cutting the cable (or direct) tv cord

[birdog1960]

so i got around to looking at my direct tv bill recently and was shocked by the cost creep. additionally, there was an installment cost for sunday ticket so it was a pretty outrageous bill. first, i cut back my programming menu and stopped the hardware warranty chopping the bill by about 1/3 after an additional $10/mo discount. then i told the rep that i would likely look elsewhere if they couldn't throw in free sunday ticket in 2015 and they told me to call back closer to the next season…and i probably will but i'll also be ready to walk cuz...

 

i'm strongly considering this: http://www.wsj.com/articles/getting-rid-of-cable-tv-the-smartest-ways-to-cut-the-cord-1405472757. anybody here down it?

 

my thoughts: antenna for all networks and pbs. tivo ota dvr for $15/month. ala carte hbo (in april) +netflix for $23/mo. possibly hulu plus for tv series (but probably not- just buy episodes i want from amazon or apple or mirror free streaming cable programs such as nfl network and hgtv, through apple tv). so i figure less than 40 bucks per month and i lose espn, fx, madmen, and the biggie - sunday ticket.

 

but what about a sling box for the bills games? pay a friend or relative that regularly watch the bills in buffalo/rochester/syracuse to stream me the games through a sling box that i buy. they're gonna watch anyway. and if the bills get good, the home games will sell out and those can be streamed as well. then there's always nil rewind if i can avoid looking at sports news for a day.

 

so anybody have any thoughts on this?

 

btw, direct tv is charging me $18 for HBO and the reported ala carte price will be 15. they also charge significantly more than tivo for the dvr service.

[Maury Ballstein]

You can't run from them. The cable companies will just raise the price of Internet as more people cut the cord.

 

They have been creeping up year after year.

[GOBILLS78]

If this is a save-money-right-now situation, you can halt service until football season. I think you can do that twice a year at no penalty. The downside is it extends the contract for the length of the pause, I believe, so not the best option if you want to entirely cut the cord.

[birdog1960]

Not feasible, IMO,if you are a devoted sports fan of any kind. What sports do you watch? Also, can you TiVo on slingbox?

 

By the way, I heard they may finally roll out a la carte cable (ie, pay for the channels you watch), but haven't seen any specifics.

 

I renegotiate with direct tv every 6 months. I think they have over $200 credits they can basically give you.

i really only watch nfl religiously, and mostly the bills. playoffs mostly in other sports or major bowl games but i think there's enough of those on major networks. i don't have any must see teams in other sports. don't know about recording sling box but i suspect there's a way on a pc to do it. i think a la carte cable is a wye off but cbs joined hbo in a la carte offering and i see other cable stations doing the same especially as their negotiations with cable and direct tv get more contentious..

If this is a save-money-right-now situation, you can halt service until football season. I think you can do that twice a year at no penalty. The downside is it extends the contract for the length of the pause, I believe, so not the best option if you want to entirely cut the cord.

it's more about the principle, honestly. my required 24 months are up (hence the fee creep) and not sure how it would work then but i think it's a cut cable or not decision.

Edited February 15, 2015 by birdog1960

[Just Jack]

This subject comes up here from time to time, here's one older thread....

 

http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/130505-there-have-been-recent-discussions-about-getting-rid-of-cable-tv-services/

 

Try doing a search on "roku" or "cable" to find some of the others

[birdog1960]

This subject comes up here from time to time, here's one older thread....

 

http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/130505-there-have-been-recent-discussions-about-getting-rid-of-cable-tv-services/

 

Try doing a search on "roku" or "cable" to find some of the others

thank you. this is a rapidly moving area tho so i hope the mods allow new threads. hbo breaking ranks is hopefully a game changer.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Saw this about a month ago and bookmarked it for future reference:

 

http://deadline.com/2015/01/sling-tv-dish-network-turner-cord-cutting-1201339761/

 

Seems like a pretty viable option to me if it got offered as planned, but I haven't followed up yet. Anybody more up to speed on this to save birddog and me some search time?

 

Hey birddog - - one other thing. If you can stand waiting a bit to see the Bills and other NFL games, you can see every regular NFL season game of every team on demand (but delayed) for about $40/year at NFL.com. All Sunday games are first available to stream shortly after that Sunday night's game ends. The stream is also unavailable when any NFL game is being broadcast live. So the service is a better option for west coast fans who can start streaming that day's Sunday Bills game around 9 pm or so west coast time. If you live on the east coast, you can't start watching until around midnight east coast time, and you also can't watch during the next day's live Monday night TV broadcast, so you may have to avoid the sports news for an uncomfortable amount of time if you want to watch the delayed stream without knowing the outcome in advance (assuming you work some version of 9-5 M-F).

 

Also, here's a useful site for seeing what you can pull off the air for free with the right antenna:

 

http://www.tvfool.com

 

Edit: Oops, just saw you mentioned "rewind" - - but left it in the post for others who might not know about it.

Edited February 15, 2015 by ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

[Acantha]

thank you. this is a rapidly moving area tho so i hope the mods allow new threads. hbo breaking ranks is hopefully a game changer.

HBO is going to be a big loss for cable and will get the ball rolling on bigger changes, but ESPN will be the biggest game changer. They already stream most of their stuff anyway (for cable subscribers), so it likely wouldn't be a big jump for them, but I haven't heard any talk of it.

[Acantha]

Saw this about a month ago and bookmarked it for future reference:

 

http://deadline.com/2015/01/sling-tv-dish-network-turner-cord-cutting-1201339761/

 

Seems like a pretty viable option to me if it got offered as planned, but I haven't followed up yet. Anybody more up to speed on this to save birddog and me some search time?

 

Hey birddog - - one other thing. If you can stand waiting a bit to see the Bills and other NFL games, you can see every regular NFL season game of every team on demand (but delayed) for about $40/year at NFL.com. All Sunday games are first available to stream shortly after that Sunday night's game ends. The stream is also unavailable when any NFL game is being broadcast live. So the service is a better option for west coast fans who can start streaming that day's Sunday Bills game around 9 pm or so west coast time. If you live on the east coast, you can't start watching until around midnight east coast time, and you also can't watch during the next day's live Monday night TV broadcast, so you may have to avoid the sports news for an uncomfortable amount of time if you want to watch the delayed stream without knowing the outcome in advance (assuming you work some version of 9-5 M-F).

That looks like a pretty awesome addition to my OTA, Netflix and Amazon Prime, though I would probably only get it during football season. I'll definitely be looking into it around August.

 

EDIT: Actually, I may check it out sooner. I've been looking into getting a Roku 3 for a while and they have a deal going on them. Subscribe to their service for 3 months and get a Roku 3 half off. That puts the total to about $110, while the Roku by itself is about $95.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Acantha

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Turns out, you can already get ESPN from the service I linked to above:

 

http://deadline.com/2015/02/sling-tv-adds-amc-sports-1201369355/

 

It's pretty new - - anybody tried it?

[birdog1960]

Turns out, you can already get ESPN from the service I linked to above:

 

http://deadline.com/2015/02/sling-tv-adds-amc-sports-1201369355/

 

It's pretty new - - anybody tried it?

looks really good. will be watching the reviews. i expect cnet and the like will weigh in soon.

 

now i see it's 100% streaming. no set up. no 1/2 day wait for an installer.

 

nice summary here: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/11/the-secret-to-sling-tvs-success/. gotta think someone (?tivo) will come up with a box that can record sling feed and ota feed, put them on a nice interface and let you feed them to your tv and still skip commercials. we'll see.

Edited February 15, 2015 by birdog1960

[Wooderson]

I recently got rid of my DirecTV and couldn't be happier. We use an antenna for local channels, PBS, etc. Although we can't get NBC no matter how I position the antenna. We also have Hulu, Netflix, HBOGO, and Watch ESPN app on my Apple TV. I'm lucky enough that my parents give me their Time Warner username so I'm able to stream HBOGO and Watch ESPN for free. Another nice feature of the Apple TV is the AirPlay feature when you can mirror your computer, iPad, or iPhone screen directly to the TV through bluetooth. It's awesome.

[boyst]

I will be ditching cable next year and going strictly OTA. I may pay for Netflix. I have an old tube tv because I do not use it enough. On game day, contrary to JR's statements, I do just fine finding streaming websites online that I don't pay for.

 

In my area outside of Greensboro and Winston Salem there are about 30 OTA chanels, if its a good night I pick up 4 or 5 from Charlotte.

 

Cutting cable will only save me about $45 unless they try to give me a plan to keep my 10megs internet and cable for less then $70.

[boyst]

To each his own, but I hate doing the streaming thing. When I have been traveling and in a bind, I would do it. And it was constantly a series of links that would be shut down or disappear. I hated the uncertainty of it.

 

Before I bought a house and got DTV, I was also a sports bar regular and that got old after 10 years of that.

 

I will say that if sling box was an option AND you could TiVo it AND you could avoid blackouts, I would probably do it over Sunday ticket.

sling box > eztv

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

looks really good. will be watching the reviews. i expect cnet and the like will weigh in soon. . . .

