(03-05-2024 07:50 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  It sounds like it’s time to let cable die. For better or worse, streaming is the future. Rather than hanging on to the bitter end, it makes more sense the the media companies to go ahead and make the switch. This new joint sports package is only going to hasten it.

But will it die?

All those high speed cable lines still bring in your internet. Some of those in rural areas were paid for by taxpayers.

They'll be consolidation and wouldn't surprise me to see some interesting company mergers.

(03-06-2024 10:50 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 07:50 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  It sounds like it’s time to let cable die. For better or worse, streaming is the future. Rather than hanging on to the bitter end, it makes more sense the the media companies to go ahead and make the switch. This new joint sports package is only going to hasten it.

But will it die?

All those high speed cable lines still bring in your internet. Some of those in rural areas were paid for by taxpayers.

They'll be consolidation and wouldn't surprise me to see some interesting company mergers.

When we say "cable", we almost never mean the actual fiber optic or copper or whatever it is wire that runs into your house to your router and wifi box. We mean the thing on your TV that lets you flip from CNN to ESPN to Nickeolodeon to Fox to BET to National Geographic Channel to USA Network.

Which means that when we say "Cable", yeah that includes DirecTV, that includes YoutubeTV. IT doesn't include your internet service from Charter/Comcast/Spectrum or whoever.

It's not about the physical wire. (Which now has competition from wireless-based home internet, and I'm sure you can stream "cable" on it if you want to.)

If you're Comcast or Charter or Spectrum though, that wire is really important, maybe more important than ESPN/CNN/Fox/MTV. If they have to dump your ESPN/CNN/Fox NEws/CBS/TBS to keep you paying for that wire, that's something they'll live with.

(03-06-2024 09:14 AM)goofus Wrote:  The whole idea of paying for a service where you have to watchTV live and with adds is going away.

If Consumers are paying, they expect to be able to watch the show they want, on demand, starting from the beginning, and pause it when they want. Or even stop it and come back later, resuming it at the exact point they left off. They also want to be able to fast forward or rewind too. Otherwise they want to watch without any interruptions.

Yes, consumers are spoiled. This attitude will gradually spill over into live sports. People will become more and more content to record a game and watch it later at their convenience. Media providers will have to adjust.

As technology progresses, it won't be enough to just watch the game. Consumers will expect somehow to be inserted into the action, in a VR type setup. Interesting times (or maybe scary times depending on your point of view) are coming.

On that part, I don’t agree. DVRs have been around for over 2 decades at this point and that hasn’t come to fruition. It has been the opposite - the “killer app” for sports is that it’s the one thing that’s a communal live event. It’s instructive that NFL viewership has *risen* even while on-demand viewing for everything else has skyrocketed. (I know that you have this thing about commercials and, believe me, I haven’t watched a non-sports program with commercials in years. However, people just put up with it differently with sports and it’s a good thing for the sports leagues because the ability to get people to watch ads is by FAR the most valuable thing for them to sell to the TV networks.) I feel pretty strongly that the fact that sports are live IS the #1 hook and that’s been borne out by the data even in the face of DVRs and now on-demand viewing.

People inherently aren’t watching sports en masse for games where the outcome is already determined. If anything, it’s going the other direction. NBC would *love* it if we just kept watching their packaged time-delayed Olympics packages in prime time, but the market is saying that consumers want it all live even when they’re at off hours. The “live” part actually IS the on-demand item that consumers want for sports. It’s inherently different than watching something like Stranger Things or other Netflix shows.

Different technologies will be interesting. Gambling is really where the interactivity is for sports (for better or worse) and that’s almost certainly going to be integrated further in streaming platforms in the future. (Bob Iger talked about this explicitly with the new over-the-top ESPN service coming out next year. VR is close to where it can conceivably put you in the place where you’re sitting courtside at a Lakers game or at the 50-yard line of the Super Bowl, so we’ll see if there’s additional value there.

