Tuesday, August 24, 2010

pay tv subscriptions fall for first time ever in US

pay tv subscriptions fall for first time ever in USfrom investors's business daily: The number of subscribers to cable, satellite and telecom TV services in the U.S. fell for the first time ever in the second quarter, according to research firm SNL Kagan. The U.S. multichannel TV market lost 216,000 customers last quarter, vs. a gain of 378,000 a year ago. The total number of subscribers to cable, satellite and telecom video fell to 100.1 million in the second quarter, SNL Kagan says. Cable TV firms lost 711,000 subscribers last quarter, while satellite and telecom TV services managed to add 81,000 and 414,000 subscribers, respectively. Are more people moving to Internet-based TV? "Although it is tempting to point to over-the-top video as a potential culprit, we believe economic factors such as low housing formation and a high unemployment rate contributed to subscriber declines in the second quarter," said SNL Kagan analyst Mariam Rondeli. Many analysts believe over-the-top TV eventually could upend the pay TV business. OTT TV is video programming delivered over broadband Internet and bypassing traditional service providers.

related update: the colony & post-apocalyptic predictive programming for the whole family

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Money is a factor, who wants to pay for the crap on cable. Of the channels we get only 8 are used. Hundreds of channels, nothing worth watching, commercials are playing longer than the programs. 24 hours marithons of programs is 24 hours of non-viewing. It is as if some one put in a tape on a loop and went on vacation. Let Us pick our channels. Not packages. I don't want sports or spanish/asia channels. Give us something for the money

N8 said...

I can't remember exactly when I heard this, but it really made sense, made the issue immediately transparent (so I probably got it here, at mediamonarchy) : the cable networks and news channels are the same as newspapers and magazines, they provide just enough content to ensure their advertisers have a wide enough audience to sell their pharmaceuticals to... In other words, the money you fork over for TV and newspapers, doesn't motivate them. They are motivated by their advertisers to try and keep you watching or reading their crap so they call sell YOUas a loyal customer to their advertisers. So of course they don't cater to their viewership, because "we" aren't their biggest customers. Thanks for always being willing to break it down for us James! Keep up the great work!

Anonymous said...

I quit cable tv last month. I think it is a waste of money and many friends are considering the change to either no tv or just dTV antenna.

My problem with cable is the channel volume is too large with too much chaff and very little quality programming. For movies, we never saw a great new movie on cable; instead we rented those movies. So what then is the point, CNN or TBS? LOL. I am so glad and I will enjoy the savings each month.

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