Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Streaming Services Overtake Pay TV In The U.S.

Statista - In recent years, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu have swiftly evolved to become one of America's favorite ways to consume video content. Notably, for the first time, more households subscribe to a video streaming service than traditional pay television. 69 percent of U.S. households reported having a subscription to a streaming video service in late 2018 while 65 percent were paying for regular television. 41 percent were also subscribed to a music streaming service while 30 percent were paying for a gaming service. 

https://www.statista.com/chart/17439/share-of-us-households-with-the-following-subscriptions/

brutal!

Well, that, and I can't realistically get single games/programs a la carte just yet.  The infrastructure still isn't built to support it, but it gets closer every day.

I do find myself laughing at some of my friends/family, generally younger ones, that tell me about how they've cut the cord.  And then they tell me about the last season of Game of Thrones, or that ESPN football game they watched last week.  I ask them "how" if they cut the cord, and they tell me things like, "Oh I used my mom and dad's login for HBOGo"  or "my buddy lets me use his WatchESPN login info."

They have no idea that they didn't actually cut the cord, instead they're just stealing cable.  Whatever...

Well, that, and I can't realistically get single games/programs a la carte just yet.  The infrastructure still isn't built to support it, but it gets closer every day.

I do find myself laughing at some of my friends/family, generally younger ones, that tell me about how they've cut the cord.  And then they tell me about the last season of Game of Thrones, or that ESPN football game they watched last week.  I ask them "how" if they cut the cord, and they tell me things like, "Oh I used my mom and dad's login for HBOGo"  or "my buddy lets me use his WatchESPN login info."

They have no idea that they didn't actually cut the cord, instead they're just stealing cable.  Whatever...

But you CAN get that stuff by cutting the cord, right?  You can definitely get HBOGo a la carte on most platforms, and while for the last 12 years you've needed credentials from another provider for ESPN, can't you once again pay ESPN for a service to get games?  I thought that's what they've been trying to tell me on the app since it updated and they did away with WatchESPN.  Admittedly I haven't paid attention to it because I just use my provider credentials if I need the ESPN app.  

It's not convenience for me.  I ditched cable (satellite, actually) because I deem them too dang expensive for the use I get out of them, and because I don't like the contracts.  Me and Mrs. DeTiger basically only use live TV during football season and the odd tennis tournament for her.  When the SuperBowl is done....bye.  Can't do it with cable and it's far less expensive for the months we do have it cut on anyway. 

The technology is not perfect, there are some conveniences in the user experience that you're missing with traditional services, but I've used Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV so far, and both are still preferable to what we were doing previously.  YouTube in particular even has some advantages over cable/satellite that I enjoy.  i.e., it has technology that knows when live games are still going so I don't have to worry about extending my recording 1 hour, 1.5 hours, etc.  It knows when there are delays, and things are moved temporarily to other channels, so it starts itself and stops when and where it's supposed to.  And my fave.....click one button and record every college football game on every channel?  Yes please.  Unlimited DVR, so what do I care? 

Yes but those are all still subscriptions which is what the article was lamenting.  I haven't found a single subscription that covers everything my cable provider does, so instead you end up cobbling together a Frankenservice.  Some folks are fine with it, generally younger, more mobile, more tech-savvy customers.  Older folks like my parents could never navigate their way through all of the various streaming/subscription services, it would completely overwhelm them.  They're willing to pay more, for the convenience of Spectrum or AT&T ow whomever, aggregating all of those channels/services and paying one monthly fee to one provider for it.

I'm somewhere in the middle, I know how to do it so I COULD spend all the time to cobble together different subscriber services, and save a few bucks, but honestly it doesn't end up being a whole lot of savings.  The moment I unbundle my internet service from my cable TV package, the internet service fee increases to the point where adding in just one streaming service on top of it, comes out to about the same as I'd pay otherwise.