From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

I think folks on this forum want it to die so they can have their streaming monopoly. This forum is a bit weird sometimes.

(03-06-2024 11:42 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

Yeah the cable bill is pretty much all or nothing. I could just end the cable, I'm not tied in to any contracts, but there's no way to just lop off 1/4 of the cable. Well I guess I could, they do have different "tiers" and I could go down a tier. Maybe I should look in to that, LOL.

Then again, I've found that psychologically, there is a "stickiness" to streaming. A few times, I have signed up for a $1 a month for three months Black Friday or whatever deal with a streamer, with the intention of eliminating it after those months go by, but lo and behold when the price goes up to $6 a month, I end up keeping it, LOL. And not really because the service is so great, but just because I say "well I do like having it and what's six bucks a month"?

Cable is just too expensive to go with these days. For most live sports (professional sports) you can get HD content with a digital antenna or with a very specialized package, and that's really the only thing people care enough about to want to watch live. Shows don't have that big draw anymore and people are fine with waiting a bit for it to be available on streaming or to just watch it later.

We moved last year. Prior to that we were in a location where we were forced to get cable if we wanted internet of any quality. Once we got here, that was no longer the case. We now have faster internet and no cable, and just use the antenna. We get everything we got before (more channels actually, oddly enough) and pay about half the price. Streaming services cover the rest.


Nothing political about it. People just don't want to pay more for what they could get for less. Also you can get full DVR that also acts like the same Channel Guide with a digital antenna (and we have that).

(03-06-2024 11:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:42 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

Yeah the cable bill is pretty much all or nothing. I could just end the cable, I'm not tied in to any contracts, but there's no way to just lop off 1/4 of the cable. Well I guess I could, they do have different "tiers" and I could go down a tier. Maybe I should look in to that, LOL.

Then again, I've found that psychologically, there is a "stickiness" to streaming. A few times, I have signed up for a $1 a month for three months Black Friday or whatever deal with a streamer, with the intention of eliminating it after those months go by, but lo and behold when the price goes up to $6 a month, I end up keeping it, LOL. And not really because the service is so great, but just because I say "well I do like having it and what's six bucks a month"?

I figured I would only knock off $25 a month if I went down a tier, but I would lose the SECN. Nothing else that mattered. But if I went down another tier it dropped a number of things we wanted.

(03-06-2024 10:13 AM)gosports1 Wrote:  Cable is over-priced and the providers have been sticking it to the consumers for decades, We finally ditched cable completely, (including internet) last year and while it was an adjustment it is not missed. Streaming IMO offers more options and can be catered to individual interests. We all know how streaming works. I like to ability to cancel or subscribe to different apps every month, season or enter your own time-frame here

Cable is overpriced because of how the sports channels being packaged in with non-sports channels in the first place. Just keep the ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, and FS1 along with CBSSports as cheap for basic cable, and move the rest into a sports deal for what they do with HBO and all those movie channels. I do think going for the all mighty dollar to put on the cable companies that passed it onto the consumers hurt cable companies. Second, there are a lot of channels people don't want which hurts as well. I think people need to understand at these networks is that you need to do something different instead of killing the hand that feeds you.

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

My cable bill just increased to about $230 a month (Spectrum). I pay for a lot of channels that I never have watched.
But by the same token, I moved my cell service to Spectrum and am saving a ton.

(03-05-2024 07:38 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(03-05-2024 07:18 PM)EOU93 Wrote:  We switched from cable to streaming because of the cost. Even getting cable channels without sports is costly. Mainly because a monthly fee for the cable box is atrocious when makes it not worthwhile when having 3 TVs

Still with Philo for $25/month. All the cable channels without the sports channels.

As a senior citizen I can say major change is hard to accept. But I finally dropped cable and jumped into streaming. Even with a Sling package with an add on for TCM and the ACCN my total bill for internet, home phone and content (streaming replacing cable) went from $307 down to $190. It's hard to justify sticking with cable, even for an old geezer like me.

