inb4 'i don't even own a teevee!'
November 24, 2013 10:50 AM Subscribe

TV is dying, and here are the stats that prove it.
posted by yeoz (122 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite

In America. Cable/ satellite/broadband prices are silly, for average service.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:52 AM on November 24, 2013 [5 favorites]

I'm looking for a downside to this.
posted by philip-random at 10:53 AM on November 24, 2013 [12 favorites]

I'm looking for a downside to this.

It's because are getting poorer. So there is that.
posted by srboisvert at 10:58 AM on November 24, 2013 [8 favorites]

According to the most recent statistics in 2012, the average American still spends 34 hours a week watching TV. I have a lot more faith in media companies finding new ways to monetize that habit than I do that habit changing in a way that leads to the death of the industry.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:02 AM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I thought TV was meant to be killing Hollywood in terms of creativity.
posted by acb at 11:04 AM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, it is, but people aren't subscribing to cable to watch it. What's the point of paying for 80 channels of reality shows about, what, people who run pawn shops, and jewelry shopping channels, to see a few hours of decent shows a month?
posted by thelonius at 11:07 AM on November 24, 2013 [20 favorites]

They could easily reverse this decline by charging less, say $8/month like Netflix. The problem is they are stuck maximizing short term revenue and making huge profits.
posted by bhnyc at 11:13 AM on November 24, 2013 [5 favorites]

We basically have cable for HBO and baseball and Dr. Who.
posted by octothorpe at 11:13 AM on November 24, 2013 [6 favorites]

Oh they had to throw in the LeBron shade, didn't they.

Jordan couldn't defend LeBron, period.
posted by Teakettle at 11:17 AM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I thought TV was meant to be killing Hollywood in terms of creativity.

Anecdata 1: the movie production company I work for has decided their future is going to be in... television.

Anecdata 2: I, er, don't even own a TV (honest!).
posted by progosk at 11:18 AM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I remember pretty specifically paying TCI cable (which is now Comcast) $15 a month in the mid-eighties for a full cable package including HBO. That's about $30 in today's dollars. That was back when CNN, Discovery, TLC and A&E were actually watchable. There are a ton of more channels but they're all pretty much the same and mostly suck.
posted by octothorpe at 11:24 AM on November 24, 2013 [7 favorites]

In about 1994, I bought a 32" Sony Trinitron XBR, widely considered the best CRT TV ever made. I figured I should buy a really good TV that would last for a long time, at least long enough to get over to the digital HDTV switchover. Then when HD LCD TVs got cheap enough, I'd buy one. I had a Sony TiVo and at one time, DirectTV and Cable.

Well that was about the last time I had any money to blow on expensive electronics. Now I'm so broke I can't even afford cable TV. When TV broadcasting went digital, I got a coupon for a free digital receiver and converter. Apparently I live in a dead zone, I can only pick up the local PBS channel, it plays for about 15 seconds and then drops out for about 15 seconds, over and over.

So since 2009, I have had no live TV in my house. I do have a huge Sony Trinitron XBR taking up a large amount of floor space. It is absolutely worthless. I'd have to pay a $25 disposal fee to ditch it in the city dump. Now that flat screen HDTVs are getting cheap enough, I'd consider buying one. But I still would have no OTA broadcast signal at my home, and no cable TV. So there is no point in buying a new TV.

But I do have a nice (but antiquated) Apple 30" Cinema Display, and a broadband connection that I struggle to pay for each month. And torrents. My Cinema Display is way higher rez than 1080p HDTVs.

The only people I know who buy Cable and Satellite TV are sports freaks. The even the most basic packages they buy are loaded with expensive sports channels. That's the first thing I remove from rotation (along with Spanish channels, Country Music, shopping channels, and a few others). Why the hell would I want to pay for shopping channels that are 100% commercials? The only channel I would pay for is NHK. I could get it through DirecTV. Last time I checked, it was available for $30 per month, and you needed the full basic package, plus a second dish to receive it from their second satellite.

This is why TV is dead. Cable and Sat companies want to bundle a bunch of crap and shove it down your throat, and then make it impossibly unaffordable to get what you really want. OTA only works in major metro areas. The media companies are fighting the internet delivery systems, they think it will kill them. They don't understand they're already dead.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:29 AM on November 24, 2013 [12 favorites]

They could easily reverse this decline by charging less, say $8/month like Netflix.

I'm a cord-cutter with access to more televised entertainment than I could possibly ever watch thanks to my $8/month Netflix subscription. Frankly, if it cost four times as much, I would still pay it. And that's why I think Netflix won't cost $8/month for much longer.
posted by escabeche at 11:35 AM on November 24, 2013 [13 favorites]

Jordan couldn't defend LeBron, period.

How old are both of them? Also, Lebron couldn't guard Jordan, period, either.

I notice that Business Insider conveniently left off the NFL, which is getting monster ratings.
posted by cashman at 11:43 AM on November 24, 2013

I'm looking for a downside to this.

I have been watching the demise of cable tv with no small amount of schaudenfreude, given the rising cost and decreasing quality over the past few decades. And I also pat myself on the back for my ability to remove television from my own personal hierarchy of needs. Whereas I once felt desperate to hang on to my "stories," now I can take or leave them depending on their cost and availability.

But then I realize that I am way more dependent on the internet than I ever was on television, and that my internet provider is also my former cable company. And unlike television, I need the internet to do my job. Not answering emails when I'm not in my office is unacceptable to my employer. I keep in touch with my friends and family primarily through email and social media. Much of my music, library, and documents are on one cloud or another. And I get that pathetic, itchy feeling when I'm offline for too long.

And if internet service goes the way of cable - decreasing quality, increasing costs, fewer options, and more profit-boosting crap companies can get away with because they can, I'm not just inconvenienced, I'm fucked. They had control over my entertainment options - now they have control over much of my life.

So basically, I feel like my dealer* is going out of the marijuana business, which is fine, because his merchandise was crap anyway, but now he's become my heroin supplier.

*I don't have a dealer and don't do drugs.
posted by bibliowench at 11:53 AM on November 24, 2013 [60 favorites]

I'm waiting for Youtube to finally get its act together and offer channels, shows and their own productions like Netflix does with Orange Is the New Black. It's probably already in the pipeline but man is Google's time to market slow. At the very least they should have allowed partners to set a price for their own freaking content instead of being dependent on just ads.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:54 AM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I was just a "Nielson Family" this summer. I took satisfaction in stating my number of televisions at "0", and then going into some detail about my favorite shows.

Also, they gave me a $5 bill. Which, ok!
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:55 AM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

Man, that world series viewership chart, with spikes up in 2004 and 2008/2009 kinda proves what I've always assumed: baseball is a spectator sport for the unemployed.
posted by pwnguin at 12:00 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Almost all of the cable and sat stuff is "bundles" and "tiers" and "packages." And it many cases, it order to get Channel A or specific Package B, you *must* have (and pay for) "Tier A+" or something.

I've always wondered why I can't have a la cart for my cable and pay appropriately. Say, $3/month per channel...and then just get the channels you actually want.

Of course, the companies make money from all those junk channels and get to count your eyeballs...so they don't want any option to opt out....
posted by CrowGoat at 12:04 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't think you can buy analog TV anymore. Everything's MPEG these days.

My computer monitor (which conforms to 1080p) is other things apart from a television; in what sense is it not a television?
posted by LogicalDash at 12:06 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I had no TV since having my own place (1989) with a brief rabbit ear experience of one year in Montreal where I could get 4 channels and watch star trek and the news (and Jo Jo the psychic!)

In the past few years I have suddenly watched lots of TV again due to the internet.

Not sure it is helping my life get better... like bibliowench we use the internet for school and work, not sure I could live without it.

But there is this family, living like it is 1986, for inspiration!
posted by chapps at 12:08 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

We pay $17 a month for Netflix and Hulu, and we have an Amazon Prime subscription. That's probably a little redundant, but the cost is low enough that I haven't bothered to figure out which one to drop yet. Everything plays through Roku on our five year old 42 inch Samsung 720p plasma, which I am more than happy with. If we really want to keep up with something as it airs, we just buy it, usually on iTunes. Even factoring that in, we have much less cost for a superior experience. We watch what we want when we want it. We don't have to mess with recording anything. Shows we pay for we now own and can watch again and again. And my three little kids love it because they can watch any episode of any show they like at any time. Not only are we paying about a third of what we paid for satellite, we like what we are getting better. Not to mention that everything we watch on the TV we can also watch on our computer, phones, iPad and iPod. It's a completely consistent experience across screens. I could spring for a satellite or cable subscription, but why? Superior experience for less money. This was originally a cost-cutting measure during our poor years, but barring some huge development, cable lost us forever.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:09 PM on November 24, 2013 [8 favorites]

I'm looking for a downside to this.

I can't find it right now, but I read an article a few months ago that drew a direct line from the bundled-package approach of cable (that we all ostensibly hate) to the ability of minor channels, specifically AMC, to produce the recent hit "quality" shows (that we all ostensibly love).

It goes something like this. When cable crams a bundle of channels down our throats, it is a combination of a few channels that could pay their own way if sold a la carte, and a whole bunch that couldn't - that would just wither and die for lack of revenue of not bundled. The thing is, sports channels and HBO are basically the only ones that can pay their own way - everyone else is getting subsidized by the bundle approach. One such subsidized channel, AMC, decided to use part of their subsidy to take a chance - and it is a BIG chance - to produce some new serial dramas, like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. While these particular shows eventually got big enough that they could sell enough ads to justify their own existence, AMC still needs a subsidy for most of the rest of its programming. And it certainly never could've afforded to make them in the fist place but for the bundle subsidy.

