Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) - 2021 version

[statsman]

I think about you every time I post an update.
I see you are in Texas, for some reason I thought you were in NC and this might be the one, sorry....

No worries. We're still under AT&T Uverse (DW's preference), so having Locast is not an issue for now. But I suspect our time with Uverse will be coming to an end soon rather than later. At that point, having Locast available would be great.

As it is, San Antonio DMA (#31 for 2021) will be ahead of us (#38 for 2021 - Austin DMA). Actually, the #38 ranking is two spots up from 2020. At the pace it's going, Austin DMA is likely to pass Milwaukee DMA and Cincinnati DMA soon.

 

[Ncc1701]

. I would say what we watch mostly now is "PLUTO TV" It has dozens of stations and weathernation which i prefer over weather channel. Already paying for internet so just go to pluto site and more chanells than we know what to do with. My wife does like old movies and tv from 40's 50' 60's and 70's on "Public domain television" that is on "You Tube".

Pluto really is awesome, had no idea it existed before cutting the cord. Now between my OTA channels, Pluto TV, Netflix and Discovery +, we have wayyy more than we had to watch with cable and I'm saving $50/month.

Cable companies had the opportunity. They could have created a la carte pricing and I would have gladly payed $1.50 month for each channel that I wanted.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

Pluto really is awesome, had no idea it existed before cutting the cord. Now between my OTA channels, Pluto TV, Netflix and Discovery +, we have wayyy more than we had to watch with cable and I'm saving $50/month.

Cable companies had the opportunity. They could have created a la carte pricing and I would have gladly payed $1.50 month for each channel that I wanted.

I don't think they are going in any specific DMA order any more although in the beginning it looks they were going for top markets. Rapid City and Sioux Falls are close to the bottom however Locast does note that Goodfriend said the addition of the two South Dakota markets are thanks to "generous contributions from local businesses and residents."
Here are their current Markets

Rank[23] Media market
1 New York City
2 Los Angeles
3 Chicago
4 Philadelphia
5 Dallas-Fort Worth
6 San Francisco
7 Washington, D.C.
8 Houston
9 Boston
10 Atlanta
11 Phoenix
12 Tampa Bay
13 Seattle
14 Detroit
15 Minneapolis–Saint Paul
16 Miami
17 Denver
18 Orlando
21 Charlotte
25 Indianapolis
26 Baltimore
36 West Palm Beach
60 Scranton
81 Madison
113 Sioux Falls
148 Sioux City
169 Rapid City

 

[explanade]

So my 12-month contract with Comcast ends soon and my next bill was jumping from about $157-158 to $183-184.

That is with HBO, Showtime, maybe some other premium like Hitz which I never watch. 220 channels plus 1 Gbps Internet, though the modem I bought only gets about 600 Mbps.

In my last bill, it shows the increases, like Broadcast TV going from 12.55 to $17.05 and Regional Sports Fee going up from $8 to $10.

Also shows increases for various on demand things that I never use.

I was hoping for other options, like Home 5G.

I had AT&T a year ago and so I checked their offers again. Their deals are better, with free HBO Max and they promise 100 Mbps.

I hated their DVRs and their speeds were not even 100 Mbps. They supposedly have Gigapower in my town but they have not expanded the footprint since coming into the town with a lot of fanfare 5-6 years ago. They cherry-pick the easiest installations and then stopped but could still tout that my town has it.

So I committed to a 2-year deal, which lets me use Tivo, my own modem and router. Monthly bill at least this year will be about $163 after taxes and fees, so not much more than I'd been paying this past year.

I could get HBO Max through them or independently of Comcast. Most of the time I watch HBO Max on my Apple TV so I've been using data, though I don't have 4K yet.

Currently it seems pretty fallow period for TV shows, especially on premiums but also not seeing new shows on AMC or FXX. I'm guessing this is due to the pandemic.

Actually the last couple of months, I've been watching more streamed content.

I decided to keep HBO Max and Showtime rather than drop all the premiums and get them later when they had new shows.

For one thing, HBO Max is putting up some Max Originals of their own. For instance, I liked The Flight Attendant and now, I've started on Patria, a Spanish show. There are a few other things that look interesting on there.

Just have to hope in 2 years the infrastructure for broadband improves and there will be other options. At that point, I may be ready to go all streaming and just dump a TV package altogether.

