1,060,000 subscribers.
“This marked the fourth consecutive quarter of record pay-TV industry net losses,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG. “With an increased focus on acquiring and retaining profitable subscribers, DBS services accounted for more than half of the net pay-TV losses in 2Q 2019, and 63% of the losses over the past year.”
There are several free services with ads. Tubing, Pluto, Crackle, ... even YouTube is free with occasional ads.
Tubi, Crackle, Pluto, and several others are free. We are paying for Philo and Netflix together $28.
I CHANGE ABOUT 2 YEAR AGO USING AMAZON PRIME WITH SPECTRUM—
SPECTRUM INCREASE PRICE TO 90 DOLLAR FOR WIFI—I SWITCH TO FRONTIER WIFI FOR 40 DOLLARS SPEEDS 200 MEG——HAPPY FOR 4 WEEKS NOW
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CHANGE CARRIERS
I didn’t watch Pluto until this year, they seem to be pretty good now. There are a TON of other Roku free channels. I only watch the free YouTube.
Maybe drive-in movie theaters will come back.
Haven’t had cable since 1997.
I cut the cord in June and wish I’d done it years ago!
I am splitting several streaming services with a friend since each has multiple screen usages.
I have Amazon Prime, Hulu (commercial free) and CBS All Access (commercial free) and it comes to about $20 or so a month. Can’t beat that! At first I went with the cheaper versions with commercials but they just drove me crazy and for $4 more a month it was hard to not opt to to commercial free!
I am able to watch every single thing I watched before I cut the cord.
This is not including internet, which is about $65, and I would have regardless of if I’d cut the cord.
So far the toughest thing has been keeping track of what I do watch and remembering to go watch it! I’m still used to stuff being recorded on my DVR and seeing what I had to watch. I’ll remember a show I’m watching and realize I haven’t even thought of it for the last 3 weeks, but then I have 3 episodes to go binge watch.
I got rid of Directv. I now stream everything I watch. I get everything free, with comercials, not near as bad as the network and cable channels type comercials. Much better and not spending any money to watch TV anymore.
If they would give the customers what we want instead of forcing a bunch of useless channels on us, they would have more customers.
Why can’t we just have a la carte TV?
Can you get out of market games on Sling Blue?
The business version is faster and cheaper?
How long until it costs 200 dollars to have internet? There is no way that cable companies are going to be ok with this.
350? Good grief. I have Comcast with every channel HD on 3 TVs but no pay channels and pay 185. Internet is 100 speed or whatever that is so streaming is not a problem. Not sure how your neighbors got so screwed.
Soon you will. Every channel will have a streaming option. Disney is next. I bet abc goes into the Disney stream package. NBC will go with a paid service soon enough. In 5 years, you will pick channels individually.
I now stream everything I watch. I get everything free, with commercials, not near as bad as the network and cable channels type commercials. Much better and not spending any money to watch TV anymore.
I think this more than anything to include politics is causing people to cut the cord. At some point, cable and satellite are going the way of Blockbuster as technology changes the game. Streaming is convenient. I can watch the Fox prime time shows on YouTube with no commercials and fast forward through the idiot guests and avoid a headache.
Times are changing for big media - still big money to be made, but there are no monopolies any more. OANN is a great place for news and it is getting better all the time.
...FRONTIER WIFI FOR 40 DOLLARS SPEEDS 200 MEG——HAPPY FOR 4 WEEKS NOW...
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Don’t know whee you are, but we finally got rid of Frontier (it wasn’t easy)and are saving over $100/mo with a local fiber optic carrier.
Our Frontier was worse than dial up with inconsistent service that went in and out at will. New carrier is steady and fast. (DH is the techie/I don’t recall the upload/download speeds but he was forced to use the library for downloading certain programs and because that was also Frontier, it still sucked, just not as bad.)
Frontier has lost so many customers here, it has a teeny 8”x5” phone book with maybe 50 pages. They are expected to close up shop soon. I have researched them when we were having so much grief and they are nearly bankrupt with thousands of FCC complaints nationwide.
If you have a contract, it is for more than a year. If you don’t have a contract, there is a kill fee (not cheap) to leave them.
Insult to injury: we had to get a new landline number after 40 years, because the petulant children at Frontier would not release our number to the current carrier even after we requested they do so. Some technicality I never understood.
Glad to be rid of them.
I could but it cost. I am learning to do without.
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