It's not convenience for me.  I ditched cable (satellite, actually) because I deem them too dang expensive for the use I get out of them, and because I don't like the contracts.  Me and Mrs. DeTiger basically only use live TV during football season and the odd tennis tournament for her.  When the SuperBowl is done....bye.  Can't do it with cable and it's far less expensive for the months we do have it cut on anyway. 

Agree 100%. 

We see these articles coming out all the time, and sometimes they seem like hit pieces against cord-cutting. "OMG it's so confusing and horrible! And if I pay for ALL the content in the world, I'll actually end up paying MORE!"

Personally, I save quite a bit of money.

First, f I had cable, I’d still have Netflix, because they have content I want to watch. If I had cable, I’d still have Amazon Prime (I used it for years for the free shipping before ever trying any of their video services). So I don’t include those in any "cord-cutting" price analysis, because those expenses would be incurred whether I had cable or not.

So the question is whether Internet+TV bundle is lower cost than Internet+streaming separately.

Where I live, there is no internet competition, so my only options are expensive. It’s $103/month for internet and $45/month for Hulu Live TV.

Cable offers a bundle of internet+live TV for $110/mo for 12 months, followed by $238/mo thereafter (2 year contract required). Note, however, that this rate excludes all sorts of taxes and fees, excludes any mandatory regional sports charges, and if you have more than 1 TV, you’ll pay additional equipment charges.

It sounds cheaper, but it isn’t.

• 24 months of my current plan: (103+45)*24 = 3552
• 24 months of Cox internet+TV: 110*12+238*12 = 4176, and that doesn’t include all the added taxes or fees.

So even factoring in bundling and their promotional rates, I’d save at least $600 over 24 months, and then save much more every month thereafter.

Even if you factored in 24 months of Netflix (I still don't count Amazon Prime because I almost never watch it, it's all about the shipping--I wouldn't pay for it as a video service if I wasn't a Prime member) at $16/month, I still come out ahead.

The technology is not perfect, there are some conveniences in the user experience that you're missing with traditional services, but I've used Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV so far, and both are still preferable to what we were doing previously.  YouTube in particular even has some advantages over cable/satellite that I enjoy.  i.e., it has technology that knows when live games are still going so I don't have to worry about extending my recording 1 hour, 1.5 hours, etc.  It knows when there are delays, and things are moved temporarily to other channels, so it starts itself and stops when and where it's supposed to.  And my fave.....click one button and record every college football game on every channel?  Yes please.  Unlimited DVR, so what do I care?  

What do you think of Youtube TV relative to Hulu Live TV? I originally ruled out Youtube when I moved off Sling as they didn't have the Food Network (a must in my household), but they list it now.

I can't stand the Hulu UI, and think Youtube might be better there. How is their on-demand library? Do they have a good on-demand library, or is it basically all about live and DVR content?

But you CAN get that stuff by cutting the cord, right?  You can definitely get HBOGo a la carte on most platforms, and while for the last 12 years you've needed credentials from another provider for ESPN, can't you once again pay ESPN for a service to get games?  I thought that's what they've been trying to tell me on the app since it updated and they did away with WatchESPN.  Admittedly I haven't paid attention to it because I just use my provider credentials if I need the ESPN app. 

If you can get ESPN separately that's news to me.  Regardless, my point stands that these proud cord-cutters really aren't doing that.  They're just stealing.

To my earlier point, once you start adding in all of the various networks/services on top of your ISP-- if you're actually paying for them and not stealing them-- then it's not really the incredible savings that a lot of people believe it will be.

In the above statement I'm including things like HBO.  One can always say, "well I don't need HBO and won't pay for it and therefore my cord-cutting is providing me savings" which is totally fine.  We can all go a step further and simply pull down live network OTA television and not pay a cent.  And you can go even further, and say that you don't need television at all and then you don't even have the purchase price of a television and an OTA antenna to account for in your entertainment budget.  We'd likely all be a lot better off if we did that, and went outside and threw the football instead of watching someone else throw the football on TV.  But that's really another discussion entirely.