Cord Cutting: Cable & Satellite TV Lose 380,000 Subscribers

From The Article:

According to a report from research firm iSuppli, pay-TV households–like those subscribing to DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Dish, or Comcast–in the US declined by nearly 380,000 in the second quarter of 2011 alone.



“Total U.S. TV subscriptions in the second quarter—the latest time in which full figures are available— decreased to 100.9 million, down from 101.4 million in the first quarter,” according to the report.

These numbers represent subscribers in three areas of pay-TV: cable, satellite video and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). However, the losses come from the former two, as IPTV made gains...

...For their part, cable and satellite companies have put up a dogged fight. Cable providers, for example, have adapted, recouping some of their losses from high-speed data and voice services. Satellite companies like DirecTV corner the high-end market with sports packages.

Yet demand for video packages has begun to go out the window as consumers can get high quality video entertainment cheaper and for a la carte prices. As demand contracts and the sophistication and content offerings of Internet-based services increase, the pay TV model is bound for a day of reckoning.

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Cable companies like to pump up their numbers and keep people as TV subscribers by offering "basic cable TV" and internet as a bundle for cheaper than internet alone. If you counted those people who have "cut the cable" but remain a customer of cable TV only for the cheaper internet price, the numbers would be a lot larger.

I still want to see what happens if networks follow through with the idea of delaying streaming of shows by a full week. I think I posted before that Fox is going to be the first to do it. If the others follow through with it, I'm very curious to see if that has an effect on the streaming habit.