A customizable skinny bundle is a way to go.

(03-06-2024 12:24 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

My cable bill just increased to about $230 a month (Spectrum). I pay for a lot of channels that I never have watched.
But by the same token, I moved my cell service to Spectrum and am saving a ton.

The cable companies give the best deal if you bundle cell, cable and internet.

(03-06-2024 11:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:42 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

Yeah the cable bill is pretty much all or nothing. I could just end the cable, I'm not tied in to any contracts, but there's no way to just lop off 1/4 of the cable. Well I guess I could, they do have different "tiers" and I could go down a tier. Maybe I should look in to that, LOL.

Then again, I've found that psychologically, there is a "stickiness" to streaming. A few times, I have signed up for a $1 a month for three months Black Friday or whatever deal with a streamer, with the intention of eliminating it after those months go by, but lo and behold when the price goes up to $6 a month, I end up keeping it, LOL. And not really because the service is so great, but just because I say "well I do like having it and what's six bucks a month"?

There's always a stickiness, but it's much more gradual with streaming than with cable. If you have Netflix, Disney+ and Max (let's say you bought the HBO streaming thing for Game of Thrones and kept it, and it rolled into Max). With Netflix at $20, Disney at $12 and Max at $10 (I don't feel like looking up numbers) that's comfortable for you. When you add PAramount and Peacock for another $20 a month, maybe that starts to be unreasonable. You can cancel 2 streamers and keep 4. Or cancel 4 and keep 2.

Cable, your Tiers generally give you some particular thing that you want, which makes it hard to part with it.

(03-06-2024 12:15 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 10:13 AM)gosports1 Wrote:  Cable is over-priced and the providers have been sticking it to the consumers for decades, We finally ditched cable completely, (including internet) last year and while it was an adjustment it is not missed. Streaming IMO offers more options and can be catered to individual interests. We all know how streaming works. I like to ability to cancel or subscribe to different apps every month, season or enter your own time-frame here

Cable is overpriced because of how the sports channels being packaged in with non-sports channels in the first place. Just keep the ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, and FS1 along with CBSSports as cheap for basic cable, and move the rest into a sports deal for what they do with HBO and all those movie channels.

"The rest" aren't what makes it expensive, it's ESPN that makes it expensive.

Quote:Second, there are a lot of channels people don't want which hurts as well.

But those channels are dirt cheap filler. Roughly nobody is watching Country Music Television in New York City, but it's let's say $0.03 a month and it lets Spectrum pad the channel count for the package.

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Two thirds of my Spectrum bill was tied to cable TV. Three boxes, DVRs, and the channel package. So it was approximately $200. When I replaced that portion of the Spectrum bill and signed up for the deluxe Sling package with an add on for the lesser sports channels like ACCN SECN, and a few others and an add on for a Hollywood package that included TCM and a half dozen other similar channels that cost dropped to about $85. And I can add, drop or change any of that with a simple visit to the website. For instance the Sports add on is $15 and I can drop it after basketball season, drop the bill to $70 and then in August with football season starting up I can simply add it back on.

(03-06-2024 01:35 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:42 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

Yeah the cable bill is pretty much all or nothing. I could just end the cable, I'm not tied in to any contracts, but there's no way to just lop off 1/4 of the cable. Well I guess I could, they do have different "tiers" and I could go down a tier. Maybe I should look in to that, LOL.

Then again, I've found that psychologically, there is a "stickiness" to streaming. A few times, I have signed up for a $1 a month for three months Black Friday or whatever deal with a streamer, with the intention of eliminating it after those months go by, but lo and behold when the price goes up to $6 a month, I end up keeping it, LOL. And not really because the service is so great, but just because I say "well I do like having it and what's six bucks a month"?

