Why cut the cable cord?

What is cord cutting?

In broadcast television, cord-cutting refers to the pattern of viewers (referred to as cord cutters) cancelling their subscriptions to multichannel subscription television services available over cable, dropping expensive pay television channels or reducing the number of hours of subscription TV viewed in response to competition from rival media available over the Internet.

The Cost of Cable

The future of television is here today and an people are leaving cable and satellite in droves because they are expensive and outdated. In the US the average cable subscriber pays $99 a month for their cable tv service! Ironically at the time of me writing this post there was a promotion being advertised on the above page link for $19.95 a month. Considering the average American pays $99 a month that sounds like a steal right? No... In small print next to the $19.95 is a little (for 12 months).

Typically what that means is after a year you will be under contract for an additional year but now you'll be paying around $30 a month to rent the set top box and the promotion for your channel package will end and you'll be paying $29.99 a month for that too. After the first year you go from paying $19.95 to $59.99! With such a drastic jump many subscribers will call their cable provider to find out why the sudden increase. Obviously its because the promotion period is over and you are now paying the market price for that "basic tv" package.

When you call them they will inform you that your promotional offer ended and that $59.99 is what that package actually costs and that the deal was only for new subscribers and that you cannot renew that promotion even though its still available (they don't reward loyalty). What they can offer is an upgrade promotion; for $39.99 you can have the "better tv" promotion for 6 months. Unless you ask them they won't tell you that after 6 months you will be paying $99.99 and be locked in for 18 months. Just like that you become the average American that pays nearly $100 a month for cable and if you continue this cycle you'll keep rolling that cable cost snowball till your promotional period is $99.99 and full price is close to $200 a month, yikes!

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