US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace

www.lightreading.com US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace

MoffettNathanson estimates that US pay-TV lost a total of about 900,000 subs in Q3 2023 – a worst-ever third quarter for the industry. That poor result left US pay-TV shrinking at a record pace of 7.3%.

US pay-TV subscriber base eroding at record pace::undefined

54 comments

It's been over 20 years since I last paid for cable TV. I'm frankly shocked it's made it this long, but I guess they can milk the boomers for another decade or two. Certainly seems to be working for the GOP anyway.
- Most of my steaming services are threatening ads now, it's absolutely no difference.
  
  I guess I'm dusting off the ol' pirate hat.
  
  Arrrr me laddies !!
- My mom loves TV and for some reason really enjoys commercials. I can't explain it. There must be some inaudible frequency in commercials that's repuslive to me, but appetitive to her.
  
  I had a good friend that loved infomercials. He’d stay up to watch the late night ones - the good ones. And he’d gleefully say that if he had a credit card and disposable income, he’d buy the garbage that they sold. Never understood that… hope you’re doing good Rojo!
Have they tried reducing their price or increasing the quality of their product?

No?
- Simpsons: You gotta help us, doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  You gotta help us, doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It's alright. They're fucking over internet subscribers just as if we still had a cable TV package.
- The day they try to bandwidth cap or piecemeal my internet service, I am becoming a Japanese terrorist
  
  Does that mean you're Japanese, or that you're going to become Japanese?
On a lark I hooked up an antenna to see what was on broadcast TV. There were like 5 pbs channels and a dedicated weather channel. For being free it was pretty good.
- PBS is actually better than ever and I prefer it over most of what gets shoved in my face on my PC.
  
  7 bucks a month for "passport" access, so PBS's streaming platform. It's damn good. NOVA episodes all over the place, news, new shows, etc. I gotta up my contribution.
  
  PBS kids is awesome. Their shows are well made and educational and available for free on their app!
- I love my antenna. I get like 20 channels. Local news, pbs, and old cartoons and sitcoms.
Coming up to 16 years since I cut the cord and hardly anyone I know that is younger has cable. It's internet and then streaming.

My father when he passed in 2013 was paying $160/mth for old HD cable for his old 35" RCA tube set before I bought him a LCD TV that required a upgrade to modern HD channels. He didn't have internet with that either. So while they were scamming him for this old 480p HD packages he wasn't alone I'm sure.

I will say at new year's I was at someone's place that only had internet and for the group of us he brought out a HD Amazon antenna to watch the ball drop at midnight on local broadcast TV.

The amount of commercials was jarring. I'm not looking forward to when they bring those to streaming services that are currently hemorrhaging billions.
- I watched Fargo last week via broadcast. 5 min to 5 min of commercial time. It's insane.
  
  I would watch about 16 minutes before giving up.
  
  In the old days flow TV was max 25-30% ads, how can people live with 50% ads? At that rate it will be "Find the content" so in a few years with 90% ads watching a 45 minute show would take 7.5 hours.
  
  The problem is that OTT services are going to the adv model too. They expect that we pay a minimum subscription cost and watch advertising.....this is crazy
  
  I'd rather do anything else.
I'd subscribe if there were anything worth watching. Occupational reality shows on every channel. Streaming has gotten so bad lately that I don't think we're going to have a culture in the future just people setting themselves on fire for TikTok clout
- Why would I pay $120-140 for cable every month and be forced to watch tons of ads when. I can pay <$20 for Hulu or NFLX a month and watch none?
  
  Give it time, forced advertising is inevitable.
- We'll line up in the online queue for "Ow My Balls 7" though. And like it.
  
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- Its currently cheaper for me to collect used laserdiscs, dvds, and blurays.
  
  People are dumping physical media, and its a firesale. For most discs its $1-5 if you know where to look.
  
  It's even cheaper to own a DVD burner. Less money spent on rent storing things.
- But not as much as the high seas me heartie...
There’s a guy on one of my FB groups who peddles those one time fee cable boxes. His an absolute legend in the group. People are probably buying those things up in cities all around the world. I only use YouTube TV for about 3 months of the year and Hulu year around otherwise I’d probably buy one.

Dude is probably going to get raided by the FBI at some point.

I hope not because fuck the cable companies, Netflix, Amazon.

Hulu’s a bro though.
- Such things are a popular malware vector too.
May it end with a whimper not a shout
I'd pay for cable for the one/two (please God, two) months my team is in the playoffs.
- I think it will become that ..... cable TV will just become a live event channel for people .... sports, concerts, public events.
  
  They'll stop using it to broadcast TV shows of any kind, including news programs because all of that can be streamed on the internet using modern systems and devices ..... why maintain old cable networks if people can just watch your programming when they want.
- There are methods to watch to games live online, for free.
  
  Yeah but not at the same quality. And my preferred game is hockey where high quality really makes a difference.
I feel like I've read this exact headline 20 times over the past couple of years.
Millennials are killing the pay TV industry.

54 comments