Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
According to Leichtman Research Group, the country's largest cable TV providers, representing around 95% of the cable market, had 48.6 million subscribers at the end of March, while Netflix had 50.9 million customers on its home turf.
While cable only represents around 50 percent of the U.S. pay-TV market as a whole, it is by far the most popular way of getting pay-TV in the country. For Netflix to surpass cable is a big step in becoming the number one source of home entertainment. Interestingly, Netflix reached that goal mainly by growing its own subscriber base rather than by having people "cut the cord". Major cable providers only lost 4 million subscribers since Q1 2012 – Netflix added 27 million.
Related Stories
Netflix has continued to add millions of new subscribers, even after it raised prices:
Netflix Inc snagged 2 million more subscribers than Wall Street expected in the final three months of 2017, tripling profits at the online video service that is burning money on new programming to dominate internet television around the world.
The results drove Netflix to a market capitalization of more than $100 billion for the first time. Shares jumped 9 percent to over $248 in after-hours trading on Monday after rallying throughout the month and rising 53 percent last year.
The company has signed up more than half of all U.S. broadband households and is building its customer base in 190 countries by spending billions on programming.
Netflix picked up 6.36 million subscribers in international markets from October through December, when it released new seasons of critically acclaimed shows "Stranger Things" and "The Crown" as well as Will Smith action movie "Bright." That topped Wall Street expectations of 5.1 million, according to FactSet.
Along with 1.98 million customer additions in the United States, the company ended the year with 117.58 million streaming subscribers around the globe, despite a price hike in October.
From a Bloomberg op-ed: "The rapid pace of subscriber additions is impressive, but so is the amount of cash going up in flames."
Also at USA Today and The Street.
Previously: Netflix Has More Subscribers Than Major Cable Providers in the U.S.
Disney to Break Away From Netflix With its Own Streaming Service
Netflix Adds 5 Million Subscribers, Doubles Profit
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @03:14PM (4 children)
Cable...? What is cable?
Ohhh... you mean the thing folks pay for because every Sunday they want to yell at professionals from their couch about how they suck at carrying a hand-egg and how this professional called a 'ref' is an idiot and they could do all of this better from their own couch?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 16 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)
Stop being silly. You can't watch that hand-egg thing from the couch. Real men watch from recliners!! Real women usually have their own recliners. It's to damned hard to get up off of a couch to get another beer, when your own two ass cheeks weigh more than the quarterback on the screen.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 16 2017, @05:12PM (2 children)
Real men have fridges in the armrests of the recliner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:07PM (1 child)
Real men sit in a chair of human flesh.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 16 2017, @06:20PM
You like mine? It was originally a throne made of swords, until Jim slipped.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @03:33PM (2 children)
Comcast is Coconut. Fuck Coconut [xkcd.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:42PM (1 child)
Was about to respond with incredulity but remembered how half of xkcd punchlines are done.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @08:32PM
xkcd's punch lines are are delivered with the strength of a dying cancer patient.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Friday June 16 2017, @03:34PM (17 children)
Not a problem for the cable companies, now that we're losing our net freedom (that is, what is usually called "net neutrality"). Since most high speed internet users get their access via the cable companies, they'll just start inserting ads into the Netflix stream. Now the entire internet is cable tv. Profit!
And yes, we need to stop calling it "net neutrality", even though that is technically correct. People, in their simplicity, do not like the word "neutrality". Call it "net freedom", because that's what it represents. Freedom to access what you want. Freedom from unwanted ads.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @04:13PM (13 children)
That's right. We need an open-source alternative.
Centralized systems like those we have are yet another mechanism for control.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:18PM (4 children)
We need SoylenTV NOW.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:15PM (3 children)
Well, I could turn on my webcam but I don't figure yall would enjoy watching me alternate between coding, playing vidya, and watching porn.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 16 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)
You never know....
