Others say that it is just becoming too expensive for low-income families and other services are cheaper. The company thinks that once the economy goes back to working like normal, the subscriptions will go back up. Though, in my opinion I think that customers will stick with the cheaper service and never give cable a second thought.
Sadly, there is no way for cable companies to lower their prices since the providers, like Walt Disney, won't liscenes their channels one by one so subscribers have to pay high amounts for a channel package or get very basic ones in which an antenna can provide them more services. It is sad to say that low income consumers are a big portion of cable TVs customers who have a more likely chance to cut the cable cord and switch to other sources.
3 comments:
I believe the Internet is to blame. In the billions and billions of websites we have today, it's not hard to find a website that can do the same thing as our television does. Sites like Youtube and Hulu provide episodes of television series in which we can watch at any time, instead of having to wait for channels to broadcast the shows. With the free HD option on certain Youtube videos, viewers may be more inclined to watching on the Internet instead of paying a thousand dollars for a high-definition plasma-screen television. Moreover, on the Internet, you can multitask better--one can type up word documents while surfing the web for information they may need to type up a research paper, while you can't do a lot of research on the television. With the Internet becoming more and more powerful and useful to people, what will be the need of television if you can watch all your television on sites like Youtube.com?
I think it's a combination of both. Honestly, I don't think it's worth to pay $50+ each month for TV in general. As Stephen mentioned earlier, sites like Hulu make watching cable TV so much more accessible. As a child I didn't have cable and almost all TV shows were not posted online. But now with the advent of sites like Youtube and Hulu, I have the freedom to watch whatever shows for free and at my convenience as well. I am no longer limited by the TV air times and the price of cable.
The internet is definitely making television less appealing. I find it a lot more convenient to watch television shows on the internet. The downside of television is that shows are played at specific times whereas one can watch their shows on a site (like Stephen said..Hulu or Youtube) whenever they please. One of my past teachers told me that he has not owned a television since he went to college just because of how accessible everything is on the internet. If everything that television can offer is available on the internet, people will save money because instead of paying two bills (one for internet and one for cable), they can just pay for one. When I read this article, it reminded me of telephones as well. I read an article online saying that fewer people are using landlines because cellphones are much more convenient. And like the whole television/internet argument, phone owners would only have to pay their cell phone bill in comparison to paying for a cellphone bill and land line bill.
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