According to the research firm SNL, for the first time ever the number of Americans who pay for bundled cable and satellite fell by a net total of 251,000 subscribers. Previously the industry has faced bad quarters and an alarming decline in subscriber growth. A net drop over the course of a full year has never happened before.
“While seasonally driven quarterly declines have become routine for industry watchers, the annual dip illustrates longer-term downward pressure even as economic conditions gradually improve,” SNL Kagan said.
Cable lost almost 2 million video subscribers last year, while satellite services added 170,000 customers and phone-company offerings using fiber optics, such as Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T Inc.’s U-verse, netted 1.6 million.
People are moving to streaming, specifically Netflix Streaming and Amazon Prime, both of which offer plenty of choices and do so for less than a tenth the price of the standard cable bill.
This net dip is seismic news. The dip in growth had been bad enough, especially after decades of monumental growth thanks to more people gaining access to cable and satellite, and of course population growth. There are still 100 million bundled cable subscribers, but the trend is everything and it is accelerating. Young people, who have little money in this Obama economy but all kinds of tech savvy, are the future of streaming, not cable.
The ripple effects are much wider than just the cable companies. Media companies that produce news and entertainment content have enjoyed a windfall from bundled cable over the decades. Your bill is so high because many of these companies are paid what’s known as carriage fees — a fee for every person who buys a cable package that includes their channel.
This is why you are forced to purchase channels you don’t watch or even like.
This is why you are subsidizing left-wing propagandists like CNN and MSNBC whether you watch them or not.
This is why you should cancel your cable … for America.
If you want to really stick it to Hollywood and the left-wing media, stop paying for bundled cable.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC