Summary: “Cutting the cable: pay TV subscribers turn to Internet”:

Mark Friedman, Arkansas Business, 29.29 (16 July 2012): p.1

Oppose hypothesis

This article by Mark Friedman in Arkansas Business, 16 Jul 2012, covers the reasons why people are leaving Cable Television for Online media. The first reason he suggests is related to the cost of subscribing. Having stated this, he later in the article reported that Bill Fisher the general manager and CEO of Paragould Light Water & Cable said “the cable service has seen little change during the past couple of years”. Fisher went on to say that “people come back to the utility for cable because of the price, which can be as low as $14.30 a month for the basic package of 24 channels, and its service.”

Apart from price, Friedman reported that according to Brett Sappington, director of research for Parks Associates in Dallas, a market research and consulting firm, “About 5 percent of pay subscribers said they have downgraded their pay TV package and are watching more online videos.” 

Friedman goes on to say that “One sign that people are moving away from pay TV service is the growth of Netflix [...] For the quarter that ended in December, Netflix reported a total of 2 billion hours streamed”.

In a related article titled “Pay TV Providers Expanding Beyond TV” Friedman suggests Pay TV providers are fighting back against Internet TV and “have unveiled a number of products so their customers can watch programs on devices other than their television sets”.

Citations:

Friedman, M. (2012, July 16), Cutting the cable: pay TV subscribers turn to Internet. Arkansas Business, 29.29,1. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.waikato.ac.nz/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA298416800&v=2.1&u=waikato&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w