 

[JoeWras]

Pluto really is awesome, had no idea it existed before cutting the cord. Now between my OTA channels, Pluto TV, Netflix and Discovery +, we have wayyy more than we had to watch with cable and I'm saving $50/month.

Cable companies had the opportunity. They could have created a la carte pricing and I would have gladly payed $1.50 month for each channel that I wanted.

Ditto. I'm saving about $50 per month compared to cable and still have way too much to watch since I am subscribed to a few streaming services.

Sports and news are now the main drivers of cable or high priced linear streaming (YTTV or Hulu+Live). Your $1.50 would probably be more like $15-20 for a sports package. You know what? I'd pay that. And you can still get plenty of news without cable, just not the prime time partisan blowhards (pick your tribe).

Now that I've broken my sports addiction, I'm not sure if I even care about that. I've found other things to do and instead watch my games legally and free the next day in compressed form. The NHL puts out compressed games the following day. All legit and free without all the boring crap.

 

[JoeWras]

NBCSN Shutting down

The chaos continues. This time, on a bottom tier sports channel, NBCSN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/media/nbc-sports-network-shut-down/index.html

NBCSN is best known as the national carrier of NHL Hockey (nationally broadcast games). They also are big in NASCAR, Le Tour and some soccer.

So, NBC is "shutting them down" which really means:

• Moving some games to USA network
• Moving some games to Peacock

Ah-ha! See what they did there? Moving some games to their streaming platform.

This is one reason I cut the cord. Cable customers are frogs and are slowly being boiled. Notice the NFL is slowly moving there too, what with their Amazon Thursday games.

They always split the games, though. They want you to have both (cable and streaming). I'm saying no to that greed.

 

[zinger1457]

They always split the games, though. They want you to have both (cable and streaming). I'm saying no to that greed.

Yep, I remember last year when ESPN for the first time split up coverage of the PGA Championship with early round coverage only on ESPN+.

 

[Midpack]

Well, after a year when your teaser rate disappears you can quit for a month and come back as a new customer again.

That may work some places, or for a few years, if you’re a shrewd negotiator willing to cancel, but it doesn’t work eventually. If you’re in a market with one provider, as some/many are, it won’t work. If you’re not at the end of your contract, there are usually $ penalties dropping mid contract, so it won’t work. I was able to get new customer rates switching from Direct TV to Dish, and threatening to leave for a couple years, but eventually they wouldn’t negotiate - that’s when we cut the cord and went to all streaming. Providers aren’t stupid...

 

[11522914]

The T-Mobile internet has been flawless for our first week. Our speeds run between 20 Mbps during the day to over 50 Mbs in the evening. The monthly charge is added to my T-Mobile phone bill which makes my phone bill look a little ugly...but then remember I am saving $25 per month overall and I'm not paying Spectrum!

That's an awesome price for mobile service. That's an extremely low amount of data. You don't use your phone for GPS? The rate is probably just a one year teaser rate although easy to take advantage for the first year and switch, as required, since you get to keep your phone number.

Spectrum's cellphone plan is not a teaser rate. It's been the rate they've offered for at least the last 2 years.

I just don't use a lot of data as I always take advantage of wifi. I do use Google maps but it uses very little data.

We could use 5 gigs of data per month and would be paying the same amount as now. Don't see us ever using that much.

If the Spectrum plan doesn't work out then I'll go with Simple Mobile. It uses t-mobile network and costs $22.38 per month with 3 gigs. My daughter uses this and likes it.

No reason for us to continue to pay $70 a month.

 

[RunningBum]

The chaos continues. This time, on a bottom tier sports channel, NBCSN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/media/nbc-sports-network-shut-down/index.html

NBCSN is best known as the national carrier of NHL Hockey (nationally broadcast games). They also are big in NASCAR, Le Tour and some soccer.

So, NBC is "shutting them down" which really means:

• Moving some games to USA network
• Moving some games to Peacock

Ah-ha! See what they did there? Moving some games to their streaming platform.

This is one reason I cut the cord. Cable customers are frogs and are slowly being boiled. Notice the NFL is slowly moving there too, what with their Amazon Thursday games.

They always split the games, though. They want you to have both (cable and streaming). I'm saying no to that greed.

That's a shame. They used to carry some less common events like the Boston Marathon too, which I really enjoyed watching.

