RIP cable television, 1976-2015

[anarky]

HBO to Launch Standalone Streaming Service

(I linked to the Wall Street Journal article, but it turns out those fucktards only let you read articles once, even the same fucking article if you click on it twice, in a particular time frame without paying. Given the number of ads all over that page, fuck that.)

HBO's been the last major holdout. As of right now, assuming HBO Go a la carte costs less than $20 (which I can't imagine it wouldn't), then that would put paid subscriptions to HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu Plus at less than $50 per month. Which would give a viewer almost everything, and certainly everything currently airing on cable. Which runs us about $200 per month; we've got a fairly high-end package (plus bundled internet and phone), but it's one of those bizarre situations where it's cheaper to get more than less, and the cheaper cable packages are a total fucking waste. Even if we keep our landline through Vonage or MagicJack or something, and Verizon charges out the nose for internet and there's no good alternative (let's say $75/month), that's still cutting our bill by almost half (and likely much more), while giving us a lot more, as well as a lot more options on when and how to watch.

The cable providers should be shitting themselves right now. Because if they don't adapt really fucking quickly, they're dead. Particularly since other premium channels will follow suit. An industry that operates logically would've been planning for this a few years ago, but I can't help but think the cable companies won't come up with anything except a half-assed response six months after the service launches.

And given that Verizon (and I assume other cable providers as well) have cancellation fees that they are contractually required to lower per each month of your service, I can't help but assume shit tons of people will be jumping ship the very second that cancellation fee is economically a better deal than paying for another month of cable.

[vynsane]

the cable companies HAVE been anticipating this for a long time, that's why they're lobbying so hard to end net neutrality, so they can throttle down the bandwidth of competitors like HULU, Netflix, et al or make them pay more for increased flow. this way, they presume, they'll make their money one way or the other. also, since i still get my internet through the cable company, they can decrease my bandwidth since i only pay for the internet, not the "triple play" package.

[anarky]

Point seen. I meant that they need to accept that the times are changing, and they need to change, while they believe they can stay in charge.

I'm not usually a libertarian, but one side effect of ending net neutrality (should this occur, which I hope not) would be other companies rising up, offering net neutrality of a sort through their service, and slowly overtaking the dinosaurs. (I'd prefer net neutrality overall, though.)

[Diabolical]

If something like Google Fiber takes off, the net neutrality argument could be squashed fairly quickly.