Economy
Related: About this forumPay-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.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-12/pay-tv-s-salad-days-are-gone-in-painful-time-for-at-t-viacom
Merlot
(9,696 posts)After years of free fox channels, overcharging for junk channels, they deserve exactly this.
SamKnause
(13,043 posts)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.