Having cut the cord doesn't really help here though. Whether you had NBCSN through cable or a streaming package like YTTV, now you will probably have to get an additional streaming package (Peacock) to get what NBCSN used to carry. NBC doesn't care if you have cable or a streaming package--they get a fee from that either way-- they just want you to pay additionally for Peacock.

I will see if Peacock has enough that I'll watch to warrant the fee.

I wonder if we'll get to the point where encompassing packages like YTTV go away, as each syndicate has it's own streaming package.

• NBC/Peacock/USA Network/etc
• ABC/Disney/ESPN/etc
• Netflix
• Amazon prime
• and so on

So then you'll have a bunch of different apps on your streaming device, each with it's own interface that you'll have to adapt to. DVR probably goes away because if you're paying CBS directly, they'll probably let you stream any CSI show whenever you want.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Every 2 years we have switched between charter and AT and T for tv and internet.

 

[Midpack]

Every 2 years we have switched between charter and AT and T for tv and internet.

Are there viable competitors where you live? It works when there’s competition, but not when they’re the only game in town, still an issue in many areas. Where I lived last year Comcast was the only high speed ISP in town.

 

[old medic]

Starting 2021 with the following paid services:
Antenna TV - Free
Verizon phones with hot spot unlimited plan x2 $204
Amazon Prime $12.99 More for free shipping, but do watch some free videos.
Power bill 70-100 a month...
thats it

 

[JoeWras]

Starting 2021 with the following paid services:
Antenna TV - Free
Verizon phones with hot spot unlimited plan x2 $204
Amazon Prime $12.99 More for free shipping, but do watch some free videos.
Power bill 70-100 a month...
thats it

Since you have Verizon, check into Discovery+. You should be able to get it for 1 year free. You may also be eligible for some Disney+ for a while.

You just have to be sure to cancel when your free period ends.

 

[old medic]

Since you have Verizon, check into Discovery+. You should be able to get it for 1 year free. You may also be eligible for some Disney+ for a while.

You just have to be sure to cancel when your free period ends.

Thanks, I'll look in to it

 

[Time2]

A friend sent me a video about a Free Live TV app, it has 190 stations and a Guide, plus you can have a favorites section. It's named XUMO.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

The chaos continues. This time, on a bottom tier sports channel, NBCSN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/media/nbc-sports-network-shut-down/index.html

NBCSN is best known as the national carrier of NHL Hockey (nationally broadcast games). They also are big in NASCAR, Le Tour and some soccer.

So, NBC is "shutting them down" which really means:

• Moving some games to USA network
• Moving some games to Peacock

Ah-ha! See what they did there? Moving some games to their streaming platform.

This is one reason I cut the cord. Cable customers are frogs and are slowly being boiled. Notice the NFL is slowly moving there too, what with their Amazon Thursday games.

They always split the games, though. They want you to have both (cable and streaming). I'm saying no to that greed.

Yep. The consumer can't win this game. They might think they are doing OK, but in the end....

I saw that CBS All Access is going away and will now be part of the "Paramount +" streaming service. I was already annoyed at CBS since their shows CANNOT be watched commercial free unless you DVR it or have their streaming service. Even the most expensive "commercial free" Hulu has commercials on some of the CBS shows. But since we watch so few CBS shows, it's not that big of a loss.

I have seen that you can buy complete series of shows on DVDs often for $20 or less. I could see that being a pretty good option to all these streaming services for those of us that don't watch sports/etc.

 

[Midpack]

Yep. The consumer can't win this game. They might think they are doing OK, but in the end....

I saw that CBS All Access is going away and will now be part of the "Paramount +" streaming service. I was already annoyed at CBS since their shows CANNOT be watched commercial free unless you DVR it or have their streaming service. Even the most expensive "commercial free" Hulu has commercials on some of the CBS shows. But since we watch so few CBS shows, it's not that big of a loss.

I have seen that you can buy complete series of shows on DVDs often for $20 or less. I could see that being a pretty good option to all these streaming services for those of us that don't watch sports/etc.

Ultimately providers will squeeze as much out of us as possible like any for profit business. On the bright side, we've saved over $1400 streaming PSV then Hulu+Live than if we'd stayed with Dish Network satellite. There will be a new equilibrium price eventually, but we've saved quite a bit so far, with more to come.

It appears the big players are going to offer subscriptions to their content, and aggregators will be out of luck - cable, satellite and streaming (e.g. Hulu, YTTV). We may have to make some hard choices some day, and I suspect we'll have to move to more on demand and less "live" programming. Sports is still the biggest sticking point for on demand IMO.

