10 Reasons to Cut your Cable TV Cord

There really is not much of a reason to keep paying your cable TV company they're $200 per month for programming when you can start using these ten technology innovations.  The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings is delusional if he thinks Netflix is not causing consumers to cut the cord.  Most of these disruptive devices, software, and innovations finally allow consumers to download and video programming on demand.  On-demand programming is simply watching what you want when you want it.  No longer will you have to stumble through horrible menus on your DVR to find programming when you can simply download it with your high-speed broadband connection.  Some of these electronics might event be nice gift ideas for the Christmas Holiday.  

Google TV

 

Apple TV 

Boxee by D-Link

 

Roku

Xbox 360

Blu-ray Players

4G Wireless/ Mobile TV  

Apps Stores

iPad & Galaxy Tablets

Google Voice, Skype & VoIP

Cable TV operators like Comcast, Cox, Cablevision & Time Warner should be very scared of the newest trend and latest quarter of losing cable TV subscribers for the first time. It's not because of the recession as many cigar-smoking executives would want you to believe.  It's because these "fat cats" have not done anything to innovate in the last ten years and would rather send dividend checks to shareholders than improving your cable TV set-top box. Cable operators have been screwing their customers for years and the FCC has done nothing about it.  I believed for a few years that cable companies were going to win the wireless home race because of their connections into the home.  In my opinion, they have failed to execute a wireless phone marketing strategy against their competition AT&T U-Verse, Verizon Fios, Sprint & T-Mobile. 

According to an AP, article companies are losing customers in droves and recorded the first quarterly loss of 216,000 subscribers.  We expect this trend to continue for the coming years and cable companies are going to have to think of other tricks like 3D channels and sports TV programming to keep their subscribers happy.  Who knows free mobile TV could be in our near future.

ESPN & NFL Saves Cable Subscribers

The Only Thing Keeping Cable TV Subscribers Paying

ESPN, NFL & NBA might have the most content leverage television business these days.  Every person I ask today says they are watching less network TV these days and if they do it's likely a PGA Golf, NFL football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey or MLB baseball game.  The second I ask is if you could dump your $200 per month cable TV bill, would you?  Some say yes if they are not sports fans and others who are sports fans say they can't give it up.  However, they say if the content was available over the internet like MLB.com they might consider it.   The cable companies know this and this is one of the reasons they are not rushing to put their programming online or make sports content "on-demand".  One other thing that are keeping cable customers tied is the upcoming promise of 3D TV Channels.  If you haven't watched the Hawaiian Open in 3D at Best Buy or Fry's on their demonstration LCD or Plasma TV's you will want one immediately. 

No matter how much content you consume on TV your cable bill is still this same each month.   So if you are a grandmother in Iowa who watches very little sports programming you are subsidizing this network because you have to each month.   U.S. consumers pay around $70 billion each year to cable and satellite companies to watch movies and TV shows on big screens in their living rooms.  This is probably about 75% too high and it's likely only a $25 billion dollar business if people truly paid what they used. 

I would like to see the NHL adopt similar a similar strategy to MLB and allow fans to watch games over the internet and on-demand via Google TV or Boxee.  I think it also makes a lot of sense for these cable companies to piece mail the content you watch but this will not happen until there is a groundswell adoption of Google TV, Xbox or Boxee.   The FCC is corrupt and just a bunch of industry puppets who work for the networks so they will never do anything.  The NAB will do everything in their power as well to sue anyone who distributes their content illegally as well.  Hopefully, a better World is coming where content is king and not programming.