Another quarter brings more evidence of cable subscribers cutting the cord. Not that the cable companies will admit as much, of course. But surely they’ll have to at some point soon, won’t they?
Cord-Cutting Increasing
This year has seen evidence of cord-cutting building strongly. In April, a report suggested that one in eight households would be cutting the cord during 2010. In June, Nielsen branded cord-cutting nothing more than “a myth”.
In September, Verizon CEO warned cable companies not to ignore the trend as it’s very real indeed. Earlier this month another analyst came out and predicted cord-cutting is real and growing.
This week came more evidence, and this time it’s some hard numbers from Comcast’s earning report for the last quarter.
Comcast Subscriber Numbers
Comcast has lost 275,000 basic cable subscribers over the past three months, with a whopping 622,000 having dropped their service in the first nine months of 2010. The overall subscriber count is down 3.5 percent over the same quarter last year.
Comcast has wholly rejected the claims that this is people cutting the cord in order to watch video content over the Web, instead blaming the continuing recession. But cord-cutting is cord-cutting, no matter the reasons people are giving for shedding their expensive cable subscriptions.
While the price compared to people’s dwindling incomes obviously plays a part, would so many hundreds of thousands of people be taking that final step if there weren’t viable free or low-cost alternatives out there on the Internet? I don’t think so, somehow.
Conclusions
Cord-cutting is real and happening right now. And it’s only going to grow from here on in. With that in mind it’s completely irresponsible for the cable companies to continue to bury their heads in the sand and hoping the phenomenon will blow over. Because that isn’t going to happen.
[Via MediaMemo]
