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Purveyor

(29,876 posts)
Fri Oct 13, 2017, 10:56 AM Oct 2017

Pay-TV Companies Are in Crisis Mode

By Scott Moritz and Gerry Smith
October 12, 2017, 12:04 PM EDT October 12, 2017, 5:38 PM EDT

*2017 on pace to have biggest pay-TV subscriber losses ever
*‘The wheels are falling off of satellite TV’: Moffett

Investors in traditional TV providers are reeling as companies from AT&T Inc. to Viacom Inc. fail to stop the desertion of customers lured away by cheaper entertainment options such as Netflix and Snapchat.

AT&T, whose ownership of the DirecTV satellite service makes it the biggest U.S. pay-television provider, said late Wednesday it will report a third-quarter loss of 390,000 satellite and cable customers, echoing a similar warning weeks earlier from Comcast Corp. The same night, Viacom cautioned that its distribution deal with Charter Communications Inc., the second-biggest cable U.S. company, may lead to a blackout, potentially testing whether millions of viewers are willing to go without MTV and Nickelodeon.

Shares of both companies retreated Thursday, contributing to a broader selloff in the sector. The S&P 500 Media Index, which includes Comcast and ESPN owner Walt Disney Co., slid 2.3 percent to the lowest level since December.




After decades of steadily increasing bills and ever-bigger packages of channels, the pay-TV ecosystem is in full-blown crisis mode. AT&T, Dish Network Inc. and others are offering cheaper, online-only versions of cable to lure customers back, but that means having to accept thinner profit margins.

continued...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-12/pay-tv-s-salad-days-are-gone-in-painful-time-for-at-t-viacom

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Pay-TV Companies Are in Crisis Mode (Original Post) Purveyor Oct 2017 OP
Good. Couldn't happen to a more well deserving industry. Merlot Oct 2017 #1
Good. SamKnause Oct 2017 #2

Merlot

(9,696 posts)
1. Good. Couldn't happen to a more well deserving industry.
Fri Oct 13, 2017, 11:54 AM
Oct 2017

After years of free fox channels, overcharging for junk channels, they deserve exactly this.

SamKnause

(13,043 posts)
2. Good.
Fri Oct 13, 2017, 12:25 PM
Oct 2017

The prices are too high.

You should be able to pick the channels you want.

You should not have to pay for sports channels that you never watch.

I have had cable or satellite since 1980.

The last service I had was DirecTV.

I got rid of it in February of this year.

My last monthly bill for DirecTV was $123.80.

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