House of Cards and similar shows are proving that new interesting programming can come from Netflix, and god willing, we will get more good shows that way in the future. But at the moment, a lot of good programming comes from the bundling subsidy that we are basically trying to kill.

(All that said, I'm still not sure it's a bad thing; I personally bought almost every episode of mad men on Amazon video, and only caught on to Breaking Bad once 80% of it was posted to Netflix. So there are other ways to fund these shows, if the producers are paying attention...)
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 12:14 PM on November 24, 2013 [10 favorites]

I'm pretty much obsessed with television, and I've never paid for cable.

The only people who do are the sports freaks, I thought.

Not even them sometimes, which is nice for those of us who work at sports bars.
posted by rue72 at 12:15 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I recently stopped watching tv, sold both my cars, eliminated internet, except my iphone, and would like to leave the U.S. Where is that fork?
posted by JohnR at 12:21 PM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

And that's why I think Netflix won't cost $8/month for much longer.

Or they'll start having more and more great movies like - Sharkmorphers 3: Dark Retaliation.
posted by FJT at 12:21 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I got rid of cable when I last moved and haven't really missed it. I have Netflix (both discs and streaming) and it has pretty much anything I want, provided I don't mind waiting until a year or so after it airs. The only show I watch that I couldn't get elsewhere is Jeopardy, and I solved that by sticking a straightened out paper clip into the back of the TV (instant antenna!).

Every so often I realize just how much pop culture I miss out on by not having it. A show has to reach a certain threshold of popularity (Duck Dynasty/Honey Boo Boo for example) before I hear about it, but more and more I realize that I just don't care and wonder why I ever did.
posted by fishmasta at 12:27 PM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

I pay Time Warner too much money each month because they have the best Internet speeds locally, by far. I really don't care about 99% of the tv channels, but I can't have one without the other, and I do take in a few hours of sports a week. I'd be perfectly happy if my lineup consisted of Color Weather Radar, the 3 major networks, Fox Sports Southwest (Spurs!) Comedy Central, ESPN & TNT. I've got all those plus another 900 meaningless channels of garbage, but I'm hooked on my 15 mbs Internet connection & my relatively stable ip address.

Google Fiber is fishing for potential customers in Austin though, so TW will lose me if they really do hit my neighborhood in 2015 & I can still get the basics.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:31 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

An aside to charlie don't surf: We recently got a $30 indoor HDTV antenna, and it made our TV useful again for picking up free broadcast channels. Some slightly pricier models with amplifiers boast 50-mile or longer ranges. If you've got the tube taking up space anyway, it might be worth it to get some use out of it. Not free, but way cheaper than a cable subscription.
posted by mbrubeck at 12:34 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

But at the moment, a lot of good programming comes from the bundling subsidy that we are basically trying to kill.

Yep, that's the basic argument U.S. cable companies have been pushing, and asking us to accept at face value, for years now. It assumes the current state of affairs in the U.S., which arose due to a very specific history, is absolutely the only way smaller channels could ever create profitable quality programming. That's a pretty big assumption.

Let's see the experiments that will prove it useful or not, starting with allowing a wider selection of bundling options - sports or no-sports being the most obvious. Thank goodness cable companies are increasingly getting their heads out of their asses and are launching trials and seem to be growing more open to the idea (at the very least, we know they're certainly not above using it as a snarky bargaining chip in those ridiculous blackout arguments with the networks).
posted by mediareport at 12:42 PM on November 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

It's been 2 years since I walked away from TV. The only thing I really needed it for was watching golf, but it turned out to be a blessing. I now watch most tournaments with my mom at her place. I get to spend some quality time with my mother - and she usually makes a pie for me. I don't recall my cable provider ever making me a pie.
posted by davebush at 12:47 PM on November 24, 2013 [28 favorites]

I'm curious how long before HBO cuts the ties and begins offering direct subscriptions. It's so clear they set up HBO Go so when the time comes, they can just take subscriptions directly. But I'm sure the cable companies have them locked into some sort of non-compete. But the HBO people, unlike the cable companies is forward looking. Surely they have some kind of minimum subscriber clause.

I want to cancel cable, DH likes the convenience. I think it's not worth the $80 a month... We watch a dwindling number of shows on TV that it is just a wasted expense IMHO.

But like others, we get out broadband through the cable company. I worry that they'll just do the same thing with data... Rachet the prices up until they are back to where they were or find some other way to screw the customer.

I do have more than a little bit of schadenfreude to see Time Warner Cable had the biggest loss of cable subscribers. They are lying shit bags that manipulate numbers and abuse both employees and customers. I worked there eons ago, and they lied to prospective employees about the commissions up could make. They tried to eek whatever free work they could out of you.

For instance, you had to be logged into your phone and computer no more than 30 seconds after your start time or you'd be considered late. But, you couldn't log in earlier than 7 minutes before your start time because otherwise they'd have to pay you an extra 15 minutes. Since many employees bused in and buses are notoriously sketchy, that meant many people arriving significantly early and doing nothing. You were also expected to have your computer up and running before the start of your shift, but between the slow computers and the shitty network login, it could easily take 15 minutes. Even though the law in my state required an employee be paid for any time it takes to set up equipment (and didn't like being reminded of that).

My favorite moment though was during training when they explained the call metrics which you will be judged rewarded by (and if you've never worked in a place with a call center, it's ridiculously unhelpful to the customer, but every second is analyzed and counted.). We were taken on a scale each week based on our percentage of time on the phone. I realized the number they had on the screen would mean that one would have to skip at least one of the two company mandated breaks to meet that percentage.

The stare I got from the manager said everything I needed to know. Yes, that was by design. What she actually said was she wasn't sure about the math, and she'd get back to me. Because I was a rabble rouser, I followed up on it. Fun, she kept forgetting to look into it. When I offered to show her the math, she wasnt interested.

My favorite part though was if you talked about salary and raises with job comparisons, they'd pull a "well we're competitive for this position in cable companies in the area." wait a minute.... You're the only cable company in the area...

From the inside, the price increases each year were cynical and calculated, but they tried to make it sound like a necessary increase. I was there only through one increase, but from talking to long term employees, that was how the all were handled. We were given talking points about the increase, which included thing like gas prices, network licensing fees, and wage increases to stay competitive. The later of which no one actually saw.

I only worked there a short while, and this is just a small list of the crap that went on there.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 12:56 PM on November 24, 2013 [18 favorites]

People are getting rid of cable because even an idiot can see how much they're being gouged when the monthly payment comes around. Is it really hard for the companies to figure that out?
posted by Melismata at 1:00 PM on November 24, 2013 [10 favorites]

Cable and internet together was just too expensive for me so when I kept declining all these supposedly great cable package deals from my internet provider, they kept bumping me up to higher level salespeople who could offer even better deals.

I now pay $10 for a tiny package that includes broadcast, HBO, and Starz channels (because GoT). It's almost like an a la carte option. But, even now, I often consider dropping that in favour of Netflix (until I'm reminded of GoT).
posted by _paegan_ at 1:13 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

They are lying shit bags that manipulate numbers and abuse both employees and customers.

Not to put TWC off the hook, but these sorts of tactics were the exact same thing my old company (large manufacturer) did for our call center. In fact they specifically made it harder for employees to clock in by removing the digital card punch-in by the front door and telling employees to log in through their computers, because they didn't want employees to talk to each other on the way in. I was also there for a major shift where they switched from long term full timers with real product experience, to a bunch of temps reading from a script.
posted by FJT at 1:17 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I get cable with required fees at my residence. I probably wouldn't get it otherwise. But you still can't get all the sports via Netflix (unless you, say, have a convenient parent or relative nearby, which means you are not doing without TV altogether, technically or your viewing could still count for ratings purposes), and a few channels are still excellent and unmatched thus far on Netflix or Amazon or what have you: the incomparable, commercial-free Turner Classic Movies and the live music channel Palladia are two of my favorite examples.
posted by raysmj at 1:42 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I got rid of TV right before the first Reagan election.

It went out in the yard and was shot shortly after the "there you go again" debate. Not because Reagan said those words- Because of the talking heads dissecting the debate over the next few days repeatedly claiming it to be a wonderful, telling argument.

I used to have people who got to know me at work give me TVs quite frequently (I did property management then, so I met a LOT of new people as the buildings would turn over tenants). Same scenario, over and over again... They were getting a new TV, knew I didn't have one and assumed it must have been because I couldn't afford one...

I thanked them all politely, stored them and sold 'em off at my yearly yard sale. Usualy at least 2 sets per sale, once after flat screens started it was 6!

I didn't have Internet either for most of this period in my life, and smart phones hadn't been invented yet.

Reality 24-7-365. If everybody did it, there wouldn't be any room or privacy for me outdoors... So the rest of you, please keep watching cable and cruising the net.
posted by bert2368 at 1:49 PM on November 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

I can't wait for our DirecTV contract to be up so we can abandon ship. (We may even take the plunge early and just eat the damn penalty they'll throw at us, just to be done with it.)
posted by scody at 1:49 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not to put TWC off the hook, but these sorts of tactics were the exact same thing my old company (large manufacturer) did for our call center. In fact they specifically made it harder for employees to clock in by removing the digital card punch-in by the front door and telling employees to log in through their computers, because they didn't want employees to talk to each other on the way in. I was also there for a major shift where they switched from long term full timers with real product experience, to a bunch of temps reading from a script.

No doubt. I've been around other call centers before and since, and it seems like these kind of practices are normal. Time Warner was the first place I had been that seemed to take them and ramp them up to evil. Specifically all the things they did that were just skating the edge of legal and relied heavily on employee ignorance. And their system of promoting employees, or rather keeping employees from being promoted, relied heavily on privilege. If you had your own car, you could get there on time and not get an occurrence or incidence or whatever they called it. If had any occurrences within 6 months of any opportunity, being promotion, different job in the company, or just yearly review, it was counted against you.

