| HDTV Almanac - Rather Switch than Pay? | ||
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By Alfred Poor HDTV Professor Posted on February 4, 2010 Category: General Interest |
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Register Now to receive notification of new HDTV Magazine Columns via email as soon as they are published. Brand loyalty remains an important part of many consumer markets in the U.S., but according to a new report by Strategy Analytics, subscription television service is not one of them. A recent survey found that more than 2 out of 3 cable subscribers would change providers if they were offered a 20% discount. For the smaller number of people who subscribe to television from a phone company, such as Verizon or AT&T, that number is cut in half to just 1 in 3.
Perhaps more telling is the fact that fewer than 22% of the subscribers overall felt that they were getting “value for the money”. With “100 channels and nothing on”, consumers are starting to question the return they get for their monthly subscription. The rapid growth of services such as Hulu and Netflix streaming movies is another indication of consumer dissatisfaction with the current choices.
From where I sit, one of the primary problems facing cable companies — and to a lesser degree, satellite services — is that they were established under a different set of rules and market conditions. In return for investing in running cable throughout a community, a cable company was given the right to provide the service to those homes. Now consumers are faced with a number of alternative choices, while cable costs keep rising year after year. One easy way to lower cable bills would be to offer a la carte pricing, but that will no doubt result in a huge drop in revenues because subscribers would opt out of all but a handful of favorite channels. But if cable and satellite services don’t do something soon to address the consumers’ concerns, they will will find their customers voting with their dollars and looking elsewhere for their video programming.
Posted by Alfred Poor, February 4, 2010 5:00 AM
Reader Commentary Feb 4, 7:28am Some--perhaps many--of us in NYC have no choice other than Time Warner with their increasing fees every time you turn around and their absolute inability to deliver acceptable customer service when there are service difficulties or--god help us--billing i Feb 4, 7:36am Giovanni, I feel your pain. I know that NYC is not very friendly to television consumers, but I guess there are some advantages to living in the city or else there wouldn't be so many people doing it. I do understand that Verizon has started running optic Feb 4, 8:27am My apologies for mangling your name. As someone who is called by many variants of my first name, I can understand. I saw the Sharp four-color LCD HDTVs at CES and they were impressive, especially with metalics like gold and brass. But would it have bee Feb 4, 8:41am Thanks so much, Alfred, for these insights. I really appreciate it. I was wondering about artifacts too. It seems with every pronounced advance come artifacts. :) Sigh...I was going to opt for one of Sharp's LE700 series sets if only because they DO Feb 7, 11:08am I would suggest putting a calculater to your suspicions... The difference in savings is marginal for the individual and the main issue at hand is the decrease in power consumption your energy provider sees due to a mass volume power reduction for your loc Feb 8, 8:28am Thanks, Richard. I understand what you mean about overall usage as viewed by the electric company. However, in New York city the reality is that change in the usage of just one appliance can have a startling effect on one's Con Ed bill. My apartmen Feb 8, 9:59am Let's see - 100 watts times 6 hours per day times 30 days per month = 18 Kw/hours. Best I can tell Con Ed is charging roughly 8 cents per Kilowatt Hour (worst case). That's $1.44 per month. Maybe we could take up a collection....... Feb 9, 7:44am Hey "akirby," hello... You live here? If you DO, and don't think $109 per month is an outrageous monthly electric charge for a studio apartment then there's not much else I can say. (And that's on level billing too, BTW.) I've no doubt that amount Feb 9, 8:30am No, I don't live there. I was only pointing out that it doesn't matter whether you're spending $109/month or $1000/month, the DIFFERENCE between one tv and another is only 100 watts which equals less than $2/month. Or to look at it another way - g More on General Interest
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About Alfred PoorAlfred Poor is a well-known display industry expert, who writes the daily HDTV Almanac. He wrote for PC Magazine for more than 20 years, and now is focusing on the home entertainment and home networking markets. |
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