The Central Valley's source for Free TV.
They’ve tried to play nice. They’ve tried to play hardball. But nothing the cable companies do is stopping the affliction terrorizing the TV industry.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Winter is here for cable and satellite TV operators.
American consumers are cancelling traditional pay-TV service at a much faster rate than previously expected, according to research firm eMarketer.
In 2017, a total of 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service to date — up 33% from 16.7 million in 2016 — the researcher now predicts. That’s significantly higher than eMarketer’s prior estimate of 15.4 million cord-cutters as of the end of this year. Meanwhile, the number of “cord-nevers” (consumers who have never subscribed to pay TV) will rise 5.8% this year, to 34.4 million.
“Younger audiences continue to switch to either exclusively watching [over-the-top] video or watching them in combination with free-TV options,” said Chris Bendtsen, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer. “Last year, even the Olympics and [the U.S.] presidential election could not prevent younger audiences from abandoning pay TV.”
Overall, 196.3 million U.S. adults will have traditional pay TV (cable, satellite or telco) this year, down 2.4% compared with 2016, eMarketer predicts. By 2021, that will drop to 181.7 million, a decline of nearly 10% from 2016. The number of pay-TV viewers 55 and older will continue to rise over the next four years, while for every other age cohort the subscriber tallies will decline.
By 2021, the number of cord-cutters will nearly equal the number of people who have never had pay TV — a total of 81 million U.S. adults. That means around 30% of American adults won’t have traditional pay TV at that point, per eMarketer’s revised forecast.
There’s a caveat on these numbers: eMarketer’s estimates for pay-TV viewers do not include “virtual” internet TV services, such as Dish Network’s Sling TV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Hulu’s live TV service, or YouTube TV. But industry analysts say over-the-top TV subscription services so far have not offset declines in traditional pay television. Moreover, the cheaper OTT packages typically include fewer channels, so the growth of “skinny” TV bundles implies net household losses for many cable networks.
Seeing the writing on this wall, several TV programmers have launched or are prepping direct-to-consumer streaming services themselves. CBS in 2014 launched All Access, while Disney has set early 2018 for the debut of a no-cable-needed ESPN OTT package (although that will exclude NFL and NBA games). In addition, five media companies — A+E Networks, Viacom, Discovery, Scripps Networks Interactive and AMC Networks — reportedly have joined forces to create a non-sports streaming bundle of cable programming to be priced at under $20 per month.
For the TV biz, there’s another worrisome trend: People are watching less traditional television. For the first time, in 2017 average TV viewing in the U.S. is expected to drop below 4 hours per day, eMarketer predicts.
Average time spent watching TV (excluding digital) among American adults will drop 3.1%, to 3 hours 58 minutes this year. Digital-video consumption, meanwhile, continues to climb. U.S. adults will consume 1 hour 17 minutes of digital video per day on average in 2017 (excluding time spent viewing video on social networks), up 9.3% year over year, according to eMarketer.
With the U.S. pay-TV base eroding faster than anticipated and average TV viewing time dropping, eMarketer cut its TV ad-spending forecast for 2017 by a little over $1 billion.
This year, TV advertising will increase just 0.5%, to $71.65 billion (versus the firm’s previous $72.72 billion forecast). As a result, the TV sector’s share of total U.S. media ad spending will drop to 34.9% (vs. 36.6% in 2016) and is expected to fall below 30% by 2021.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that 22.2 million U.S. adults were expected to cancel pay-TV service in 2017; in fact, eMarketer’s estimate represents the cumulative number of cord-cutters projected by the end of the year.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
By James K. Willcox | June 27, 2017
TV antennas aren’t as outdated as you might think. If you live near a city, there’s a good chance you can get networks such as ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS, and Telemundo over the air.
Category : Cord-Cutting
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Deloitte Global predicts that the US traditional television market, the world’s largest at about $170 billion in 2016, will see erosion on at least five fronts: the number of pay-TV subscribers; pay-TV penetration as a percent of total population; average pay-TV monthly bill; consumers switching to antennas for watching TV; and live and time-shifted viewing by the overall population, and especially by trailing millennials (18-24 years old).
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Cable TV companies could lose nearly $1 billion to people cutting the cord over the next year, but some channels will be hit harder than others.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Fresno numbers are much higher than the national average. Almost four in ten homes with an 18- to 34-year-old resident rely on broadcast-only or Internet-only alternatives.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
By Adam Buckman
TVNewsCheck, September 18, 2014 3:55 PM EDT
Nielsen’s diary-based system for measuring local TV viewership — a system that has been in place in one way or another for at least 60 years — is beginning to be dismantled and will “eventually” be retired, TVNewsCheck has learned.