If you were poor, had to rely on the bus, you had to work extra hard to make sure you got there on time, and even waste much of your own time ensuring that. If you were a single parent and your kid gets sick, you could kiss any chance of promotion goodbye.

And I'm sure none of those things are unique to them, but just an example of how I will not be sad for the pennies they lose. They treated employees like they treated customers; people to be screwed in order to make a nice profit. Seeing as how they turned off CBS.com when they were fighting over licensing rights, I thing we will see a long list of abuses and limits on the broadband service if they can bring eyeballs back to their tv, or have a more expensive broadband service they corner you into. Or like the streaming video caching, which they swear isn't intentional, but they do suspiciously benefit from it.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 1:52 PM on November 24, 2013 [5 favorites]

What we are talking about is the "push" model is dying, where you subscribe to a channel and they "broadcast" on their schedule. But even then I kinda feel like "push" cable is going to remain viable in some form way into the future even if it is not recognizable as "broadcast tv". Maybe it becomes a system of high speed burst transmissions to a local media server. It isn't like TWC is going to curl up and die because nobody really wants Style Tv. They have the most flexible product imaginable.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:52 PM on November 24, 2013

DATA: Is there something wrong?
SONNY: Wrong? Only that your computer here fixed about the best martini I have ever had. I just might get to like this place. Let's see if the Braves are on. How do you turn on this teevee?
RIKER: TV?
SONNY: Yeah, the boob tube. I'd like to see how the Braves are doing after all this time. Probably still finding ways to lose.
DATA: I believe he means television, sir. That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year two thousand forty.
SONNY: Well, what do you guys do? I mean, you don't drink, and you ain't got no TV. Must be kind of boring, ain't it?

-- Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1 Episode 25, "The Neutral Zone"

When I first saw this episode, I remember thinking it seemed unrealistic that somehow TV-watching would cease as early as 2040. Now I'm thinking Data's date might be right on the nose.
posted by General Tonic at 2:25 PM on November 24, 2013 [15 favorites]

Just about two years ago I discovered that my parents, who suffer from dementia, were paying over $100 a month for the three cable channels they enjoyed.
Fuck that noise. I called Comcast and shut it off, bought a Roku box and subscribed to Netflix.
There weren't any complaints until they'd watched every episode of Quincy 8 or 9 times, at which point I moved them to assisted living.

My personal opinion is that subscribing to cable is like allowing someone to hang their butt out of your set and take a 24/7 shit on your living room floor.
No thanks.
posted by Pudhoho at 2:28 PM on November 24, 2013 [20 favorites]

TV free since 2000, 13 years now. My question is what happened in 2011? These stats are fascinating they show something dramatic happened in 2011. I'm thinking iPad (introduced April 2010) reached critical mass with other technologies.
posted by stbalbach at 2:32 PM on November 24, 2013

An aside to charlie don't surf: We recently got a $30 indoor HDTV antenna, and it made our TV useful again for picking up free broadcast channels.

Yeah, I got one of those before giving up on OTA HDTV. Without the antenna, I get nothing. With the antenna, I get 15 seconds of reception, it breaks up for 15 seconds, repeating forever. I would blame the converter, but it seems to work for most people. Oh well, not the first time I threw good money after bad.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:34 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the article—Cable TV AND broadband internet are both declining? How can this be true?—and then I spotted the key phrase:

People who are unplugging from both cable TV and broadband internet are likely going to free wifi.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Maybe in the United States! Trying to subsist off free wifi in Canada would result in disaster. I'm not even convinced that most cities in the States are this way, given that free access to wifi is often actually gated off by requiring the user to do something at that business (whether that be social media check-ins or actually buying a product), but I don't actually spend much time in the States so I wouldn't know.

People I know who have to rely on free wifi don't do so because they like the idea of cutting the cord; they do so because they literally can't afford broadband internet. That's less a "cable TV is in trouble!" trend and more a "holy shit we've sure got a lot of poor people these days" trend (though to be fair: based on anecdotal evidence). I suppose the two are occurring in tandem but they're not the same thing.
posted by chrominance at 2:38 PM on November 24, 2013 [8 favorites]

Good fucking riddance. Read some books.
posted by Decani at 2:52 PM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

Cable/ satellite/broadband prices are silly, for average service.

It's beyond silly. That it is entirely possible -- not even particularly unlikely, either -- that a person might spend more on cable per month than on food is pretty much the most ludicrous thing ever.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:54 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Free wifi? Shit, the only people I know that can pull that off are those in apartments or townhouse/condo and it has to depend on a neighbor with an unlocked wifi account. I live in a small town, residential neighborhood and there isn't even a coffee shop to surf at. You have to have broadband, which is from the rural telephone coop. But even when we lived in the Twin Cities, surfing off someone's wifi was pretty rare. I can't imagine watching all of your TV while sitting in a coffee shop or bookstore.
posted by Ber at 3:01 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I own cable TV for the Wealth channel.
posted by Renoroc at 3:08 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Actually, there were two complaints.
First from their caregiver who would park mom and dad in front of the set and watch the food channels, HGTV, and
the hoarders + OMG! My triplets each have two heads! channel for the next 8 hours. Talk about degenerate art...

The second occurred when I called Comcast:

Me: We're paying $129 and and only watch three channels. Why is that?

CC: Rattles off list of bundles...

Me: Is there any way we can get basic + X, Y & Z?

CC: Nope.

Me: Ok then, just turn it off. All of it.

CC: But then you won't have any television.

Me: So? You gonna send the firemen to my house?

CC: What!?!?

Me: Nevermind. Just cancel our subscription please.

CC: We can offer you...

Me: Do I have to speak with your supervisor?

CC: Uh... 15 seconds of keyboard tapping

Me: Is it turned off?

CC: Yes, er...

Me: Great! Thanks. Have a nice day!

/dialtone
posted by Pudhoho at 3:18 PM on November 24, 2013 [9 favorites]

Cable companies are interesting in how they have chosen to act like (as so aptly said above) total shitbags. The big broadcasters (CBS, NBC, etc) were just as greedy in their day, but managed to maintain a veneer of normal corporate behavior, as do most of the companies we interact with. The cable companies, on the other hand, long ago dropped any pretense of pleasantry and decent service. They are the TicketMasters of media, using monopoly power to extract payments.

So no, it doesn't surprise me at all that people are grasping at other options.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:22 PM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

You realize of course that when you call the cable company, you don't actually talk to the CEO, right? You're really just being a dick to some poor schlub.
posted by Brocktoon at 3:33 PM on November 24, 2013 [10 favorites]

In the Steve Jobs book there is a point where Jobs is sick at home and turns on the cable tv. Before long he is placing a call to the cable company's CEO who, of course, takes the call. Steve Jobs? Cool! I wonder what he wants? Jobs proceeds to unload a classic "THIS IS SHIT!" rant on the guy.
posted by R. Mutt at 3:56 PM on November 24, 2013 [12 favorites]

I'm looking for a downside to this.

Same here. Well, the causes might be a downside, but I think a lot of social and political problems are ultimately traceable to the cultural homogenizing effects of television. Not that those problems don't have other sources, but the existence of nationwide services that repeat the same things to hundreds of millions of people helps to greatly shape consensus. Just look at what Fox News has done.

Of course, a lot of worthy things will perish in the coming fire. But imagine what could be done with all that dark cable, and what uses all those dark tv sets could be put to.

You're really just being a dick to some poor schlub.

That schlub is being paid to try to retain customers by any means possible. Pudholio called for a specific purpose, and was being kept from that purpose by corporate will. The phonebank employee was caught in the middle, which sucks for him, yes. But the reason he's put in that position isn't because of the customer but corporate management, which sees their phone representatives less as their public face to their customers, and more a tool to limit customer loss. In brief: yes, it sucks, but it's not Pudholio's fault.
posted by JHarris at 3:58 PM on November 24, 2013 [8 favorites]

Brockton, you're right and you're wrong. The company tries so many manipulative tactics (and that's not just cable companies) that busting through the script is sometimes the only way to get things done. If enough people ignore those tactics, they'll change. I think part of the problem is that people have been taught you need to be polite to the person on the other end of the line. It's the same reason people don't outright hang up on telemarketers. It's companies taking advantage of the social contract to be nice and hear the other person out. Fortunately, younger folks and kids growing up don't have that overarching need to sit through a schpeel because they don't use phones.

Just like many companies, they make you jump through hoops to cancel because they don't want you to cancel. I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to long into your account and cancel service. Maybe you can now, but I know for a long time that was resisted specifically because they wanted to run their "but do you really want to be without cable?" sales pitch.

Incidentally, that's the best way to get a good price on cable. Call to cancel. But you have to actually mean it, and risk that the customer service person isn't lazy and doesn't just actually cancel you. What you want is to actually cancel, and be sent to the retention department (probably a different exterior facing name). If you are in too much of a hurry, and force the CSR, they'll close it, and not offer you a better deal. If you sound like you're fishing for a better deal, they'll have a small deal. Your best option is to say you're switching to att uverse or dish, where they try and convince you to cancel that and stick with cable.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 4:01 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Or they'll start having more and more great movies like - Sharkmorphers 3: Dark Retaliation.