 

[Chuckanut]

Yep. The consumer can't win this game. They might think they are doing OK, but in the end....

I saw that CBS All Access is going away and will now be part of the "Paramount +" streaming service. I was already annoyed at CBS since their shows CANNOT be watched commercial free unless you DVR it or have their streaming service. Even the most expensive "commercial free" Hulu has commercials on some of the CBS shows. But since we watch so few CBS shows, it's not that big of a loss.

I have seen that you can buy complete series of shows on DVDs often for $20 or less. I could see that being a pretty good option to all these streaming services for those of us that don't watch sports/etc.

Two thoughts:

1. Somebody has to pay for the lavish lifestyles of the 'Stars' and other entertainment industry moguls. But, does it have to be you and me?

2. The local public library often checks out DVD disks of various shows. I went through the entire life of The Amerikans that way.

3. The constant breaking up of various types of entertainment into smaller and smaller chunks that have to be purchased separately is getting very annoying. I have stayed with: OTA antenna, Netflix and Amazon Prime, and whatever DVDs I can get from the public library. That is already more material than I can possibly watch.

 

[statsman]

3. The constant breaking up of various types of entertainment into smaller and smaller chunks that have to be purchased separately is getting very annoying.

This. Because of my DW, we muddle along with an all-in-one service like AT&T Uverse (or cable TV previously). The channels she likes, which isn't a huge list, requires multiple streaming services to cover. I figure this is one of those "blow that dough" expenses that keeps peace in the house.

But even DW sees the writing on the wall and knows Uverse will be going away soon enough. Neither of us are looking forward to needing 3+ streaming services (and accounts and passwords and someone else with our credit card numbers) just to get the channels she would like. I figure the cost savings *for us* would be minimal, if at all.

Even now, despite paying for the highest TV service tier which excludes the premium movie channels, we can't get all of the Discovery family of channels as part of what we paid for. New episodes on those channels require signing up for and eventually paying for (after a 7 day trial) a service with Discovery+. We haven't signed up yet.

It may be the wave of the future for TV viewing, but so far, the future already sucks.

 

[REWahoo]

Neither of us are looking forward to needing 3+ streaming services (and accounts and passwords and someone else with our credit card numbers) just to get the channels she would like. I figure the cost savings *for us* would be minimal, if at all.

You've expressed your difficulty in satisfying your wife's TV needs a number of times. Is it her requirement that all her desired channels/programs must be available to her at all times?

One of the great features of most streaming services is the ability to watch programs on demand, meaning she could watch all her channels/programs on service A one month, then you could move to service B the next month, etc.

Subscribing to all the services year round is a waste of money since you can't watch all of them at the same time.

 

[statsman]

You've expressed your difficulty in satisfying your wife's TV needs a number of times. Is it her requirement that all her desired channels/programs must be available to her at all times?

Yep.

One of the great features of most streaming services is the ability to watch programs on demand, meaning she could watch all her channels/programs on service A one month, then you could move to service B the next month, etc.

Sounds like a pain, but that's just me.

Look, I get the money savings angle. Some express this fact a number of times in terms of pure numbers. There looks to be a growing number of people who see the need for numerous streaming services as more of a pain than a plus, especially with the rising costs as the various entertainment services slice the bologna even thinner for what we get for our $$$.

As I stated, it's the wave of the future. We'll be forced to deal with it when the time comes.

 

[REWahoo]

Sounds like a pain, but that's just me.

Are you referring to the emerging streaming service strategy or to your spouse?

 

[statsman]

Are you referring to the emerging streaming service strategy or to your spouse?

Yes.

 

[JoeWras]

This. Because of my DW, we muddle along with an all-in-one service like AT&T Uverse (or cable TV previously). The channels she likes, which isn't a huge list, requires multiple streaming services to cover. I figure this is one of those "blow that dough" expenses that keeps peace in the house.

But here's the thing my friend. Even having the premium all-in-everything package on cable or Uverse won't be enough for you to see the games. Or see the "tell all" on "90 Day Fiance," and on and on.

So it doesn't matter if Uverse goes away or not. Favorite programming is going away right now.

Can you find the Mandalorian on Cable? No you cannot.

So, nobody is safe from this greedy madness. Cable subscribers or streamers, we're all hosed -- unless we become both. And this is what they want. And I will not cave to them.