Could I save money by getting rid of "cable"?

[walkitout]

I decided to take a look at my bill, to find out. We live in a town with two major providers of Luxe Access: Verizon Fios and Comcast Infinity. We have option A, and we have the Triple Play Bundle with a bunch of discounts, and our cell service is also through Verizon, so we get a One-Bill discount. What with one thing and another, it can be a little difficult to know _what_ we would actually be paying if we went Internet only, but if I am to believe the line item, the internet plan we are paying for is $45/month. Subtracting the amount of our bill that is Triple Play specific, I get $70 -- that would involve ditching the landline AND cable. This is no hundred dollars a month savings.

Could I replace the shows that I watch through cable? Well, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both available the next day after airing, and that's when I watch them anyway, so that wouldn't cost me anything. I could get The Rachel Maddow Show, albeit with a bit longer delay, through the iTunes video podcast, again, for free. I have a list of Crappy TV shows that I watch in any given week, different during the main season than the off season, but I'll figure it at main season. If I bought them through Amazon, the per ep cost would range from a little under $2 to a little under $3, depending on whether I subscribed and whether I went for SD or HD (this is what I do when something I TiVo'd gets chopped up, so that's probably what I would do if I wasn't able to watch it via the cable subscription -- I'm unlikely to wait for a DVD boxed set for purchase or rental, and I can't be bothered to figure out when the free window is on the network sites, Hulu, etc.). I watch about five shows during the main season, so call it $10-$15/week, or $50-$60/month.

This ignores the fact that there are three other people in the house who watch TV much less consistently, but who do in fact watch TV.

I'm not seeing any savings here, and I'm seeing a whole lot of inconvenience, so I'm betting that consumption patterns for people who have big savings by getting rid of cable are a lot different from ours. Here are some possibilities:

(1) They are in a town without as much competition for their business, so they are paying a lot more for quite possibly worse stuff.

(2) They actually watch worth while stuff available only through Netflix streaming and similar, where we watch Horrible Commodity Hollywood Programming. If we weren't so White Bread, we'd be able to save money, too.

(3) They _were_ paying for premium services like HBO or whatever.

(4) They dramatically reduced their consumption when they cut the cord, either by reading more, having family dinners, adopting a useful hobby, going to church more often, spending time with loved ones, or getting their media through the library, free streaming and similar.

Theories? Data? Rampant speculation?

Comments

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Keeping in mind that "anecdote" is not the singular for "data"....

I have not owned a tv since the mid-1990's, initially because the British TV license fee was a serious deterrent to a grad student, and later, having lost the tv watching habit, I just couldn't be bothered. My cable bill is around $60, for internet service only, in the KC area.

I fit (2) because we watch netflix for both tv shows and movies. I also fit (4), initially because I was a grad student (see above) and was too busy either working on my thesis (or, its counterpart, feeling guilty I was doing anything other than working on it), and now because I have a family, read, play computer games, have hobbies, and (2).

I'm a big believer in qualitative analysis

[walkitout]

So for suitable definitions of "anecdote" (like, I can calibrate the source, ask questions, etc.), I actually like it better than "data", when the data are still scarce. And this is really the very definition of "scarce data". Creating a representative sample of people who are engaging in cord cutting is especially hard.

I probably should have mentioned, but did not, that my primary resistance to cord cutting lies in concerns I have about completely losing any connection to what commodity Hollywood/cable news/etc. is producing. (Most cord cutters who write online about why they did it seem to view this loss of connection as a positive.) My secondary concern involves my relationship with my walking partner. Virtually all of the commodity TV I consume, I consume because she consumes, and it forms the basis for many enjoyable conversations over the course of the week. We're both avid readers, but she really prefers literary fiction -- and I really don't, so our ability to discuss books we are reading is sharply limited.

The impression I am getting from articles about cord cutting is that cord cutting is partly driven by savings (sort of this decade's version of ending "the latte habit" by buying an espresso machine or whatever), and partly driven by time displacement/choice issues (that is, whatever people were using to watch a show not at the time it aired was annoying enough, or broke and/or there was a desire to watch things that arose after it had aired). Altho there does seem to be some anger at cable as well (not on your part).

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

Your cable is cheaper than ours; the TV-only portion of our bill is $75. It was the cheapest package I could find that got the channels we care about (SyFy, USA and Comedy Central). I think we are the last of our local friends who still get cable; everyone else seems to do a combo of Hulu and Netflix. We would probably be way better off waiting for DVD releases and buying a season at a time, especially since we often end up buying the DVDs anyway.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I've pretty much missed the whole cable generation. I just refuse to pay for TV, period.

[jkonrath.livejournal.com]

We had triple play through Comcast, and then our condo got Webpass service (100mbs via microwave) so I added that and then called Comcast to drop only the internet. Until I said "cancel everything and go f yourself" five times and got transferred to a retention specialist, they were quoting a *higher* price to drop internet from our service.

Pricing Is Weird

[walkitout]

Given that Verizon (and probably Comcast) will consistently deliver discounts if I check in with them approximately annually, I sometimes wonder if we really _are_ paying for the relationship, rather than the actual services.

Cable companies are high maintenance.

Re: Pricing Is Weird

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure they make a medication for whatever condition I have that makes me reluctant to call up Comcast and complain about pricing.

I'm also fearful that I will call and renegotiate for a lower fee, but it will be some crazy "temporary promotion" or whatever, and if I don't remember to call back in exactly 90 days, my rate will be tripled.

When I was at Juno, right before I left, we switched from fixed pricing tiers to the "charge them whatever we can get away with" model, which is what Comcast and other cable companies seem to love. We stopped plastering static prices of $19 (or whatever) on the site and it was largely a game of chance as to what rate the customer got, depending on the ad campaign or current promotion, or whatever. I'm sure there was some economic study that justified this, but it basically turned our CRM department and call centers into Operation Hell on Earth.

Re: Pricing Is Weird

[walkitout]

A couple decades ago, I was working as an office temp (reception) at an HMO. A couple of VPs walked by discussing what to do about a particularly expensive/difficult claim. One of them said to the other, deny it, but if she comes back, then pay it.

I was completely stunned, because my father had been saying that companies did this as a regular thing, and I had chalked it up to the kind of stupid conspiracy thinking that led to his brother believing that lettuce was sprayed with kerosene or gasoline or something along those lines (this was his excuse for refusing to eat salad). And there it was, right in front of me.

I feel much the same way about what you are saying about Juno.