Very disappointed that this is not a real movie. Don't tease like that.
posted by kafziel at 4:18 PM on November 24, 2013 [7 favorites]

We've actually gotten good results by calling the cable company and complaining that we're paying too much money. My wife called a few months ago to try to get a smaller bundle that cost less and managed to get a bigger bundle that cost less. They took off something like $40 a month and added Starz and Showtime. Doesn't make much sense but it's worth calling to negotiate because there's all kinds of secret bundles that they don't tell you about unless you ask.--octothorpe

Yeah, a couple of my big complaints about cable are
1. They don't give you real prices, but they give you a price good for 1 year or 6 months. "That price sounds good, if I knew I only had 6 months to live. Can you give me the real price I'll be paying for the next 20 years?" "I'm sorry, we don't give out that information." (They've actually gotten better at giving their outrageous real prices in the fine print. I wonder if a law was passed.)
2. They have three prices: the introductory price, the real price most every average joe pays, and the price for people who complain effectively enough. You actually have to reach the 'customer retention' person. None of their other employees can do this and they won't tell you how to get to this person. I mean, what the heck is this? It is like haggling at some third world outdoor market, not buying a service from a national company.

Maybe these games work with most of their customers. But it turns me off enough that I've never bothered getting cable.
posted by eye of newt at 4:30 PM on November 24, 2013 [7 favorites]

The negotiation works better if you can threaten them with going to a different provider because they really don't want to lose you to a competitor. Some of my neighbors have done that but stooopid Verizon still hasn't strung fiber on my side of the street yet. The even side of the street got FIOS TV/Phone/Internets almost three years ago but the odd side still hasn't. No idea what the hold up is and no one at Verizon will tell me anything even though they send me flyers in the mail at least once a week asking me to sign up for FIOS even though they won't actually let me have it.
posted by octothorpe at 4:40 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't have cable and every time I have to mess with it at my mother's (in her assisted living) I find it so bogglingly complicated and time-consuming for the amount of TV I watch that I can't imagine paying for it. I'm old enough to remember '57 channels and nothing's on' except now it seems like 570.
posted by immlass at 4:40 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Let's make this clear: Time Warner Cable is no longer a part of Time Warner, parent company of HBO. They 'split' about the same time Comcast took the opposite tack and acquired NBC Universal. They're considering changing their name, but they're also considering getting acquired by the smaller cable company Charter (part owned by Paul Allen, the less-evil co-founder of Microsoft). I hope that makes things (relatively) clear(er).
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:57 PM on November 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

What oneswellfoop said. Time Warner Cable is no longer part of the same company HBO is, and they have been this way for a while. From all accounts, HBO is well aware they will need to switch models, it's just a question of timing (and probably contracts). Which makes sense why they pushed their app so hard, even at a time when the only thing the app got you was the same content you had on your tv.

I will try to prod dear husband into this thread, he was at TWC for close to 10 years, and went to an industry conference specifically dealing with the future of cable and the competition from over the top content providers. Everyone seemed to recognize it was a thing; but from his account, it sounded like a lot of talk, but not a lot of momentum to do much about it.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 5:07 PM on November 24, 2013

Moved into this house in late 1996. Did not ever get cable -- tv requires a satellite dish and tree felling because I live in a valley with poor satellite line-o-sight but eventually DSL came to my house. I shop at tpb for my television needs, coupled with amazon instant video (fast and easy, but TOTALLY needs to have a "I own the whole season, please marathon this for me" button) when I'm too lazy to download. I did buy a small flatscreen when they got cheap, but it turned out that I watched everything on my laptop so eventually I gave it away.
posted by which_chick at 5:08 PM on November 24, 2013

Comcast called me a few months ago to upsell some cable TV package (I have an internet-only subscription). Out of some kind of perverse curiosity and boredom, I decided to play along with the salesperson and not just hang up on them.

The catch: I don't own a TV.

I actually told them I had no TV right up front. There was a brief pause, then the salesperson went ahead with the script, describing the various sports packages, etc. After hearing each option, I reiterated that I owned no TV.

This went on for more than 10 minutes.

I don't think their script has an actual end-condition other than the customer buying something or hanging up. It might have been funny as part of some comedy sketch. But this being real life, it was fairly tragic.
posted by ryanrs at 5:40 PM on November 24, 2013 [17 favorites]

I had a conversation similar to Pudhoho's only in reverse.

I signed up for internet-only service from Comcast since my DSL line went from almost 6 M down to barely above ISDN speeds and the most I could get out of AT&T was indifference.

I got called at least twice and was told that I somehow "forgot" to get TV along with the internet and they seemed really dismayed when I told them I didn't need TV since I can get any show I want for free Netflix for $8 a month or if I wanted to watch something first-run I could pay about $30 for a season from iTunes or Amazon Instant.

I definitely spend less a year for Comcast internet and paying by the season for shows I want to see than I would for a cable TV package.

I still own a TV though because watching things on a portable or sitting in front of my computer is not fun.
posted by Gev at 5:41 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I got rid of TV because dammit, not enough shows I actually WOULD watch, and waaaaay toooo much Cringe-worthy Crap.

First I got rid of TV. Then since mostly I'm over at Mr. Roquettes place, and I do have a cheap mobile phone, I saw no further need for the land line. When I need to talk with my big sister, or my little sister, it's cool, I can call on a weekend from Mr. Roquette's land-line.
OTA TV has been such a m****f**** frustration that when there was a game he wanted to see, I offered to treat him to a sober outing at the nearest sports bar. He decided it wasn't really worth the agro.
I can sometimes watch classic movies on YouTube. If Charter raises my Internet too much, I will just get any decent phone plan that truly has all you can eat data as in 24/7/365.

Charter is nearly as scummy as all the other cable companies. I used to get calls trying to get me to bundle, but Hell No!

I had cable as part if my rent when I lived in Sarajevo. Many more channels and programming from all over the place.

It wasn't just the novelty, there really were better shows on offer.
Yes there was sports, mainly soccer, and European style hand-ball, and basketball.

I am not a sports person. I used the cheesy horrible American shows. They had sub-titles. I learned more Bosnian that way.

I think television needs to wildly change in order not to die.

A la carte TV would be an excellent idea.

The moment the primary phone company here starts offering reduced price WiFi, Charter will go completely out of my life.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 6:02 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ah, Comcast. My favorite response to people who believe government can't run things well-- would you rather your health insurance be run by Comcast? (Of course, health insurers are just as bad, but for whatever reason that doesn't seem to be as well known).

(Yeah, no TV. I am however typing here thanks to a Comcast internet-only setup; we get a flyer at least once a month asking if we'd like to try a TV package.)
posted by nat at 6:03 PM on November 24, 2013 [7 favorites]

we get a flyer at least once a month asking if we'd like to try a TV package

Once a month? I'd love once a month. I get something from Time Warner at least once a week asking me to add one service or another. That's in addition to the weekly AT&T mailings desperately trying to get me to buy U-Verse or something. Telecoms know the internet has turned them into just another dumb pipe like other utilities and will do anything to delay that. Imagine if your water utility was pestering you every week to add a third Diet Pepsi line to your house.
posted by fishmasta at 6:18 PM on November 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

If I could manage to get Dr Who and the NBA a la carte I would be verrry happy. We currently have a plan with Verizon, where we get Comcast Sportsnet, but would have to upgrade to a much more expensive package to get BBC America. So we looked at Xfinity. They have a package with BBC America that is comparable to what we pay now...but we would have to upgrade to get sports. I just want lunatic Time Lords and the Celtics, without going bankrupt. Is that so wrong?
posted by Biblio at 6:20 PM on November 24, 2013

I still keep my TV because we like to watch things together and laptop screens don't accomodate that. We got a used first-gen Wii (50.00 online) hooked up to it that runs Amazon Instant Video and Netflix.

Before we had that we either did just OTA TV plus buying a DVD if we really wanted something. That was fine, too.

I think my kid has seen about 90% fewer commercials than kids his age with cable.

As a result, he wanted no toys at all for his 8th birthday. NONE.

Just some fish/an aquarium and a laptop so he could Minecraft more effectively. Which he got, and now he's the happiest kid in kidtown.

The hell of that is, Christmas is coming up and there's nothing to wrap for him and put under the tree (that he actually wants). Because he has all he wants. It's good problem to have, but hard to explain to the relatives. His room is full of untouched action figures, unwanted Matchbox cars, and neglected Legos (Minecraft has taken over from those).

In a way, it's the death of regular TV that has made his childhood nearly unrecognizable compared to mine. I was a walking ball of WANT at this time of year at his age, fueled by commercials and cartoons and the Sears Wishbook.

Change just keeps happening, don't it?
posted by emjaybee at 6:56 PM on November 24, 2013 [10 favorites]

So the cable companies sell an overpriced product that is increasingly out of the average person's reach and for which newer, cheaper entertainment alternatives exist--and they wonder why they're getting mowed over as people leave in droves?

Speaking just for myself here, the thought of paying $100/month for cable and internet is absurd: I simply can't afford both products. So I picked the internet, because of course. The internet gives me access to television and movies and newspapers and books and just about everything else you can think of. What's cable TV done for me lately?
posted by librarylis at 6:59 PM on November 24, 2013

In the end, you're still being a dick to some poor schlub. Those of us who don't think it's worth it, don't have cable anymore.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:06 PM on November 24, 2013

I technically don't have a TV, but it would be silly for me to say so because I have other screens in my house that are used for all the things I would use a TV for.

It was much more amusing back in 1993 when a bright-eyed, chipper young woman came to our door, clipboard in hand, obviously ready with a response to every possible objection, and said, "According to our records, you're not signed up for cable!"

My wife said, "Yeah. We don't have a TV."

The woman's face fell and she stammered, "Oh...I...I'm sorry." She looked as embarrassed as if she'd been selling children's books and we'd told her our daughter had died yesterday.
posted by straight at 7:12 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

KR: If Charter raises my Internet too much, I will just get any decent phone plan that truly has all you can eat data as in 24/7/365.