Category : Blog , Industry News
It’s a huge movement. It’s becoming cool not to pay for bloated cable subscriptions. The internet has made cable obsolete and cable companies know this but they don’t want you to know. Why pay for what you don’t use? It’s invisible clutter. My cable bill was $280 per month and now I pay $77 (not including the subscription services, some of which I was paying for already). You may not save as much as I’m saving because you may not have been paying as much. If you can save an amount that makes a difference in your life and you can meet your home entertainment needs, then why not give it a try? Here’s how I did it:
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Product Review
How much do you pay for cable? The first year with a new cable or satellite provider is generally affordable with the generous promotions, upgrades, and free channels provided. However, after the promotional period ends, our bills always see to creep up a bit more here and there.
Every year the bloating gets larger — an extra fee for that second box we hardly use, all the movie channels that we don’t watch often, the amount of taxes and additional fees we have to pay, and so on.
All of this leads me to my next question. Have you ever thought about cutting the cord on cable or your satellite provider?
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting
By Jill Cataldo CTW Features
April 12, 2016
Dear Jill: I would be interested to hear your thoughts on cable or satellite television. I feel like our cable service is not worth what we are paying for it, but I don’t know what other options we have other than satellite, which costs about the same. I don’t feel like we are ready to completely cancel it, but I also don’t know what to do about the bill continually spiraling. — Robin S.
I’m sure this will surprise no one, but I’m a big fan of free, over-the-air television. Our family never had cable when I was growing up (that was a luxury to enjoy at friends’ houses!) and so my perspective on paying for television is likely somewhat different than those who have never known a world without cable or satellite TV at home. Even now, we have a rooftop antenna on our house, and the antenna has been the primary source of television reception for the majority of the years we’ve lived as a family.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting
Mohu study puts pay TV near bottom of food chain
Author: Mike Farrell
Digital antenna maker Mohu released a consumer satisfaction study Wednesday that seems to fly in the face of industry efforts to improve customer service, with respondents putting their cable company just a step ahead of Congress and disease-carrying vermin.
According to the survey, 50% of respondents said they held an unfavorable view toward their cable company, compared to 72% that said they had an unfavorable opinion of Congress and 92% that said they did not enjoy the company of cockroaches. No word on where rats, ringworm, or the Senate ranked in the study.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
By Sean Pendergast
Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 6 a.m.
In team sports, to fans and spectators, ultimate victory is a simple concept. One winner takes home one trophy each season in each sport. Peyton Manning’s hoisting of the Lombardi Trophy, confetti raining down onto the Villanova basketball team after their title-winning buzzer beater — to fans, those are the images of success.
Behind the scenes, though, to the power brokers and franchise owners who move the chess pieces in our sports universe, true “victory” is far more inclusive. To them, success is measured in dollars, and while only one team can lift the trophy at the end of each season, for several years now, the money has piled up sky-high for every single team owner and major college president, regardless of how good or bad their teams have been.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Updated: Ratings analysis shows viewers prefer watching NFL on broadcast over cable
1/19/2016 02:57:00 PM Eastern Last updated at 1/19/2016 03:38:38PM
Scott Clarke / ESPN Images
As the NFL playoffs reach the semifinals, the big winner so far is local broadcast television.
Viewers prefer to watch the games on broadcast TV over cable, according to an analysis of ratings from Nielsen data conducted by the local broadcast nonprofit trade association TVB.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News , What's On TV
So you’re an AT&T U-verse customer and you flipped on your TV to watch this month’s NFL playoffs — only to discover a static screen and a message that “This channel is temporarily unavailable and we are working to return it to you soon.”
You might have checked the news and learned the channel was blacked out due to a transmission fee dispute between WSVN, Miami’s Fox affiliate, and AT&T.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News , Product Review
By Anne Badalamenti
GoMohu.Com
Time Warner Cable Outage Strikes Carolinas
Over the weekend, thousands of Time Warner Cable subscribers experienced cable outages, internet outages, and even phone outages. The outages lasted for hours. People were frustrated they were missing Week 16 NFL action, unable to stream Netflix, etc. And understandably given the ever-increasing cost of cable and internet. This type of outage is nothing new, unfortunately. They seem to occur with such frequency that folks acknowledge it’s part of the package when they sign up with a provider like TWC.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
By December 21, 2015
For a bunch of the big cable and satellite companies, it does indeed look like a very merry Christmas and a happy new year are on the horizon — but consumers can be forgiven for feeling a lot more grinchy about it. That’s because all the new nickels, dimes, and dollars that are going to line businesses’ big virtual pockets are coming directly from subscribers in the form of unasked-for price hikes.
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting , Industry News
Lloyd “Sonny” Crile traded his satellite TV service for a regular antenna last summer and says there’s no way he’s going back.
“To get the TV channels we wanted (on satellite), we had to take a package giving us about 200 stations,” said Crile, of Oxford. “When we really took a look at what we were watching, other than regular TV, it was only three or four of the 200.”
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting
A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers finds dissatisfaction with bundle is driving customers to join cord-cutting trend
Category : Blog , Cord-Cutting
“More consumers are looking to cut the cord, giving up their cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of either over-the-top or over-the-air options, according to a new survey by TiVo’s Digitalsmiths unit.
Category : Cord-Cutting