cord cutting

Cord-cutters — those who drop traditional pay TV providers — can be lured back those big TV packages because of sports TV programming. Just under 40% cite sports as a reason to return, according to a survey by Frank N. Magid Associates.

Cord-cutting of pay TV packages will still be a thorn to TV providers and TV networks — but a small thorn at the moment. Consumers surveyed by Frank N. Magid Associates say 3.7% of them are “extremely likely” to cut the cord; that’s up from 1.9% five years ago.

There’s long been a debate among media people over whether cord cutting, or getting rid of pay TV services such as cable and satellite, is actually a problem or if it’s just overhyped by the media. A new report from Digitalsmiths suggests it is a real problem. Billy Purser, VP of marketing at Digitalsmiths, talks about whether cord cutters are a big problem, what’s behind their decisions, and how cable and satellite companies are combating cord cutting.

Among like-minded cable companies, Cablevision is making the most aggressive effort to target cord-cutters by offering them broadband Internet service and a TV antenna to pull in over-the-air channels. “Our goal is to meet the customers where they are,” Cablevision COO Kristin Dolan said at NCTA’s INTX convention in Chicago.

In a press briefing held Thursday, executives from Nielsen suggested cable subscribers who also have a subscription video-on-demand service are more likely to drop the SVOD than they are cable. In fact, according to Nielsen data, 93% of homes who had both services were more likely to keep the cable and instead drop broadband or SVOD offerings, said Glenn Enoch, SVP of audience insights for the measurement and data service.

PBS MediaShift launches a comprehensive series on the phenomenon of cord cutting — who is doing it, what’s driving it, how ready services are to meet its demand and how cable may push back. A multi-part look at the implications.

No single streaming service offers everything. And you still need to pay for your Internet connection, typically at a higher price when unbundled from your TV service. Depending on how and what you watch, cutting the cord won’t necessarily save you money. Here are things to consider.

If you are thinking about dropping your cable/satellite subscription — and really, who isn’t? — one of the necessary exercises is to figure out what network shows you will lose easy access to, and, significantly, how many of them you can get via subscription online video on demand outlets.

HBO and ESPN have long been cited as a chief reason people keep their pay TV bundles, amid a growing practice of “cord cutting.” But last month, Dish started making ESPN available as part of a $20-a-month online television package called Sling TV. Now, HBO will offer its movies and shows over the Internet for $15 a month. Here are some things to know before you rush out to cancel your cable service.

Many millennials find themselves simply fed up with their cable companies, for myriad reasons. Millennials aren’t cutting the cord simply because of medium preference, but also due to increasing prices. But it’s not that millennials are completely done with live television -– no, they’d just rather find a more accessible, cheaper option. Forty percent want access to live TV online, desiring real-time experiences rather than on-demand.

Dish wants to make inroads with people who are fed up with traditional pay TV with its upcoming internet-based TV service, said company exec Adam Lowy at the TV of Tomorrow Show in San Francisco Wednesday. “Cord cutters, cord nevers and what we call cord haters” will be the target audience of the new service, he said.

A new survey published by Experian Marketing Services suggests that 7.6 million U.S. households, or 6.5% of all U.S. households, have now cut the cord — up 44% in the past three years. Ownership of an iPhone or iPad “noticeably increases the odds” that a household will cut the cord, Experian said.

ABC’s restriction of next-day online episodes to cable customers and Hulu Plus subscribers only may have led cord-cutters to turn to pirated content sites.

Pay-TV” cord-cutting” and “cord-thinning” climbed a bit in the third quarter, with perhaps higher activity to come. Among pay TV customers — representing some 90% of U.S. TV homes — 17% either trimmed pay TV networks/services or removed them completely in the third quarter of this year.

One of the more helpful tools cord cutters give up when they finally say farewell to cable or satellite, and presumedly the DVR built into the cable box, are those helpful channel guides. TVGuide brings that guide into your hands, provides show teasers, organizes your favorite shows and more.