 

Not a review - - more like "coming attractions" from a month ago, but it's by c/net:

 

http://www.cnet.com/news/dish-launches-20-sling-tv-streaming-video-service-with-channel-lineup-that-includes-espn-disney/

[birdog1960]

dish is offering 1 week free, a free amazon or roku stick and they are now offering epix as an add on. i think i'll be doing the 7 day trial soon. anybody have experience with using one of these dongles with an av receiver. i suspect it just plugs into an auxilliary HDMI input? for the trial will probable just mirror through apple tv.

[Beef Jerky]

TV companies will always give you discounts as long as you are willing to fight with them. They won't just give it to you but also do not want to lose you.

[Chef Jim]

I didn't read everyone's posts here because I'm busy at work but we cut the cable cord a couple of years ago. I don't watch that much TV and have pretty much gone off of sports. We got Roku and Netflx and an antenna for local news and that's about it. It saves us a decent amount of money.

[birdog1960]

You can't run from them. The cable companies will just raise the price of Internet as more people cut the cord.

 

 

maybe not: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-leading-cable-analyst-says-its-time-for-investors-to-move-on-130517256.html

 

Many investors believe cable providers will be able to make up for revenue lost from cord cutters by increasing rates on Internet service, either by charging consumers more or by extracting fees from content providers like Netflix (NFLX). Moffett's concern is that under the FCC’s new rules, the companies won’t be able to make that shift.

“The obvious risk is that carriers’ ability to monetize traffic (through either of the above mechanisms) will never be permitted,” he writes.

Edited February 19, 2015 by birdog1960

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e46dc7a4-b843-11e4-86bb-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Sa9POMQL

 

Broadcasters fear falling revenues as viewers switch to on-demand TV

Shannon Bond in New York and Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles

Financial Times

Last updated: February 22, 2015 8:02 pm

With YouTube to watch, Instagram pictures to take and Facebook, Snapchat and other social media platforms to explore, a generation of young Americans that used to turn to television for entertainment is finding its fix elsewhere.

They are watching on-demand services, such as Netflix and Hulu and the BBC iPlayer but turning off “linear” TV, or tuning in at a set time on a set channel. This migration has been gradual but is starting to show up in the quarterly results of some of the world’s biggest media companies — and investors are beginning to notice.

Television executives started sounding the alarm last autumn when Viacom, 21st Century Fox, Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, and Walt Disney began reporting lower advertising revenues for some or all of their networks. Todd Juenger, senior analyst with Bernstein Research, called the ratings declines “alarming” and “unprecedented”.

The trend has continued into the most recent round of financial results, with Viacom among the worst hit. The company, controlled by 91-year-old billionaire Sumner Redstone, has suffered some of the sharpest ratings declines, with viewership down 18 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to a MoffettNathanson analysis of Nielsen data.

BET, which is aimed at African-American audiences, fell 22 per cent, the children’s network Nickelodeon was down 17 per cent while MTV declined 14 per cent.

Viacom’s profits have held steady but on the company’s recent investor call, Philippe Dauman, chief executive, alluded to significant changes in audience habits. “It is no secret that there are far-reaching shifts taking place in our industry,” he said.

His peers agree. In a nod to the popularity of subscription services such as Netflix, Jeff Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, owner of networks such as CNN and HBO, recently said television was “in the midst of a secular shift to on-demand consumption”. That has pushed networks including HBO and CBS to launch their own online offerings.

At Viacom, the ratings decline is not only putting pressure on ad sales, but reducing the company’s leverage in negotiating with pay-TV providers that carry its channels. Some small operators, including St Louis-based Suddenlink Communications, which counts about 1m video subscribers, have dropped Viacom altogether. Suddenlink said Viacom’s pricing demands were too high.

Viacom maintains its programming is still being viewed by young people and says they are just watching it in different ways. It has turned its fire on Nielsen, the consumer research company, whose ratings are the currency on which the $70bn television ad market depends.

The broadcaster believes Nielsen’s measurements have not kept up with how people consume content. Such changes, it argues, are especially pronounced among younger audiences that watch its channels on smartphones and gaming consoles, which Nielsen does not measure.

Mr Dauman said such “inadequate measurement” undermined “innovation” and disproportionately hit programmers such as Viacom. He has pledged to move away from relying on Nielsen ratings by boosting Viacom’s digital advertising inventory and selling more sponsorships and targeted ads that are inserted when shows are watched on demand. Viacom wants to increase the proportion of ad sales from those sources to 50 per cent in the next three years, from 30 per cent last year.

Viacom is also loading more advertising into some programmes to generate more revenue, boosting commercial time by more than 4.5 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to Mr Juenger at Bernstein Research.