There's always a stickiness, but it's much more gradual with streaming than with cable. If you have Netflix, Disney+ and Max (let's say you bought the HBO streaming thing for Game of Thrones and kept it, and it rolled into Max). With Netflix at $20, Disney at $12 and Max at $10 (I don't feel like looking up numbers) that's comfortable for you. When you add PAramount and Peacock for another $20 a month, maybe that starts to be unreasonable. You can cancel 2 streamers and keep 4. Or cancel 4 and keep 2.

Cable, your Tiers generally give you some particular thing that you want, which makes it hard to part with it.

This is what I'm paying...

Netflix = $16.50
Hulu / Disney+ / ESPN+ = $14.99
Max = Free through ATT
Network TV = Free with OTA Antenna
Tubi TV = Free
Curiosity Stream = $1.60
Comcast 12gb Internet = $90 (buy your own Modem to save yourself $30 a month)

(03-06-2024 12:24 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

My cable bill just increased to about $230 a month (Spectrum). I pay for a lot of channels that I never have watched.
But by the same token, I moved my cell service to Spectrum and am saving a ton.

I considered moving my cell to Spectrum, but I have so many problems with internet/cable service from Spectrum (Time Warner was far more reliable) I'm afraid to do it even if it looks cheaper. I have nightmares about losing both my internet and my phone service at the same time and being unable to communicate with the outside world. At my age, I worry that I'll die and nobody will discover my body until the smell reaches my neighbors.

(03-06-2024 01:35 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:42 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

Difference is your streaming bill is much more reducible if you're not picky. Which a lot of people aren't.

Yeah the cable bill is pretty much all or nothing. I could just end the cable, I'm not tied in to any contracts, but there's no way to just lop off 1/4 of the cable. Well I guess I could, they do have different "tiers" and I could go down a tier. Maybe I should look in to that, LOL.

Then again, I've found that psychologically, there is a "stickiness" to streaming. A few times, I have signed up for a $1 a month for three months Black Friday or whatever deal with a streamer, with the intention of eliminating it after those months go by, but lo and behold when the price goes up to $6 a month, I end up keeping it, LOL. And not really because the service is so great, but just because I say "well I do like having it and what's six bucks a month"?

There's always a stickiness, but it's much more gradual with streaming than with cable. If you have Netflix, Disney+ and Max (let's say you bought the HBO streaming thing for Game of Thrones and kept it, and it rolled into Max). With Netflix at $20, Disney at $12 and Max at $10 (I don't feel like looking up numbers) that's comfortable for you. When you add PAramount and Peacock for another $20 a month, maybe that starts to be unreasonable. You can cancel 2 streamers and keep 4. Or cancel 4 and keep 2.

Cable, your Tiers generally give you some particular thing that you want, which makes it hard to part with it.

FWIW, I have all the streamers you mentioned, plus Hulu, ESPN+ (both as part of the Disney bundle) Prime Video, and Britbox, LOL.

It's out of control, but we like it, LOL.

(03-06-2024 12:24 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(03-06-2024 11:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  From what I've been able to discern the price of cable and streaming are converging. It's not like in 2015 or so, when streaming first became a thing and you could cut a $200 cable bill down to $30 by signing up for a streamer. Or at least I don't think it is.

I currently pay about $150 for cable, I guess I could probably cut that down to $75 with Youttube TV, but I also get my internet via the cable company, and so I might lose a "bundle" discount if I did that.

I'll probably always pay way more than I could be, I guess. I value convenience over getting the very best possible deal. So I still pay for cable. And streaming, LOL.

My cable bill just increased to about $230 a month (Spectrum). I pay for a lot of channels that I never have watched.
But by the same token, I moved my cell service to Spectrum and am saving a ton.

Cool.

My cable bill is also $230, because I buy my internet from them too so the total, internet service and cable, is $230. I pay $98 a month to Verizon for phone, so man I'm paying a lot.

It's basically $400 when I add up internet, cable, streaming services, and phone.