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:50AM (1 child)
Darn it, ran out of mod points upvoting Buzzard -- this is actually funnier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:00AM
Gotcha covered.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 16 2017, @04:35PM (5 children)
Centralized systems are unavoidable in many cases though, and for internet service, I don't really see how else you could possibly do it. The only alternative I can imagine is "mesh networks", but those would only work where there's sufficient density of participants, and the bandwidth would be horrible, plus at some point(s) they have to connect to the internet and whoever manages that is going to have legal liability for all the data going through that interface. Of course you could do something like TOR but now performance is going to be pathetic for everyone on that network, and you certainly aren't going to be watching streaming movies on it, you'll be lucky to just send an email with an attached JPEG at speeds comparable to what we had 30 years ago.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Internet is like Power, Water, Sewage, Trash nowadays. It should be a community funded initiative for the good of the community.
Mind you many places (including my own!) have been privatizing as many of those as fast as they can with the expected decline in infrastructure maintenance and increase in bills, so YMMV.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 16 2017, @05:47PM
That's still centralization, it's just that your ISP is owned and operated by your municipality instead of some private company. I like it, it's a lot better than Comcast IMO, and worked well in Chattanooga from what I've read, but this isn't like what the OP was promoting, which is total decentralization. But again, it is preferable IMO, and is less centralized I suppose since each municipality manages its own internet service instead of having some giant corporation being the de-facto monopoly ISP to millions of people across several states.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
The problem with mesh networks is latency, but given how cheap memory has become widespread default caching might be a way to ameliorate that. I don't care if it takes a while for my system to sync while I'm sleeping...
There's also sneaker net or old-fashioned LAN parties. I have a friend that hands me an external harddrive with every movie and worthwhile series of the last year on it when I see him once or twice a year; in exchange I take care of any system issues he has.
As for liability, perhaps a return of Freenet or something like it would serve.
Other engineers have solved the pieces of this puzzle, but nobody has put all the pieces together because it hasn't been worth the hassle. If the hassle factor increases dramatically, that calculus may change.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)
Nope. I'm on a mesh network right now with ping of 11ms and speed of 3.8Mbps and that's fine for streaming video. Cue asshats screaming, "It slow!!1"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:17PM
It slow!!1
I hate to disappoint.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday June 16 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)
Netflix is proprietary software because it needs to implement "digital restrictions management" measures to deter teeing [wikipedia.org] a rented video into a file that remains useful to nonsubscribers or to former subscribers. So in practice, an open-source alternative to Netflix would work only for motion pictures licensed under terms allowing at least verbatim reproduction and distribution. But producing video costs money, and I'm told that crowdfunding is one to two orders of magnitude too weak to fund production of an original feature film with Hollywood-class production values.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:58AM
Netflix in my opinion, has reached a very fair balance between convenience for the user and desires of the content producers. The price is very modest -- $12 month and you can watch 4 different streams simultaneously on different devices and you can even download (at least some) stuff now for offline viewing. That's three lattes or six drip coffees per month, for a wide enough selection that I can always find something interesting.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 16 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
Call it "net freedom",
That name is already taken by a bill aiming to make it legal to kick gay people off the net.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:18PM
Get with the times. Nobody cares about gay people anymore. We're all too busy being transphobes and islamophobes nowadays.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 16 2017, @08:26PM
Suddenlink started injecting HTML into my pages when my meter (something that wasn't there a few years ago) goes up too far. They're massive banners that are roughly 800px tall. The opt out button doesn't actually opt out.
Guess we will now have to start paying a VPN fee in the near future just to get a dumb pipe wrapped in horrid complexity.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @04:21PM (26 children)
While they were signing up, Netflix transformed itself from the company people thought they were signing up for to yet another cable channel whose only difference is it's all on-demand and has no commercials. The first part will probably last, but the second part cannot be long for the world. Remember, when cable started all those decades ago its main selling point was that it did not have commercials. Now, something like 15 minutes of every hour is commercials.
