We've seen that for the past couple of years the number of pay TV subscriber have been falling, both for cable and satellite providers. The latest figures show that trend continued in 2015, with providers having lost an additional 385,000 customers. That's not surprising considering cable and satellite subscription costs have continued their upward climb. Streaming operations Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and others have also eaten into the pool of subscribers.
While we haven't yet dropped our satellite subscription, we have dialed it back, dropping to a lower service tier and losing a few of our favorite channels. We could no longer justify paying over $100 every month for the 22 channels we actually watch, so we ended up dropping down two levels and cutting our monthly bill by almost $40. If streaming ever provides both our local channels and NFL games for a reasonable price, we will cancel our satellite subscription and not think twice about it.
It's up to the content providers to figure out how to lower the price of their programming because every time they raise their rates they lose viewers. Eventually they will price themselves right out of the market and other content providers will be more than willing to step in. This is already happening to Viacom as last year about 60 cable systems dropped their programming because of the over-the-top fee increases they tried to ram down the cable providers throats. This will happen again as prices continue to rise.
They might learn the lesson...or not. Only time will tell.