Channels aimed at young viewers are not the only ones being hit. Viewership among 18-to-49 year olds of primetime broadcast and cable shows — some of the most valuable television advertising available — dropped 7 per cent in the final three months of 2014, the third consecutive quarter that audiences shrank, according to MoffettNathanson, the analysts. “This is just about the worst decline we have seen,” it said.

David Zaslav, chief executive of cable programmer Discovery Communications, added to the criticism of Nielsen, saying last week “there’s no question that it’s under-measuring . . . I think they will fix it over time, but it’s a problem”.

He contrasted the US to Norway, where “anybody that watches anything, whether you watch it in a bar, you watch it at your vacation house, whether you watch it on your iPad, it counts”. Since Norway moved to a new measurement system last year, he said, TV viewership has swung from double-digit declines to a 15 per cent increase.

Nielsen plans this year to introduce new tools to measure watching on digital devices which it says will provide a more comprehensive portrait of evolving viewership habits.

It also acknowledges that viewing a programme after its original transmission has taken a toll on audience ratings: the traditional metric, known as “C3”, captures only the live viewing and what is viewed within three days of the show being aired.

“What it looks like is a decline in ratings when in fact there is shifting viewing that is not captured,” said Megan Clarken, Nielsen’s executive vice-president of global digital products.

But she also noted that consumers have more choices in what they watch. “There’s a competing landscape on the digital side with digital pure plays producing content.”

That includes Netflix and Amazon, which are both spending more on hit shows such as House of Cards and Transparent , and Google’s YouTube, whose online video stars are particularly popular with young viewers.

Mr Juenger at Bernstein Research argues that television is undergoing a “structural” migration from ad-supported networks to streaming video services. “We don’t think those viewers are coming back,” he warns.

Nielsen wants the television industry to adopt a new standard of ratings that captures viewing no matter the screen or source, and has been developing its own “total audience” metric to measure digital content. “We think it’s important that the ratings we provide are reflective of what’s going on in the environment,” Ms Clarken said.

But, she added, redefining the industry’s currency is ultimately up to the media owners and the agencies that buy commercial time. “It will be the marketplace who decides the numbers on which they trade.”

While the TV industry struggles to hammer out new models for revenue and measurement, advertising executives say they are following consumers in expanding the definition of television itself to encompass on-demand viewing, streaming and digital video.

“I believe you have to redefine what television is. It’s more about moving content,” said Amir Kassaei, chief creative officer for Omnicom’s DDB Worldwide, an advertising agency.

“There is still the old media platform called TV, which is strong and you should use it if you need to build awareness and build a bigger audience. But the way people are interacting with moving content more broadly is changing, especially with young people. We have to be selective if we are trying to reach people in the right way.”

Shrinking live TV viewing threatens broadcasters’ bottom lines

This week, 3m more viewers than usual tuned into watched EastEnders, the long-running BBC soap opera, as it broadcast live, writes Henry Mance.

But that one-off success is unlikely to break a trend of falling live television viewing in the UK, as viewers switch to Netflix, DVDs and catch-up services. Now the question is whether advertising revenues — which have been increasing at broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 — will start to drop.

The amount of time that British children spend watching TV has fallen by 22 per cent since 2010, according to industry data from Barb. Many industry figures have argued that the shift away from live TV is a kids’ phenomenon, which will disappear as audience grow older.

In fact, says Toby Syfret, an analyst at Enders Analysis, “the habits of the parents are changing too”.

Live television viewing has fallen 11 per cent among adults aged 35 to 54 since 2010. For those audiences, the transition to on-demand viewing is often an easier behavioural shift than, say, the move from print books to ebooks. Only among the oldest demographic — aged 55 and above — has live television viewing remained relatively unaffected, falling 2 per cent in the past four years.

Broadcasters are, however, riding a recovery in advertising sales. ITV’s shares are at their highest since the dotcom boom, with ad revenues rising 6 per cent year-on-year in the nine months to September 2014.

In the short term, the fall in television audiences may actually increase the price of TV advertising. Brands want their ads to be seen a certain number of times on television; as it becomes more difficult to reach audiences, the cost of doing so rises.

Brands cannot switch their spending to Netflix, which does not show ads. The obvious option is to advertise more on online platforms — including ITV’s on-demand player and YouTube.

For the moment, “advertisers and media buyers just do not see [YouTube] as a substitute for mass market reach”, says Ian Whittaker, an analyst at Liberum.

“The big thing that prevents disruption is the content most people want to watch is produced by the big broadcasters,” says Mr Syfret.

Broadcasters are therefore investing in making their own programmes. Some are also exploring revenue streams that would hedge against a decline in revenues. ITV launched its first pay channel in more than a decade last year, and offers ad-free digital subscriptions.