Thank goodness we have torrents to fall back on. Having options reduces coercion.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 16 2017, @05:10PM (4 children)
In the US, at least 18 minutes per hours is commercials, and that rises to about 21 minutes during reruns, and probably 40 minutes during Football.
Torrents are like Netflix: soon to die after the end of Net Neutrality. You'll soon get an internet package with Unlimited Comcast/frontier/At&T data, a Gig or two of non-provider data, and the right to buy an extra package if you want to play games. There might be an unlimited Netflix optional package, but it will be priced at, or $5 below, the cableco's own VoD...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:08PM (3 children)
Is there some particular reason why you can't use a VPN which defeats content inspection and makes all your data neutral again?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:13PM
Massive blacklisting of VPNs, encrypted data running through a single pipe with enough bandwidth will get shutdown. They already do these things, without net neutrality we'll see them apply the worst possible versions of them instead of the defanged crap they pull now.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 16 2017, @06:18PM (1 child)
IF (! (traffic_to_Verizon_server OR traffic_to_subscribed_partner_package)) THEN increment_data_against_cap;
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:57PM
Don't be that guy who uses a DNS VPN and routes traffic through the ISP's own DNS servers for free.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday June 16 2017, @05:22PM (3 children)
Does Netflix still do the DVDs in the mail thing? Does anybody still do that? When my ISP sucks, I'd rather not have to deal with buffering, poor image quality, and a lack of available titles.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Friday June 16 2017, @05:55PM (1 child)
Netflix still has their DVD/Blu-Ray via mail service, but (and be aware that this is hearsay so who knows), I've heard that the discs are becoming increasingly scratched up and Netflix is not replacing them, and the wait time has increased. My guess is it's attrition. Eventually when enough of Netflix's discs go bad or missing, they'll just stop the service altogether.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Friday June 16 2017, @07:54PM
Which sucks because there's still a lot of content only available by disc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @09:43PM
Barely. They used to have an awesome library of titles, but it's shrunk significantly as they've tried to go online only. They don't seem to be replacing titles when they get damaged and the end result is that there's even less to watch.
The company itself is run by an asshat that seems to think that it's OK to continually raise prices while the amount of content continues to decline while they take that money and use it to expand overseas.
Fuck Netflix, it's a shame that it's the best of the non-pirate options.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Friday June 16 2017, @05:23PM
Nailed it. I canceled my Netflix account a couple of months ago. It just wasn't worth the $13 per month. The only original programming of theirs that I cared for was Voltron: Legendary Defender, and Voltron isn't worth $13 per month IMO.
Now I just have Hulu (commercial free), WWE Network, and YouTube Red. I imagine that I'll add CBS All Access when Star Trek: Discovery premieres.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 16 2017, @05:42PM
..whose only difference is it's all on-demand and has no commercials.
You say it like that's a minor difference.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Friday June 16 2017, @05:49PM (2 children)
Cable sank their own ship. They had "on demand" content but it was clunky and expensive. Instead of innovating they just resisted and cranked the price up.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:27PM
Mmmm yeaaaah. You like it yeaaah, mmmm.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday June 16 2017, @08:08PM
Their ship isn't sunk yet, it's going to be fixed and soon dominate the seas: with the elimination of Net Neutrality, the cablecos can simply block your access to Netflix and other competing services unless you pay them a hefty access fee, which of course will be much more expensive than their own clunky and expensive in-house service. So whichever way you go, they're going to win, unless you go without streaming video altogether (and then your choice is still with them for cable TV, unless you go for rabbit ears or abandon TV altogether, but most Americans aren't going to do that any time soon).
(Score: 2) by rondon on Friday June 16 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)
Honest question - don't you think that the prevalence of other options will prevent Netflix from stumbling down that route? I mean in the near to medium term future, before their corporate culture slowly metastasizes with cancerous ideas about quarterly profits and shareholder value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @09:45PM
Too late. The prices are on their way up, the amount of content is approaching a quarter of what the online service had and the DVDs are disappearing over time as they get scratched or damaged.