There is no such thing, unless you root your phone to enable tethering, and a phone makes a poor hotspot. None of the major providers offer an unlimited plan for an actual wireless hotspot. I am on charter now because T-Mobile could not offer me a plan at any price that allowed 20 Gb/month for my PC.

And yeah they call me on my cell phone at least twice a month to upsell me to TV. The first few times it was from 888 numbers so I learned to just not answer, but last time they got cagey and the area code wasn't toll free. Since I get the occasional call from a customer in the boonies I can't just ignore numbers like that I don't recognize, so it's hangupsville.
posted by localroger at 7:14 PM on November 24, 2013

Meanwhile my mother in Seoul pays $25 a month for IPTV, internet, and phone package.
posted by needled at 7:24 PM on November 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: "So? You gonna send the firemen to my house?"

Melismata: "People are getting rid of cable because even an idiot can see how much they're being gouged when the monthly payment comes around."

My wife wanted cable and the first setup teir that she wanted would have been more than my monthly petrol bill. And it's not like I drive some super sipper car only on weekends; I drive to work 5 days a week in a moderately fuel efficient coupe. It just that cable was completely rediculous.

And they wanted me to buy a device in order to interface my TV to their network. At least they didn't want me to pay an installation fee, Sat/PhoneCo TV competition final put an end to that bullshit.

We're still paying a 10th as much for netflix and no cable tv.
posted by Mitheral at 7:39 PM on November 24, 2013

I was so happy to finally disconnect Direct TV when my contract ran out two years ago. My ex--who was the TV watcher--had moved out of my house and I was stuck with a $200/month TV/Internet bill for another 8 months. I didn't turn on the TV more than twice in this time period. After cancelling, I'm down to about 80/month for high speed internet.

Since cancelling, I've been building an HD projection theater in the basement. Netflix and Amazon stream directly to my house and are projected onto an 8-ft wide screen. It's like having a classics and indie theater in my own basement. Right now, I'm in the process of upgrading the sound system and installing acoustic treatments into the room. My total budget for the project is about $3,000. Sound expensive? Well, that's exactly how much money I've saved by not having dish service for the last two years.
posted by TrialByMedia at 8:01 PM on November 24, 2013 [9 favorites]

An hour of 'show' is actually 38 minutes of program including intro and end credits. If I am going to be watching commercials near half the time; provide it for free.
posted by buzzman at 8:31 PM on November 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, I'm not the TV watcher in the family, but we mostly pay for the outrageous bundled fees just so we (OK, she) can watch IFC and maybe Sundance, I dunno. No sports. Hardly worth it, is it? We also pay for Netflix, worth it, of course. These cable/dish companies could cut their rates in half and still make a bundle, by allowing us consumers to cut out 90% of our channels, because these companies pay a lot of bucks to the providers.

What I don't get is people who watch movies on their cell phones. WTF?
posted by kozad at 9:02 PM on November 24, 2013

What I don't get is people who watch movies on their cell phones.

What's not to get? If you're out and about and the only device you have on you with access to streaming is a cell phone, why not? I've done it while waiting for a plane.

Obviously I don't do this at home where there's wi-fi; there I watch on the big screen, which is to say, the iPad.
posted by escabeche at 9:06 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

After buying an HDTV and a $50 antenna, I cancelled the cable. A few weeks later they called to see if any sort of discount would get our business back. I asked, "Can you do better than free?" and it felt wonderful.

I don't watch sports, I regret every minute I've ever spent watching reality shows and having only about 20 channels now mean it takes less time to find out that there's nothing on TV.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:12 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

People frequently ask me how I've had time to master several complex, practice-driven hobbies and become a classical musician in middle age - while on a tight budget.
I've never owned a TV hooked up to any type of broadcast. As a result, I have 30-some hours a week, ~$100 a month, >$500 every few years to use on my interests, such as relationships, community, fine food, music, DIY/makership, travel, studying languages...
posted by Dreidl at 10:50 PM on November 24, 2013

I paid through the nose for DirecTV after my two-year introductory price. My DVR was full of episode of COPS, Pawn Stars and Judge Judy. When you give me that many options, my brain shuts down and settles for something safe.

I disconnected my cable, best thing I ever did. I have a $40 antenna that picks up all the major networks in HD. Don't miss cable one bit, except for some sports. Now I get to go out and watch sports. Hell, if you're lazy, to be honest, you can get most games online from Russia. I now get to watch high-quality programming when I want to via the internet. I just picked up an XBone, I mean, who wants cable? Totally ridiculous. The programming is horrible.
posted by phaedon at 10:58 PM on November 24, 2013

OTA only works in major metro areas.

...And even then, it's often useless. I live in Seattle, and my mom has tried OTA HDTV or even SDTV out at the last two places she's lived. and before anyone goes "yea but hills" both of these instances were smack dab in the main part of town. One was right in downtown, and one was on First hill up near all the hospitals.

1. With a good quality antenna, receives maybe 3 channels. Maybe 4. Cuts out and has to re-establish it's train on the signal constantly.

2. 0 channels. Zero. I tried multiple times with two different receivers on two TVs. Utterly worthless. There's actually a tv sitting at this place that hasn't been powered on for months because of this.

In the late 90s and early 2000s i had a little pocket LCD tv i had gotten for free from some promotional giveaway. I used to watch the simpsons on it and stuff. The damn thing worked nearly EVERYWHERE in town including inside cars and nearly any building. If the same thing existed today with a digital tuner, i bet it would work essentially nowhere.

As for myself, as much as i hate the whole "I don't have tv and I'm Smarter Than Everyone" circlejerk and where it can go, i'm actually pretty much on that path.

I own a TV, but i have never had cable tv service in my entire life. I haven't lived in a place which had any sort of TV service since i moved out of my parents house in high school. Thinking back on it, there was maybe one exception in that when my friend went to order internet at my first apartment in college they actually offered us internet+tv service for cheaper than any internet deal we could get. Couldn't say no to that, but it basically only got used for watching cartoon network when we were baked. A couple months in when the deal expired the cable service got promptly cut off.

I've been watching specific TV shows and movies, and lots of weird anime/foreign films/hard to find even at a weird local video store full of odd stuff movies via the internet since a pentium 3 was still a respectable computer, and DVD rips were as good as quality got. That habit never broke, and likely never will.

My setup has been upgraded over the years, and has now reached some sort of platonic ideal. I have my 70s H/K kick ass amplifier the size of a desktop PC that weighs something like 70lbs, some nice infinity tower speakers, a panasonic professional plasma "monitor", and a PS3. I think the entire shebang cost me maybe $500(note: just for video viewing, considerably more went into vinyl and CD playback), and there's nothing about it i'd change. The black levels of the display rival the latest LEDs, and the speakers provide more punch than most small subs i've seen people have while having better definition of vocal tracks than any little pod speakers.

The amusing thing is even if i got cable, i wouldn't even have a spot to plug it in. Everything is all HDMI now and that wouldn't play nice with my amplifier, or my tv. I'm sure i'll eventually be drug in to the 21st century on that front(although you can pry my amp from my cold dead hands, nothing new even has a phono preamp, much less one as good as this or even worth a damn)

I think what killing cable, and especially what makes it utterly uninteresting to me is that nearly all of the time i want to watch exactly what i have in mind. Not someone else's curated list of what they think i want to watch averaged out to the lowest common denominator. Netflix has the right idea here, but has never been more than a secondary video source for me because of it's selection.

I would pay as much as cable costs for a service that allowed me to play the vast majority of content listed on IMDB, or at least the pirate bay. It's similar to how i'd pay $20 a month for a service that had nearly all the music that was on oink(or several of the current, large private torrent sites even). Bump that up more if it would actually stream at vbr V0 or 320kbps from a desktop site or app, and at least give me the option of a high quality mobile stream.

I could get in to my whole rant here again about the quality of streams from sites like netflix, but the funny thing is that that not only are they continuously better than "hd" cable or satellite even if you manually kick them down to 480p(!!!), but that as an overall package they're still delivering a better product.

It's like choosing between eating only the daily special at a place that sucks, or ordering anything off the menu at a decent but not great place. Neither is exactly what you want, but the choice is obvious.

I look forward to where this goes. I don't look forward to the outcry when netflix raises it's prices. Or when some cheeky startup backed by deep pockets creates the equivalent of GOG but being a massive back catalog of shows and movies that netflix doesn't have, and slowly encroaches from there... but for more money. Remember excite@home cable internet being like $20-30 a month(Ok, maybe it was a bit more, but it was still laughably cheap compared to comcast or any other ISP now) for nominally 40mb uncapped bandwidth or transfer service that could basically max out whatever DOSCIS version existed at the time? yea, that didn't last long. Same with $30 unlimited iPad data plans, or any of the old unlimited smartphone plans.
posted by emptythought at 1:38 AM on November 25, 2013

It's quite different here in Australia. For one thing, cable TV wasn't even available until sometime around the early 90s. I would estimate it has less than 20% household penetration nowadays (but I'm too lazy to look it up).

But most of the shows I watch ARE exclusively on cable here, at least for the first run, then may show up on a Free To Air channel a year or so later. (usually on ABC or ABC2, which are like the UK's BBC). But I don't have cable.

I DO have a TV, and I love it! It's 46" of ultra-thin, High Definition, borderless, LED with an attached 5.1 surround soundsystem - technology from the heavens. But ... the shows I watch on it are not coming from FTA broadcasts or cable.

We don't have Netflix or Hulu or any of those services here, so... I source it from other places over the internet. I do pay for it - a very small amount - to companies that work in the grey areas of legality. But if I could get Netflix or Hulu without jumping through hoops, I would happily pay for it.

