dannyswitzer
11-21-2010, 02:28 AM
This is a link to a news article i was linked to from the howard stern web sight. Interesting read. Its in the pheonix busniess journal.
C/P
Phoenix Business Journal
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 12:44am MST
Consumers continued turning off their cable television subscriptions in the fall, stretching the pay-TV industry’s unprecedented U.S. decline to six months.
Cable, telco and satellite TV services collectively lost nearly 119,000 subscribers during the third quarter, according to an analysis by SNL Kagan, a Monterey, Calif., trade group.
The industry had lost 216,000 subscribers during the second quarter — the first year-to-year decline since SNL Kagan started keeping those records 30 years ago, according to the Kansas City Business Journal
Slower consumer spending, high unemployment and a weak housing industry are thought to be primary reasons, but Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based SNL Kagan analyst, theorizes that streaming of TV programs over the Internet may be behind some of the decline.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance, particularly after seeing declines during the period of the year that tends to produce the largest subscriber gains due to seasonal shifts back to television viewing and subscription packages,” Olgeirson said in a Wednesday release.
Fall is when TV and telco hookups historically have surged because of the end of family summer vacations and the return of college students to campuses throughout the country.
Instead of the usual third-quarter growth, U.S. cable TV companies lost 741,000 paying customers, according to SNL Kagan’s 2010 analysis.
Those losses were partially offset by telecom companies’ broadband TV services adding 476,000 customers and satellite TV services adding 145,000 subscribers in the third quarter.
The shift toward telecom and satellite TV providers left cable companies’ pay-TV market share at 60.3 percent nationwide, down from 62.9 percent a year earlier, SNL Kagan estimated.
C/P
Phoenix Business Journal
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 12:44am MST
Consumers continued turning off their cable television subscriptions in the fall, stretching the pay-TV industry’s unprecedented U.S. decline to six months.
Cable, telco and satellite TV services collectively lost nearly 119,000 subscribers during the third quarter, according to an analysis by SNL Kagan, a Monterey, Calif., trade group.
The industry had lost 216,000 subscribers during the second quarter — the first year-to-year decline since SNL Kagan started keeping those records 30 years ago, according to the Kansas City Business Journal
Slower consumer spending, high unemployment and a weak housing industry are thought to be primary reasons, but Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based SNL Kagan analyst, theorizes that streaming of TV programs over the Internet may be behind some of the decline.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance, particularly after seeing declines during the period of the year that tends to produce the largest subscriber gains due to seasonal shifts back to television viewing and subscription packages,” Olgeirson said in a Wednesday release.
Fall is when TV and telco hookups historically have surged because of the end of family summer vacations and the return of college students to campuses throughout the country.
Instead of the usual third-quarter growth, U.S. cable TV companies lost 741,000 paying customers, according to SNL Kagan’s 2010 analysis.
Those losses were partially offset by telecom companies’ broadband TV services adding 476,000 customers and satellite TV services adding 145,000 subscribers in the third quarter.
The shift toward telecom and satellite TV providers left cable companies’ pay-TV market share at 60.3 percent nationwide, down from 62.9 percent a year earlier, SNL Kagan estimated.