Posted on 05/19/2011 9:19:57 AM PDT by Kevin J waldroup
The weak economy is at least partially responsible for an ongoing video subscriber slide at Cablevision Systems (NYSE: CVC), COO Tom Rutledge said during an earnings conference call, adding that the MSO is still reeling after a retransmission dispute with News Corp.'s (Nasdaq: NWSA) Fox Networks that resulted in a blackout during last year's Major League Baseball playoffs.
"Cablevision core system ... lost about 8400 video customers. Some of that was attributable to how we came into the year after the dispute that we had with News Corp. and the carriage and the World Series (but) we still continue to see softness in the economy, particularly in lower income neighborhoods," Rutledge said.
(Excerpt) Read more at fiercecable.com ...
I had a similar problem with Comcast. I told them if they did not lower my rate I was going to cancel their TV service. Surprisingly they obliged.
I pray to God the cable companies fail. I will never ever understand how they were let to monopolize their grip on cities in towns here in Assachusetts. I don’t know if it’s like that in other states but I think it is.
If it wasn’t for my son and wife I would have cancelled my tv service YEARS ago.
As The Misfits once said, Die, Die my Darling!
Bye-bye cable companies. See you in hell!
ATT UVerse is growing by leaps and bounds.
I love my cable service, Cable One. I’ve had their package of 10Mbps Internet, Cable TV and Cable Phone for a couple or three years now, and it’s actually a better picture than either DirecTV or Dish.
I just scheduled installation of their new 50Mbps upgrade, and my monthly bill will drop by about $50. The cap is 100GB per month, and I have to maintain a one year contract each year, but that’s OK with me.
The employees are fabulously friendly, helpful, and dedicated. I have no complaints, but when I do have a problem, they usually have a repairman out here the same day, or the next day at the latest.
(I’m almost salivating at the thought of having 50Mbps Internet. That’s more than 6MB/sec. When I first started using the Internet, I was lucky if I got 6KB/sec.)
There isn’t anything much worth watching. I’d much prefer to read, anyways.
They have a monopoly. They need to open cable up to competition the way they did Ma Bell.
Many people are dropping cable for satellite because of sports. Younger people and families realize that they can get all the movies they want for $7 a month with Netflix, and since they can only watch one at a time they won’t pay for cable packages. So it is not just losing subscribers to a bad economy, people are downgrading to smaller packages. The result is lower revenues to the cable companies.
It is human nature. The cable monopolies charge too much, and people figured out a way to get what they want without them as a result. It is time to end the cable monopoly.
So, that’s what became of Tom Rutledge! He was my boss when he ran our little cable company back in Austin in the early 90s. He was a good boss but he was an obvious Yankee that didn’t really fit the Texas lifestyle.
FWIW, the combination of Netflix, Hulu, 4g wireless and other internet options, as well as poor programming would be as big a reason for the downturn as the poor economy.
They were allowed to have a monopoly because in order to provide the service, 30 years ago, they had to acquire millions of miles of rights-of-way and install the cable lines, the wires. It was a huge investment that made sense AT THE TIME. But they long ago recouped their huge investments and now have bought off the government entities that are prolonging their monopoly and encouraging them to continuously raise their rates so that the government’s tax/fees can go up, too. The reason this will end is that the technology has overtaken their land lines. Where I live, you can get cable from the cable company, or from the phone company (or from Direct TV). Competition will out. I recently negotiated a $35 cut in what I pay them.
So they are losing basic subscribers in poor neighborhoods.
But gaining in higher end services and bundles.
Lord I hate paying my $200 cable bill.
Yes, we have the phone company option too but it’s not much better. I can’t do satellite because of the sheer number of oak trees that surround my house. We tried it and had no end of problems with it.
I wish my wife would just let me cancel it. If I want to watch something I can subscribe to Netflix or watch it on Hulu.
The cap is intended to prevent you from using streaming services to excess. Be careful. If you stream movies, download movies to iTunes etc, you could hit the cap and get smacked with overages. I oppose the cap. And I only wish I could get that speed! Cable is much slower in my neck of the woods and yet I live in perhaps the richest “cable district” in America (cable company I have serves Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Venice, Malibu etc...100,000+ high income homes, yet perhaps the worst cable offerings in the country. Slow, expensive, old technology. If I had the monopoly on this cable district I would be stinking filthy rich and would still be able to provide excellent service, and I would have ran the phone company out of town, but the people who ran it were incompetent crooks (formerly Adelphia) who refused to invest in technology and the new owners are not much better)).
If they are allowed to involuntarily cap ( sounds like you volunteered to cap for a lower bill, that is fair long as you know the deal) they should be forced to deregulate the last mile and open it to competition.
Have you tried watching BBC America and the content on MHz? There is an imperative that you keep the women in your family happy. So you might as well try to find something you like.
I have Comcast. I get TV, internet and phone service (that I never use). Wife recently called them and they dropped the rate from $113 per month to $91. I’ve shopped for other services such as ATT and Comcast is the best price.
Ever since it went to no-term contracts, Verizon Fios has been kicking Cablevision’s butt in New York. Better product and better customer service. My hope is that Cablevision will soon be forced to sell the Knicks and Rangers. :)
I had to stand on line for over a half an hour to return my Cablevision equipment after I switched. Almost everyone on line was dropping off equipment, as opposed to picking it up.
When I called to cancel my service they told me it would take about 5 days to send a man out, though I had already switched to Fios. I didn’t care, until I received my final bill and found that they had the nerve to CHARGE ME for service for those days. After a lot of arguing, I got them to credit those charges.
Also, I’m sure I’m not the only one annoyed by the constant calls from Cablevision’s sleazy, obnoxious sales reps, trying to get you to come back. I have demanded they stop calling (I even kept one rep on the line asking ridiculous questions about Jim Dolan’s wig) but they won’t stop.
Originally, I thought, if the price was right, I might go back, if Fios jacked up my bill too much after my guaranteed price term ended. But after dealing with Cablevision’s horrid sales reps and customer service, I would not use them if the service was free.
I would not be surprised if Cablevision does not exist in 5 or 10 years. It is a truly horrible company. The actual product is decent, but the people and policies are vile.
I agree with all that. In this case, I’ll have an advantage:
They freeze all overage charges for the first 90 days, so I can see how much traffic I put through it for 3 months without getting any surprise extra charges.
I intend to not throttle myself at all during those 3 months, just to see what happens. If I have to adjust my usage after that, I will.
Going into it with eyes wide open.
wow, you actually reached a sentient human being at Comcast?
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