The top pay-TV providers lost 75,000 video subscribers in the third quarter, triple their loss a year earlier. But there’s a “but.”

America’s four-decade romance with cable television seems headed for the rocks, the victim of a sultry flirtation with an industrial homewrecker, the Internet. And that will ripple through television in ways that executives are only beginning to imagine, from the way it’s made to the way you watch it.

Without cable, Netflix doesn’t exist like it does today. If everyone one of the 100 million households in America with a pay-TV subscription dropped cable for Netflix, the company couldn’t support entertaining all of them for just $8 per month.

The dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable was the last straw for at least one subscriber, who found setting up a TV antenna took little tech savvy.

Of the TV watchers surveyed who said they’re highly inclined to drop their pay TV subscription service, 8.8% are connected TV users, compared to the 3.5% who are non-connected TV users, according to a new report by The Diffusion Group.

Broadcast Interactive Media and Channel Master have teamed up on a Web-based tool called Antenna Choice that, after consumers plug in their address, determines which antenna is right for them. After trying out the new tool, however, I was advised to buy one of the most expensive antennas, when a basic, more affordable model would have worked just as well.

No one on the planet may know more about the pay TV business than Craig Moffett, who analyzed it consistently and cogently for about a decade at Bernstein Research up until the end of last year. He resurfaced last month at his own research firm, Moffett Research, and returned Monday to the subject he knows so well with a simple message that stood out from the rest of a 135-page coverage initiation document: “cord-cutting is real.”

You’d be surprised how many people still don’t know that significantly cheaper TV options are available to them. It’s time to spread the word.

Pay-TV cord cutting will be minimal over the next several years. And while traditional TV viewership is in decline, TV will easily remain the most dominant for advertisers in years to come. “Even though some consumers are cutting the cord, reducing their subscriptions, or not subscribing when starting a new home, the impact to the pay TV industry over at least the next five years will be minimal,” says PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook.

Growth in the pay-television market was anemic in the third quarter, fueling the debate about whether subscribers are starting to cut the cord. Charter Communications, -1.80% Cablevision Systems Corp. -6.29% and Dish Network Corp. +3.36% collectively lost 102,000 video customers in the latest quarter, based on information contained in their quarterly reports on Tuesday. That is better than their combined loss of 193,000 a year earlier, but it isn’t a reversal.

Aereo won’t say so, but coupled with a Netflix subscription, the Barry Diller-backed service will enable many users to cut the cord of their cable subscriptions. And Diller’s former colleagues from the broadcast world would like to litigate Aereo out of existence.

Still paying for channels you don’t even watch? That is so 2011. It’s time to gear up with the right tech and transform your TV into the Netflixing, Huluing, 21st-century streaming machine it was destined to be. Don’t think you can frame the Internet as this unreliable source for premium content and dangle professional sports in front of my nose to reel me in again. I can get everything that counts over the Internet and on my TV.

Cable companies are still losing TV subscribers. But online services aren’t the culprit. Continued competition and a slowing economy are likely to blame.

Consumers subscribing to television service via cable, satellite or telco services are downgrading their services at an accelerating pace, according to a new industry study.

Everyone in media agrees that cord cutting has become a big-buzz topic in recent months, with cable subscriptions dropping for the first time and more free online video content available than ever before. Robert D’Asaro, U.S. director of digital strategic alliances at OMD, talks about cutting the cord, how online video consumption is changing and why DVRs are actually somewhat limiting.

If online video really is taking TV service subscribers from cable, satellite and phone providers, it’s not just bad news for those companies. Analysts also see it leading to more restrictions and higher prices for online video and broadband access, a trend that has already started.

In its inaugural “Residential Pay-to-View” study, J.D. Power & Associates found only 3% of U.S. consumers who subscribe to either cable or satellite television services have completely “cut the cord” from those services in favor of other viewing options.

Although new consumer electronic devices/digital video services are making inroads with TV programming, subscription television is still the dominant TV service for consumers — cord-cutting trends are not yet a threat, new research finds.