But, I guess my main point is, in this country, I can't understand why ANYONE watches FTA TV. It's either mindless "breakfast TV", stupid, repetitve, product-placement laden home reonavation or cook-off shows, or ads. But mostly ads. I can't remember the last time I watched FTA TV. Maybe when I stayed in a hotel a month or so ago and didn't want to pay for their cable channels. But in that instance, I was TRYING to go to sleep, so I guess it worked out well...

So I do watch TV, after nothing at all for a few years, I've got back into the game with some of the brilliant shows that have been produced over the last few years. But I am not showing up in their ratings figures.
posted by Diag at 3:17 AM on November 25, 2013

They took off something like $40 a month

O_o

How the hell much does cable cost? Because for $40 I could buy at least two entire series of TV I wanted to watch.
posted by Francis at 3:53 AM on November 25, 2013

I read all the way to the bottom. Just in case the LeBron/Jordan derail caught on. It didn't.
posted by One Hand Slowclapping at 4:38 AM on November 25, 2013

How the hell much does cable cost? Because for $40 I could buy at least two entire series of TV I wanted to watch.

Too embarrassed to say how much but as I said it's for baseball, HBO and Dr. Who. At least for me, my wife likes a bunch of other shows.
posted by octothorpe at 4:50 AM on November 25, 2013

Comcast called me a few months ago to upsell some cable TV package (I have an internet-only subscription). Out of some kind of perverse curiosity and boredom, I decided to play along with the salesperson and not just hang up on them.

The catch: I don't own a TV.

To be fair to the salesperson, if the customer hasn't left, the customer is still there. If they don't know that you're joking, it's not totally unreasonable for them to guess that you might buy a TV, if cable became a good deal again.

Besides, maybe they're bored, too, or maybe they're not allowed to just leave you hanging. Many moons ago, I worked in telemarketing for college donations. I had surprisingly great conversations with people who didn't hang up the phone. A recent law grad told me about her indie rock bad. A self-proclaimed sexologist told me about his work. IIRC, the only time we were supposed to end the conversation on our own was if the person we were looking for was deceased. (Obviously, at that point, you just say, "I'm sorry for your loss, take care.")
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:10 AM on November 25, 2013

Man, that world series viewership chart, with spikes up in 2004 and 2008/2009 kinda proves what I've always assumed: baseball is a spectator sport for the unemployed.

I was amazed the authors would present a graph with no regard for the popularity of the teams involved in each year's Series. The 2004 spike is obviously due to the Red Sox drama, just off the top of my head. It's either irresponsible or deliberately misleading to ignore influencing factors and other context when using data to "prove a point" as large as the one they're proposing.
posted by aught at 6:07 AM on November 25, 2013

I also like the way they gloss over the fact that cable company stocks are rising as the audience declines:

The market does not care that the TV audience is declining.
This chart shows a basket of cable TV stocks over the last year. Not bad!

That's it? Would have been a good spot for some intelligent writing - why exactly is that happening, what does the stock market know about "TV IS DYING!" that we don't, etc. Why is that not even an interesting question?

As Business-Insider-does-Buzzfeed pieces go, this one is good, but it sure falls down there.
posted by mediareport at 6:26 AM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]

Again, this is the argument some cable folks insist is definitive:

But ESPN is part of my cable package and needs to be because ESPN is what's paying for the History Channel. People buy ad space on the History Channel becasue there's a guarantee of a minimum audience. Same thing with HGTV. Or Discovery. Or TV Land. These are all lower-profit channels. If the cable audience was allowed to not have these channels on their plan, then the ad rates would plummet. And then those channels would like not even exist.

And again, cable companies themselves have begun to experiment with different bundling packages to test whether the above argument is actually true. The idea that there just *might* be a different model somewhere out there in the universe that works as well as, or even - gasp - better than, the current historically contingent U.S. model for providing a variety of channels to the public is often painted like some sort of wild-eyed radical suggestion.

It's not.
posted by mediareport at 7:22 AM on November 25, 2013

My question is what happened in 2011? These stats are fascinating they show something dramatic happened in 2011.

I don't think it was the iPad, I think it's more likely that it was the Roku box hitting critical mass.

If you look at the release dates of the various models, and recall that the first few iterations were fairly pricey early-adopter toys, 2011 is about the time that there was really significant saturation. The Roku 2 models came out in mid-2011, and they also cut the prices way down on the older models; I picked up a few as gifts for <$100.

It's the Roku-type STBs that really allow for cord-cutting, at least in my experience. I know a few people who dropped cable (or just never subscribed to upon moving out from shared housing) based on using a computer to watch downloaded TV, or used a computer as a media center, but it was sort of a niche / geeky thing to do. But the Roku boxes allowed people who weren't interested in watching TV from a computer to get rid of cable. And from a user's perspective it's sort of like having a really good DVR, without having to worry about preselecting content for recording.

The cable companies have finally started to fight back a little: when my parents called up to cancel cable and just stick with Internet access, the company gave them a "bundle" that effectively brought the price of keeping TV service to the same level that bare Internet would have been. Of course, they did this in part by jacking the price of bare Internet over the past few years. But that's what they've been reduced to: they know the value of cable TV is quickly approaching zero for many subscribers, but they need the subscriber numbers in order to appear valuable to advertisers and networks, so they're going to overcharge for other services and basically give away TV if they need to.

The bundle pricing only lasts 12 months, though; so if you forget and don't remember to call them up and threaten to cancel every year, suddenly you get a bill that's $100+ higher than usual without any recourse. I'm sure they've figured this into their pricing strategy as well.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:26 AM on November 25, 2013

I am also scared to see Broadband prices go up as TV subs decline. I cancelled my TV package with TWC over the summer and my broadband bill went from $60/mo (for 30down/5up) to $90/mo. I had to call 3 times over two months to get back down to $60/month. TWC is literally my only possible provider, what would I do if they decided that next year broadband really will be $120/mo (but look, now you can get TV for a mere $25/mo as part of a package!)?
posted by jermsplan at 7:38 AM on November 25, 2013

TWC is literally my only possible provider, what would I do if they decided that next year broadband really will be $120/mo

Realistically, at least in the short term, probably not much. Which is why this is exactly what I think will happen in the next few years as the cable TV business model falls apart.

However, due to the nonlinearity of broadband pricing schemes, it's definitely possible to share a connection to great effect. The companies hate this and will doubtless try to prohibit it both contractually and technologically, but the former will probably be ignored and the latter worked around when the stakes are high enough.

E.g., if you and your neighbor each want a 5down/1up Mb connection, it would probably run you $80/each, but for one of you to get a 10down/2up connection probably isn't $160. A substantial part of the cost isn't marginal; it's fixed and has to do with providing that first bit down the pipe. So you can do pretty well by getting one really fat connection and sharing it.

I expect we're going to see a lot of back-and-forth between cable/telcos and consumers in the next few years over broadband.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:36 AM on November 25, 2013

Looks like Google Fiber is going to have some competition by the time they get here: AT&T to Roll Out Gigabit Internet in Austin, Texas
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:18 AM on November 25, 2013

There are some small local/regional ISPs trying to emulate Google Fiber on smaller scales as well: Google Fiber Spurs Mom-and-Pop Net Providers.

Unfortunately the economics are very different from the mom-n-pop ISPs of the 1990s, which involved getting one high-speed connection (typically via a leased line from the local telephone company to an existing Internet PoP) and then a bank of modems and regular lines ... if you want to compete in broadband today you have to solve the last-mile problem yourself.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:33 AM on November 25, 2013

Every time I go to my parents' house and flip around the hundreds of channels they have available I get annoyed and depressed by the sheer breadth and depth of the endless cavalcade of horseshit being served up. I really can't imagine a reason to pay for cable outside of sports.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:50 AM on November 25, 2013

My question is what happened in 2011?

I think a lot of things happened in 2011. Hulu grew a lot, adding content from the CW and others. Amazon launched their "Prime Instant Video" service, making a lot of their video content available at no extra cost to Prime subscribers. Netflix launched the $8/month streaming-only option, along with an Android app (adding to the iOS app released the previous year). The second-generation Apple TV became available (much cheaper and smaller than the original, geared more toward streaming rather than just syncing an iTunes library). The second-generation Roku players and the iPad 2 launched, as mentioned above.

And all these things kind of add together, along with the general growth of tablets and smartphones and online video. As services like Hulu and Netflix offered more, it made hardware like set-top-boxes more attractive, and vice-versa.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:54 AM on November 25, 2013

TV is a nickname and nicknames are for friends and television is *no* friend of mine. ::lip shiver::
posted by FatherDagon at 12:23 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

I also like the way they gloss over the fact that cable company stocks are rising as the audience declines

I have a pet theory that the stock market does the opposite of what common sense dictates. It's purely anecdotal, and I'm not a stockbroker (IANAS?), but it seems like when I see bad news that I would expect would negatively impact the stock price, the price has actually gone up. I wonder if this isn't at least partially caused by investors suddenly remembering that the company exists, and deciding to put money in under the No-Such-Thing-As-Bad-Publicity theory, figuring the stock will rebound eventually.

Regardless of the reason, stock prices never behave the way I think they will, which is precisely why IANAS... Plus, THE MARKET IS ALL-SEEING AND ALL-KNOWING. DO NOT SECOND-GUESS THE MARKET. ALL YOUR BASE BELONG TO THE MARKET.

I have my own cable-cutting anecdata: Upon having our first (and now second) child, we made a conscious effort to limit the amount of TV we consume. Well, some of it was conscious effort -- the time-suck that is parenting dictated a lot of it. But basically, we don't just turn the TV on and look for things to watch. We actively seek out shows, and limit ourselves to the ones we really like.

Anyway, we realized that the value proposition with Netflix vs. Cable was really lopsided, but I maintained a sort of "Basic Basic" package for the OTA networks. It was basically a $10-12/mo. to ensure that we got the network broadcasts in high quality without having to futz with an antenna, and then Comcast kindly deducted $10 from our Internet package. This worked well enough that I didn't pay much attention to it, even when the cost escalated from $10 to 11 to 14 and so on.

Only one day a few weeks ago, I noticed my homespun DVR was no longer working -- Comcast had encrypted all the channels without so much as an email. For the life of me, I can't figure out what possible advantage this provides them, except maybe reducing the number of customers they have to service.

Still, in the immediate aftermath of this discovery, I did all sorts of research to figure out how to get the new system to work with my Homerun HD set-up: new DVR hardware, antenna costs and contractors, only for the realization to hit me that I almost never watch broadcast TV anymore.

Calling up Comcast and telling them to get stuffed (even though my Internet cost went up) was tremendously satisfying, more than words could express. If I could work out a way to get Internet service that works at a comparable cost (the wireless Internet sucks at my house), I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm not trying to be a snob -- I watch plenty of DVDs and streaming content, but apart from the Oscars and maybe the Super Bowl, neither of which has been terribly compelling in recent years (Watch a bunch of famous people you'll never meet get lauded for movies you've never seen!; or Let corporations pimp stuff you can't afford, with occasional glimpses of some sort of sporting event that you don't care about! don't really work for me like they used to.), there isn't much live TV can offer.
posted by gern at 1:46 PM on November 25, 2013

If I could work out a way to get Internet service that works at a comparable cost (the wireless Internet sucks at my house), I'd do it in a heartbeat.

It's funny how dealing with the major utilities (gas, electric, water/sewage) is always super easy and professional. You give them your address, they charge you a relatively transparent cost for a given amount of usage. For internet my only real options are DSL and cable, and both suck ass to deal with. Pricing is not at all transparent and is subject to sudden upwards changes, and they make sudden downwards changes to their service all the time.

Most of that is undoubtedly regulatory, since the public utilities are tightly regulated and every service and billing change they make gets scrutinized. But there seems to be a difference in attitude, as well. The cable companies especially seem to be trying to operate much more like old-style monopolists, hoping I guess that no one will give them serious competition.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:08 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

(Man am I late to this. Have had the tab open forever but, work.)

We cut the cord for the most part, only local networks included in our cable package because it keeps the broadband fee low. How they charge less for more service, who knows. But the only thing I really miss are sports.

The first network to figure out that people who don't already have cable are willing to pay for instant access, in game, for a reasonable amount, will make a killing. I can instantly stream almost any movie by punching in a code and charging it to my credit card for a few bucks. That works. But sports? I can pull up NHL games live on my Roku. ESPN, college conferences, etc. broadcast games over the internets already. But none of these services will allow me to pay them to let me watch. I can only watch if I already subscribe to their cable package. Because... why exactly? They don't WANT my money? NHL comes close, but from what I've heard it's subscribe to the entire year or nothing, and way, way too many games are blacked out for no reason.

Let's not forget a part of the reason TV viewing is declining during sports events is because many events that used to be on networks are now pushed to cable. If you had told me 5 years ago that I wouldn't be able to watch the BCS championship game unless I had cable, I'd think you were smoking something... more and more and more are pushed to the cable tiers, because people who can't live without sports are pricing everyone else out of the market.

If I can't spend $10 to watch it streaming live at home, I'll spend $25 in beer and food to watch it in a bar. Might be more fun that way anyway, right?
posted by caution live frogs at 2:40 PM on November 25, 2013

Pretty late to the thread, but I run the technology behind WatchESPN. Ask me anything!
posted by butterstick at 3:00 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

butterstick,

I find increasingly that websites which used to show me TV online for free now require me to sign into my service provider to prove I'm paying for TV in the first place. WatchESPN and AMC come to mind. WatchESPN was an especially annoying loss for me when I cancelled TV (as I mentioned upthread) because that was usually the only place to watch non-major sports like WorldCup matches, Ultimate Frisbee, that sort of thing. Now that I no longer pay for ESPN on TV, I am no longer able to watch anything on WatchESPN.

So I guess my only question is...did you build a backdoor into your system? Feel free to memail me.

(people who want to point out that a friend or relative probably has a password I can use, thanks, I'm aware)
posted by jermsplan at 3:37 PM on November 25, 2013

People are getting rid of cable because even an idiot can see how much they're being gouged when the monthly payment comes around.

This is always my easy-to-understand argument about how the free market argument is nonsense. All people who want cable want is to pay modest monthly fees for the 3-8 cable channels they actually watch. Many would pay for you to not delivery certain channels to them at all. This is actually impossible but Netflix/Hulu are the closest model. And maybe iTunes tv subscription stuff.

I don't have a tv at home but I basically cheat and slingbox into my (deceased) dad's cable at his house that my sister and I still own. It was sort of neat during World Series time because everyone in my neighborhood got together and ate and drank and listened to the game on the radio and watched a somewhat lossy version of the game for replays. It was nice, chummy. I was interested in the diagram that splits out phone/computer/tablet. I get why they did this, but man aren't they all sort of the same thing (that is, not a television) for the purposes of this argument?

I did a cord-cutter's guide to the Olympics on my blog durring summer Olympics and it was crazy popular. As more and more people get tech-savvy, these options become more genuine. The downside? (as people asked upthread) people without broadband or tech saviness are getting crappier and crappier options available to them, it's basically a digital divide tax.
posted by jessamyn at 3:40 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yeah, all the over-the-air broadcast digital TV I've seen has been a horrendous glitchy mess that looks purposefully designed to drive what few broadcast viewers there were left into some sort of subscription service if they wanted any TV at all. Worst of many bad moves on the part of the FCC that I can think of.

I spent a little time looking through att's uverse options this morning and it's a confusing jumble of special limited-time deals, with add-on packages for anything you might actually want, so by the time I'd added the HD tier and the sports tier, the second DVR for the mo-in-law wing and picked the proper DSL speed, it was well over $100.00 again, and I still wasn't exactly sure what I was getting, or how I was going to get gouged at the end of the year when my special deal expired. Blurgh.

Time Warner keeps me through inertia once again.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:36 PM on November 25, 2013

I grew up in New Orleans in the 1970's with 5 TV channels. I was promised that pay TV wouldn't have commercials, and I won't ever pay for TV until that promise is kept. So today I have a DTV broadcast setup, and this weird season I'm watching more TV than I have since I was a teenager -- Sleepy Hollow, SHIELD, and at first just because it was so easy and increasingly because I kind of like it, Almost Human.

I live in a fringe area where analog TV was noticeably noisy. DTV is sharp. But it did require an amplifier for the new TV; the DTV converter for the old TV apparently was designed with low noise for antenna reception in mind, but most new TV sets are designed more with a high-level cable signal in mind, and they can benefit from an antenna amp. In the new DTV era I actually have 20+ channels available because all the originals now have a subchannel or two.

I just wish my ~~internet provider~~ cable company would stop calling me on the phone to try to upsell me to cable TV service. Do Not Want Or Need. And I"m not even using my cable internet to stream video; between Netflix disk and the antenna I've got more media than I need to be watching anyway.
posted by localroger at 7:36 PM on November 25, 2013

E.g., if you and your neighbor each want a 5down/1up Mb connection, it would probably run you $80/each, but for one of you to get a 10down/2up connection probably isn't $160. A substantial part of the cost isn't marginal; it's fixed and has to do with providing that first bit down the pipe. So you can do pretty well by getting one really fat connection and sharing it.

This game becomes even more obvious now that even without one of the endless promos you can always get, a 50/10 comcast line is only about $65 or 70(and i've managed to pay about $40 for that for an entire year). 75 and 100mb service is also available, and even the 100mb which gives you i think 25-30mb of upload is only like, $120?

Entire blocks of student housing suites were served by one 100mb line even just a couple years ago at my friends college, and it worked fine. If you lived in a four unit apartment building you'd have to be absolutely bonkers to not throw in on a the 100mb service and split the cost of a high end router and maybe a repeater or two. Hell, even if you only knew a couple of your neighbors in a bigger place it would still be worth it.

The inverse of these shitty prices in a lot of areas where 20mb is the max are starting to become apparent though. My friends building a block from mine bought a couple commercial cable lines, and a license for some scummy software. 5 minute trial for free, one per day per MAC. want a months worth? $25 for a username and password that's tied to one MAC address.

You make an account on the thing, and every device needs one. Want wifi on your roku/ps3/etc to stream stuff on your tv? hopeugot25bux.

Everyone in the building pays it because it undercuts any of the local ISPs and it is actually, truly fast. But i think something along those lines is the future. I had to thump them over the head and point out that even if you just have one roommate $50 a month can get you fast service just to your apartment and use an unlimited number of devices with it.

I've seen that sort of bait-and-switch deal go on at multiple apartment buildings that advertise "Wifi throughout the building!" in craigslist ads kidna implying it's free. Nice one, guys. Nice. Oh, and of course they have a like $10 plan that only lasts a couple days for "guests". Gotta get em coming and going.

I really hope that isn't the face of the future, but it sure seems like it.
posted by emptythought at 9:39 PM on November 25, 2013

I'll ratchet up the LeBron/Jordan derail for you. LeBron isn't even in Kobe's realm of skill and accomplishment yet, let alone Jordan's. And Jordan would never guard LeBron; he's too big, and Jordan needs to play offense, not take hits on defense. Jordan will always be king of the mountain. Kobe has come close, and he's a once in a lifetime talent. LeBron will have a good career, but he should and will never be mentioned in the same breath as Jordan and Kobe.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:07 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

You make an account on the thing, and every device needs one. Want wifi on your roku/ps3/etc to stream stuff on your tv? hopeugot25bux.

