Big providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable may want to cling to the past but it looks like smaller cable providers seem to know that cord cutting is actually the future. The Wall Street Journal reports that smaller cable providers are increasingly placing more emphasis on their broadband offerings and less on TV packages as consumers have shown that they would much rather have a faster Internet service than hundreds of channels they never watch.
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“Faced with rising programming costs, some of those companies… have pulled the plug on TV service altogether, preferring to simply focus on Internet and phone service,” the Journal writes. “The shift poses a potential threat to big media companies. These cable providers are tiny compared with industry titans like Comcast, but the fees they pay media companies for rights to carry programming add up.”
The Journal also posts a chart showing that as cable TV subscriptions in the United States have declined, high-speed broadband subscriptions have grown.
As to why more consumers are opting to go with broadband-only subscriptions instead of TV bundle packages, it’s not hard to figure out — cable bills have been rising at over triple the rate of inflation and many consumers just don’t think they’re getting good value for their money, especially when they can get many of their favorite shows over Internet streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.
It may take a while for cord cutting to become completely mainstream, but given how much younger people in the U.S. use the Internet to get their TV fix over pay TV, it’s only a matter of time.
