Cable Viewers Bail In Favor Of Programming On Demand

As access to traditional television media becomes more easily reachable through the emerging methods of streaming programming using pay per view, the cable industry is feeling the strain as formerly satisfied customers slip away.

Consumers who have happily made the switch to internet TV brag a savings in service costs, but no little loss of satisfaction from the service provided. Their favourite programs are accessible through online streaming sources like Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix.

Almost five percent of the almost 60 million cable service customers ended the relationship with their provider sometime between 2010 and 2011. Across New Jersey, cable customers are dropping like flies. In the same time span, Comcast lost 2.5 percent of its customers in the area, and Cablevision lost another 1.6 percent. These numbers are, however, still less than the national average of for dropped service, based on the findings of market research conducted by the Board of Public Utilities.

Verizon FiOS's fiber-optic network delivers both internet and TV services to consumers, providing extremely fast and competitive service. The service was introduced in 2005, and now garners about 15 percent of the revenue generated by TV media consumption. Their customer base continues to grow, but isn't stopping the total number of TV watchers from dropping. By 2011, TV consumption had lost 1.5 million contracts.

There is a growing trend toward online viewership, both in illegal person to person file sharing, as well as subscriptions that provide users with unlimited streaming of their choice of movies or shows on demand. On of the appeals is that online media comes with a great deal less advertising through commercials. Another is cost savings. Netflix, for example, will provide viewers with a month of unlimited movie streaming for only eight dollars. Hulu provides a sizeable portion of its programming for free. By contrast, cable consumers can expect to pay almost ten times more for the access to internet and TV.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf...subscribe.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...E801-M4UGO.DTL

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-574...-to-cost-$205/