Some ISPs used to do this (maybe still do) when broadband first became common. The solution was always to register using your computer, and then go into your router and put in the computer's MAC address into the router so that it would spoof it. Then plug the router into the upstream connection, swapping it with the computer you used to register. From the ISP's perspective there's still just one "device" using the connection ... the router, with the computer's spoofed MAC. All your computers get plugged into the router, and you can have basically as many as you want.

The only downside is that you can sometimes end up with two levels of NAT, which will break some applications (file sharing, VoIP, etc.; but an ISP scummy enough to be doing this is probably managed poorly enough to break them already).

The first 'home router' devices that I ever saw -- the ones without wireless, before wireless was even a thing -- were designed explicitly to cope with this shitty behavior from ISPs.

One of the great things about TCP/IP is that it's almost impossible to determine with reliability how many actual clients are hiding behind a single network node. NAT is just one technique; if the scumbag ISP starts to get wise to that there are other ways. Nobody should tolerate per-device pricing.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:54 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

My parents are not big TV-watchers, so when they were having a house built in 1985, at the point where cable had pretty well caught on generally, they decided not to have the house wired for cable, knowing they would never want it.

I, then a know-it-all teenager, berated them for this choice. "Even if you don't ever want it, it's going to seriously hurt the resale value of your house, because people will just take it for granted that houses are wired for cable, and a house not wired for cable will be considered an oddity."

They're still living in that same house, which is still not wired for cable (they have DSL for internet), and they're looking pretty prescient about now.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:35 PM on November 26, 2013

I would love to be a cord cutter, and could deal with waiting for episodes to appear in whatever online service gets them, but the bigger problems to me are the lack of standard interfaces, the unskippable ads, the siloing of content with exclusive deals, and the fact that content comes and goes without much warning.

In addition to my Verizon FIOS service with video on demand, I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. We joined Hulu Plus briefly but the cost/benefit just wasn't there unless we were going to truly cancel the FIOS service, which we can't do. If we did, we have to find out where the content we want is, how long it's going to be there, etc. With our DVR, we can set the recording, watch it when we want, and skip the commercials (unlike Hulu), and we can do it with a single interface that works the same way on all the TVs in our house.

Of course this costs more, and that's what I feel like we're paying for -- I know our money is going to channels we don't watch, but it's a lot less frustrating an experience to just fire up the DVR and see what's new, rather than having to switch between two, three, or more apps, potentially ones on different devices with different controls.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:43 PM on November 26, 2013

My house had two cable drops when I bought it. Today the piece of coax running to the den terminates at an antenna in the attic. The actual cable now comes through the wall in my wife's office, where it plugs directly into the cable modem.
posted by localroger at 3:40 PM on November 26, 2013

I know our money is going to channels we don't watch, but it's a lot less frustrating an experience to just fire up the DVR and see what's new, rather than having to switch between two, three, or more apps, potentially ones on different devices with different controls.

That's a legitimate decision. I'm not sure however, given current economic conditions, that there are terribly many people who are going to continue to be willing to pay $1200+ per year (in my market anyway) for that convenience, though I've been wrong before.

The fragmentation in the streaming-video market is obnoxious, though. I think there's a market for someone to build a service, accessible via an API, that lets you search across Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Go, Google Play, YouTube, and all the other major streaming video services in order to figure out who happens to have what episodes of what show and return a unique URL to that piece of content. If you had that, you could make a nice wrapper that would go around the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/etc. apps on a STB. Sort of like the TV guide services for broadcast TV but for streaming.

Google is probably well-positioned to do that, and I originally thought that's what the Chromecast was going to do, but it seems to have taken the smartphone-esque "app" route instead as well.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:26 PM on November 29, 2013

That's a legitimate decision. I'm not sure however, given current economic conditions, that there are terribly many people who are going to continue to be willing to pay $1200+ per year (in my market anyway) for that convenience, though I've been wrong before.

I can't imagine it's costing anyone $1200/year (above the price of paying for multiple streaming services) just for the consistent interface. Remember you also have the fact that even if you pay for all the major streaming providers, there's still some content you won't get, and not just HBO and sports. Then there's the delay for some shows to hit the streaming services -- not a huge deal, but for shows with spoilers online, it might be a factor. And for some people in some markets (not sure how many), the streaming services might require you to upgrade your Internet connection above a basic one that you could use alongside a conventional cable/satellite TV feed.

I do get what you're saying, though -- I was psyched to see what Google would do with the Google TV idea, and, sadly, it hasn't been very ambitious or successful. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the content providers, streaming services, and cable operators not wanting to surrender any of their control/profitability, but it really does suck for the end user.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:02 PM on November 29, 2013

I can't imagine it's costing anyone $1200/year (above the price of paying for multiple streaming services) just for the consistent interface.

I'd have to actually add up all the numbers, and I'm too full of leftovers to do that, but I wouldn't be surprised if in my situation it wasn't actually more of a wash, financially.

A fairly full cable package, including internet and channels like HBO, would probably cost me about $100 per month, possibly lower with sign-up offers. Instead we are paying something over $60 for cable internet, plus Netflix, plus Hulu+, plus Amazon Prime (for both the expedited shipping as well as the streaming shows). There might be another service in there that I'm forgetting as well. Then there's the cost of the Roku (which seems to need to be replaced every two or three years), and the time it takes to get all the interfaces working together which gets repeated every time there is a change to one of the interfaces or a hardware upgrade.

I'd put at least part of the cost of an iPad in that mix as well, since it gets used entirely for watching streaming media; I doubt we'd own it if we were just watching cable.

Add it all up and we might well be paying more than someone who simply has cable.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:43 PM on November 29, 2013

Nobody should tolerate per-device pricing.

I can't escape the feeling that it's coming back, and that all the providers are freaking dreaming up ways to be able to pull off what the wireless guys are getting away with on their "buy an 8gb data bucket, pay per device that gets to access it on top of that" model. Remember how IPv6 was supposed to entail every device getting an external IP and the destruction of NAT? Those guys are waking up with boners from their mid day table naps thinking about that shit.

I just can't think of a way that it isn't coming back. Yes, my brain hamstered a way around that nearly instantly(shitty old router with dd-wrt in bridge mode paired with that network, cloning the mac of a signed in system>router all your devices connect to. Total cost: under $20 after a trip to goodwill/value village). But they can't fucking wait to do this shit. They'll sell it exactly the same way. Only $60 for a 100mb connection! $10 per connected device after that.

Everyone will end up jumping on it... and paying more than they are now. It'll be exactly like the situation now with people who are grandfathered in to old unlimited plans, pretty quickly people will realized they got fucked but there won't be a path backwards ever again.

Google is probably well-positioned to do that, and I originally thought that's what the Chromecast was going to do, but it seems to have taken the smartphone-esque "app" route instead as well. and tonycpsu's similar comment

I was extremely disappointed by this as well. I expected chromecast to be minimal, but do two things.

1. Centralized google news-like index of all streaming services, with the ability to subscribe to more. Cross-site recommendations, updates showing which services got new episodes first or still carry a show. Half way through a show and netflix drops it? Click here to play the next episode on prime!

2. Something like what i thought airplay mirroring would be, and yet it still isn't even with OSX mavericks and the latest full screen mirroring. Somehow, chromecasts "select on device or browser, play on TV" functionality still sucks compared to some aspects of airplay. I want to be able to open any app on an android phone and tap a button to play that content OR mirror the display on the tv. I want to be able to open any page, and any streaming video and click one button in chrome to throw it on the big screen. There should be utterly no limits to this. little CPU in the chrome stick can't play this content in an accelerated manner? run it on the full computer i clicked the button on and render offscreen and stream a mirror of that "display", or transcode it. This is not pie in the sky shit, various apps like plex/ps3 media server and the newest airplay and others do all of this stuff. The trick is getting it all in one place. This isn't flying car stuff either. It's more of "bolt it all together and do some QA, fuck"

I honestly think they have no excuse for 2. They haven't had an excuse for 2 for a very, very long time. a combination of airplay and DLNA streaming(or the plex trick) on apple TVs can get you 95% of the way to this.

1, however, is a fuckmess. I get the feeling that the various streaming services are actually working against that sort of thing and really don't want it to exist. The repeated changes to the netflix API that fucked up various sites that would skim netflix and provide extra suggestions and such(and even just "trending with people who use this site", even without "trending with people who use this site and watch stuff you watch") kinda proves this.

Every single one of those services seems to want you stuck in their garden, and only looking through their content. I get that, but it's tiresome because the content on netflix doesn't even compare to certain(dying) big local video rental shops that stock tons of esoteric niche stuff they're happy to recommend to you, but also don't just randomly throw movies or entire box sets of tv shows in the incinerator with no notice.

There are various divx streaming "pirate" sites that have significantly more content than netflix, and also lots of content netflix used to have but no longer carries. A central index would go a long way towards stymying that advantage, and i really wish the actual content creators and rights owners would realize that the only way they're going to compete with free is if they have a really strong, cross-platform list of content "all in one place" with one central search.

That, and maybe a $40-50 all access to every streaming site monthly deal, but now i'm just dreaming.
posted by emptythought at 11:36 PM on November 29, 2013

Well, TV may be dying, but terrestrial radio is alive and well, according to the President of the Southern California Broadcasters Association (which was not so reliable a source back when I was a 'southern california broadcaster' 30+ years ago).
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:27 AM on November 30, 2013

relevant xkcd
posted by yeoz at 9:15 PM on December 4, 2013

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