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HDTV Almanac - Why TV Subscribers Change
by Alfred Poor on February 14, 2012 Categories: Service & Repair

A new report from Centris indicates that more than one out of five pay-TV subscribers intend to change providers, change their level of service, or cancel entirely in the next three months. About half of these will change the program package that they have, which means that the other half will switch to a new service entirely or get rid of pay-TV altogether.

For those in this second group who are not moving, the main reason for making the change is simple: money. More than a third of them indicate that the price of the subscription is the reason for their decision. And I can’t say that I’m surprised.

Satellite and cable fees continue to rise (driven at least in part by more expensive retransmission licensing fees), and consumers feel that they are paying more for nothing. The pundits forecast continued subscriber losses; in an Associated Press story, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet predicts that Comcast will announce a net loss of another 125,000 basic cable subscribers for the fourth quarter of last year.

As I’ve said before, the pay-TV services are getting squeezed and I expect that we’ll see some significant changes in the business before this year is over.

Posted by Alfred Poor, February 14, 2012 5:00 AM

Reader Commentary

Reply
fsense • Feb 14, 7:37pm
It was really an easy decision to leave Dish satellite service. We started years ago with DirecTV when it was $19.95/month. Our Dish service was more than three times that much and we were paying for 150 channels, only a few of which had content worth watching. Their movie fees were absurd and signal outages were commonplace during rainstorms. Customer service was as bad as it gets. We changed to using a Roku box on our DSL service and subscribed to Netflix and Hulu Plus for TV and movies and watch the major networks over the air on HD channels. Anyone who isn't using the Internet for movie and TV delivery is simply wasting their money....
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JazzGuyy • Feb 15, 2:18am
The problem with getting programming over the Internet is that the picture and sound quality is still fairly poor as compared what you get with HD cable or satellite. If your priority is PQ, the Internet is not yet the answer to lowering prices. What I really want is a la carte pricing for cable or satellite. I believe that the companies will be pushed toward this....
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fsense • Feb 15, 4:47am
The problem with getting programming over the Internet is that the picture and sound quality is still fairly poor as compared what you get with HD cable or satellite. If your priority is PQ, the Internet is not yet the answer to lowering prices. What I really want is a la carte pricing for cable or satellite. I believe that the companies will be pushed toward this.

I agree on the a la carte pricing, but even if that happened, I think you'd see per program or per channel prices that would drive up your monthly bill if you watch much TV. Your comment on picture and sound quality are interesting and we don't find that the case here. Sound quality is superb on everything we've watched, including concerts. Picture quality is 720p and the only time we wish for better quality is if we're trying to watch a sporting event or high action movie where the fast action isn't as smooth as it could be. The overall quality of programming is so superior to what we ...
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JazzGuyy • Feb 15, 5:06am
The other factor is bandwidth caps that are increasingly being added by Internet providers. This could severely limit how much TV you can get over the Internet or drive the price up in a different way by shifting from cable or satellite fees to bandwidth fees. My ISP provides limits to bandwidth used and I need a good deal of my available bandwidth for other purposes than TV watching....
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fsense • Feb 15, 6:04am
I didn't consider bandwidth caps since our provider has yet to do that with their DSL service. I suppose that could happen any time, however. But, it may be that the low density of DSL usage in our county might push that far into the future. We have a cabin in a rural county in the NC mountains and the telephone co-op there that provides Internet service has gotten a grant from somewhere to run fiber to every customer premisis - it will be interesting to see how that affects their DSL speed offerings and prices. I have a feeling that the move away from cable and satellite will shake things up quite a bit in the telephone industry - hope it's for the good....
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JazzGuyy • Feb 15, 6:46am
I increasingly expect cable and phone companies to become mostly Internet bandwidth providers. The satellite companies realize this and are trying to figure out a business model that will work when everyone is getting their TV via IP. I think satellite services for delivering media are doomed in North America but it will be a few more years before this happens....
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alfredpoor • Feb 16, 11:32am
JazzGuyy, I agree that the future of cable and telco is to become a data-delivery utility, and that they probably will have to get out of the business of content delivery because others will be able to do that over IP better than they can. (This is the issue that I address in my recent "Big Three Networks" post: http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/201 ... tworks.php.)

As for bandwidth caps, I don't expect it to be a problem. Market forces will prevent many carriers from imposing limits or fees that are too harsh, and we're already seeing technology developments that will help mitigate the problem in any case. H.264 compression is becoming more common, and H.265 is already on the way with the promise to provide the same quality with even fewer bits. For now, I think we'll hear a bunch of saber-rattling on the subject, but only a tiny few consu...

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About Alfred Poor

Alfred 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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