They've been coasting for a few years now by being slightly better than the competition, but at this point, they're nothing particularly special as they've got an ever decreasing library and the costs are significantly higher than they were when they had a catalog 3x the size and were also sending out those DVDs.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Friday June 16 2017, @08:26PM (7 children)
The bit about commercials was never true. Cable got its start from people who lived in valleys. Some form of company, depending on location, would establish a mast antenna and run out coaxial cable from there. The mast received regular OTA signals. Cable was never, ever, commercial free. Eventually, some premium channels would be commercial free.
Many don't know this, so here's a cite:
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=88245 [snopes.com]
There's a bunch of other sources. Cable was never, ever, commercial free. I'm pretty sure there's never even been any tech to make it commercial free. You could do it - but I don't know any who have. It'd be kinda silly, actually. What would they fill the blank air space up with?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday June 16 2017, @09:06PM (6 children)
When I was a kid and my parents got cable there were no commercials.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Friday June 16 2017, @09:55PM (5 children)
Is that your memory having issues? That is not meant to be derogatory. Commercials have always been on cable TV.
Cable TV got its start from people living in areas where they couldn't get reception. Depending, they'd form a co-op, set up a mast antenna, and distribute the signal ove coaxial cable. A limited number of premium channels would have no commercial breaks, during the show. Some would only then include adverts for their own content and would do so between shows.
In regards to the US, I can speak for nowhere else, cable TV has a,ways carried commercials. There wasn't even a mechanism to remove them, as cable also supplied OTA programs. They would have just had dead air space. There are myriad citations online. It's a strange belief that I don't understand. Cable, at least in the US, hasn't ever been commercial free, as they always carried OTA programs. The motivation for cable was a lack of reception.
I'd be quite curious about how it would work, otherwise.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:52AM (3 children)
In Oz there were 0 to 5 OTA channels depending on location. Almost anywhere cable rolled out it would have been at least 3 channels. Cable offered 30 or 40 more channels, as well as the OTA channels. When people say they were ad-free, they usually are not including the rebroadcast OTA channels.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:58AM (2 children)
That they don't include them is hardly my fault. I don't think I'm to blame for that? I'm guilty of many things, but probably not that one.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)
Not blaming you, just pointing out a miscommunication. At least, in Oz anyway.
Although OTA is rebroadcast through the cable, it is almost never included as part of the discussion on cable content. The rebroadcasting is merely treated as an inprovement of OTA signal reception.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:01AM
I should have included the smiley face.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:24PM
The cable-only channels were commercial free. This was a major selling point that the door to door cable salesman talked about, and a few years later I was quite miffed when they started having commercials.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 16 2017, @08:30PM
Yeah. Plus they rose the subscription fee from $7.99 to $10.82 which I only recently noticed and will likely keep doing more of the same on top of that. They're also trying to cut corners by doing their original shows instead of classics and stuff. But to be honest eventually people are going to see the formula they're using in those. They started out doing actual original stuff, then found out what they think is a formula to success. Like Hollywood does already.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting on Birdman and The Green Room to show up there. But cool thing about a VPN is that if they're going to make me use my funds for that just to watch stuff I pay for already without a banner popping up. Might as well just go back to downloading the convenient way if I'm going to be forced to VPN anyway.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:39AM
One of the excuses I heard for cable (in Oz) adding commercials was that a lot of their content was made in expectation of it. Hour long shows were less than 50 minutes and half hour shows were around 20. They wanted to keep in sync with the on-the-hour/half-hour program changes and needed something to fill the dead airtime. Could be true, I remember before they started with ads they were filling up five and ten minute slots with all sorts of junk to keep programs starting on the hour.
Vicious cycle now of course. Program gets shorter, add more ads, make cuts to shorten program, add more ads. I bet nobody under 40 has actually seen a complete episode of Get Smart.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.