Traditional cable is rapidly losing its ace in the hole - premium channels

[Shawn Knight]

Following a similar announcement from HBO on Monday, CBS chief Leslie Moonves said his company is planning to offer Showtime as a standalone streaming subscription service in the near future.

During a recent speaking engagement, Moonves said it’s clear the days of the 150-channel universe in the home are rapidly changing and that people are slicing and dicing it in different ways. HBO’s formal announcement during Apple’s recent smartwatch event only accelerated conversations to get a standalone service out the door.

Moonves didn’t provide any other details regarding the planned subscription-based service outside of acknowledging that the floodgates are now open. Truer words were never spoken.

If you haven’t yet noticed, cable and satellite television providers are quickly losing one of the few services that have kept some subscribers tethered to pay television – premium channels. By unbundling these channels and pricing them at the same amount as one would pay on top of a traditional cable package, networks are essentially eliminating the middleman.

It’s a move that will no doubt prompt droves of people to ditch cable in favor of these semi a la carte options that’ll offer flexible access to hit shows like Game of Thrones and Homeland without the need (and expense) of a standard cable bundle.

If CBS is willing to offer its standalone Showtime subscription for less than what people pay cable providers (doubtful), they’d stand to make even more money and really put the squeeze on traditional providers.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/60031-traditional-cable-rapidly-losing-ace-hole-premium-channels.html

 

[p51d007]

If they made HBO, Cinemax, Showtime et al, a streaming service, I might watch a few.
There have been several HBO documentaries that after their run, were made available on
DVD that I enjoyed, but, I didn't want to shell out the money for cable.
If this proves popular, either cable will have to drop its rates, or they will continue to lose
subscribers. Yes, some people live in an area, (thanks to forcing the digital tv signals on
everyone, which doesn't propagate as well as analog) where cable is their only option, but
streaming will continue to grow because people have had it with the prices satellite & cable
charge.

 

[Taharial]

Of all the services cable providers typically offer customers (phone, internet, TV), TV is the least profitable for the cable provider but (generally) the most expensive for the consumer. That's because every year HBO, Showtime, etc. want more money and cable providers can't lose the little profit they make so that cost at least partially goes to the customer in a price increase. Customer gets angry and thinks it's the cable provider screwing them when it's really not.
The companies that own those premium channels are making way too much money from cable providers to start pricing their stand-alone services like HBO Now much lower then what it costs to get them from their cable provider. What the consumer saves money on is not having to pay their provider for a basic cable subscription or any other equipment charges/contracts they would require of them. If it no longer becomes profitable for cable companies to offer cable TV to their consumers and they stop carrying these big brands, I expect the cost of these stand-alone services to increase substantially. That's a long road from now though.

 

[amstech]

I dropped TV from my cable bill (TimeWarner), I now pay $75 instead of $125 ($600 savings per year) for just turbo internet (2MB). I just stream any channel I need.
You wouldn't believe the offers they through by me when they knew I was canceling.

 

[Guest]

You pay $75 a month for a what? You said 2mg? If that was up or down, that's still bad, and if your paying $75 for it... WOW!!!!

 

[psp100travis]

You pay $75 a month for a what? You said 2mg? If that was up or down, that's still bad, and if your paying $75 for it... WOW!!!!

Well I'm paying $170 a month for basic phone, basic tv, and turbo internet. So taking the tv and phone off that's probably what my price would be too, but knowing Time Warners bullshit they would add any kind of hidden fees they can think of just to get my price up. Also why Time Warner continues to act like their Internet is fast on their commercials is beyond me because my 'Turbo' 20mbps is starting to remind me of my dial up days.

 

[RzmmDX]

You pay $75 a month for a what? You said 2mg? If that was up or down, that's still bad, and if your paying $75 for it... WOW!!!!

Well I'm paying $170 a month for basic phone, basic tv, and turbo internet. So taking the tv and phone off that's probably what my price would be too, but knowing Time Warners bullshit they would add any kind of hidden fees they can think of just to get my price up. Also why Time Warner continues to act like their Internet is fast on their commercials is beyond me because my 'Turbo' 20mbps is starting to remind me of my dial up days.

Wow, that is a terrible bundle price...

 

[pmcardle]

I jump back and forth between Verizon Fios and Brighthouse every couple of years to get their "I want you back" specials. TV, Phone & Internet (75MB or 90MB) with four HD boxes and all premium channels run around $150 to $180 per month. I created an Outlook.com email account when it first came out so I'm not tied to their email either which makes switching even that much easier.

 

[pmcardle]

Btw... I found Brighthouse (104/10MB) much better than Verizon (84/84MB) internet speed. I rarely upload anything. Brighthouse also has a superior PC TV experience so my home office would have a spare TV via a second monitor. Verizon Fios PC TV experience $ucks. I'm currently in a Verizon cycle and I can't wait to switch back to Brighthouse.

 

[wiyosaya]

I dropped TV from my cable bill (TimeWarner), I now pay $75 instead of $125 ($600 savings per year) for just turbo internet (2MB). I just stream any channel I need.
You wouldn't believe the offers they through by me when they knew I was canceling.

If you are not getting anything else like phone from them for that price, they are still screwing you. Call up Earthlink and get them through TimeWarner 15 Mb service for $29.95/mo. That is where I get my internet from Earthlink through TimeWarner, and I am currently paying $34.95/mo for 15 Mb service.

 

[wiyosaya]

And yet another over-priced service that I'll skip comes to market with this. No thanks, SHO.

 

[ffry444]

It's all about Sports now. That's all cable has left.

 

[Guest]

I live in a town of 80k where one cable TV company has a monopoly on broadband and the service was terrible. For a few years the speed would drop to dial-up or below at night and on the weekends and go out completely for up to a week at a time. Verizon installed FIOS only in the very wealthy neighborhoods and DSL is to slow to stream HD video so many people installed satellite broadband and I relied on my cell phone service as a backup for Internet. I was renting a place in a neighborhood with covenants that didn't allow outside antennas so I had to use cable until I bought a house. I had built my own 4 tuner DVR with 4 TB of storage so I had no rental fee for a cable company DVR. I was still paying $190 a month for extended basic cable with two HD tuners and "3 MB" broadband. That was without any premium channels or sports packages and they were charging for HD channels. As soon as I bought a house I installed two antennas in the attic to pick up the local stations that DirecTV doesn't carry and I get 36 channels with a third of them in HD and The picture quality is much better than the cable and doesn't drop out. I bought a cable modem to get rid of the monthly rental fee and my bill dropped to $58. I was out of town a lot over the past few years so I haven't installed DirecTV yet but the cable company finally updated their equipment to provide reliable service and I can now stream video. Most of the channels I used to watch have switched to trashy "Reality" shows so the only things that I have been missing are the premium channels and sports. With HBO and Showtime now offering to stream those to people without a cable or satellite package the only thing missing is some sports.

 

[monty york]

Phone 10.00 a month sling tv with HBO 35.00 comes to 45.00 a month

 

[DelJo63]

This will sound insane but - -
I'm splitting Interenet + ViOP (currently TWC) from TV (going to Dish).

Here's the deal breaker for me - - my email addresses (5) are tied to critical services and dropping TWC would remove access to them - - :sigh: it's an imperfect world and we get (need) to set our priorities.

 

[Nitrotoxin]

I dropped phone and internet long ago from my house, my kids don't even know what a TV tuner is. I pay $60 a month for 40MB/5MB internet and I also subscribe to HULU and Netflix... My family seems to be happy with that. =) When I did have a TV tuner through Charter no one ever used it... so what was the point?

 

[bea108]

Buy Ooma phone and pay about $3.85 a month. Just get the equipment (about $120 one time ) You don't need a new modem or anything. Wish I had done it long ago. Yes that's $3.85 per month. ( taxes ) Your area may be different but go online ( Ooma.com ) and you can get a price for where you live.