I have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.
When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of:
1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon Network, USA
2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language channels, Starz, and a few more.
You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month. I think they may have had a few other premium channel options as well, but I never paid that close of attention.
We cut the cable because the price had crept up from about $50/month total to almost $100/month over the course of a few years. It was just unsustainable. Now we pay about $40/month for streaming services, and the streaming services don't have ads.
Yet. IIRC, when cable started, it didn't have ads either. It was its selling point.
Advertising is a cancer on society that infects and poisons every communication medium available. It has already metastasized to streaming platforms, though it's not conspicuous yet. You don't have to watch interstitial ads between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, but if that show is a modern production, it's likely overflowing with product placement ads. When that and other means of making easy money get used up, you can be sure that overt ads will follow.
"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." And that's a salient argument in favor of torching the whole advertising industry to the ground.
When cable started, it had ads. Cable was just a bunch of broadcast stations pushed over a coax wire to your house so you could get stations that were pretty much impossible with an antenna from your location in pretty much perfect signal quality for the time. There weren't even "only cable" kind of channels when people started paying for their television to come over wires to their homes.
> You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month
Please note that that was only a channel (or two). You still had to tune to watch the movie/show you wanted! For the same price today (not even adjusted for inflation), you can watch any of this content on demand, on any device, but it has waaay more content available.
My current monthly cable subscription is $135 (plus "fees"). And when people say, "cable", they generally mean TV service. For many, that may mean a pricey satellite TV service (very expensive back in the day). Basic cable is likely what you are getting, but many people want to watch sports or movies, which requires premium subscriptions and it adds up quickly.
Half the country can't really shop around they need to buy internet alone from the same cable company and then replace TV with netflix hulu etc but long term there isn't much stopping the cable provider from jacking up the price of just internet to what you are paying for TV and internet and claiming to offer you a deal for just a little bit more if you pay THEM for tv.
Hi we've noticed you used to pay us $200 for internet and tv but now pay $100 to use and $50 for streaming services. How would you instead like to pay us 200 for internet and 220 if you want TV too. our $20 tv addon is cheaper than netflix because its subsidized by the monopoly rent we are charging you on internet access! Also we have noticed that despite bandwidth being cheaper than ever we can also discourage your netflix use by also charging extra for using "too much" data.
There’s one wire going into the house usually that carries media, a coaxial cable. Hence, your options were always Dish or DirecTV satellite or the cable company.
Being able to buy and cancel on demand streaming for $15 or less per month is a massive improvement over the previous situation.
It has never been easier, cheaper, and more convenient to consume basically all content and yet people still find ways to complain.
There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels? The issue might be paying for things that are already free over the Internet.
> There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels?
Yes, I've lived in places where there is one cable company and they abuse their monopoly position with predatory pricing like this. When you're a new customer, they offer you a deal at maybe ~$60/mo and then over the course of a couple years raise the price to over $120/mo, with price increases every year or two after that, as well.
In the U.S. the vast majority of places have only only provider, there is no shopping around. $135/month sounds about right for the complete package. If you're lucky that includes a "special" on including HBO.
Virtually all places have "specials" on the first year of service, wherein the price will increase 50% or even 100% after the first year, which will almost always put you well into the $100+ range.
I understand. For myself, I chose to solve that by not purchasing any TV, cable phone, or any other package and only getting Internet. Internet is the only useful thing for me from all of that, anyway.
If the prices get too high I call them up and cancel. At that time, they try to keep me as a subscriber by giving me lower rates. If they don't have any available I ask when their new packages are coming out and call back a day after that time.
Comcast hides their real rates as well as they can but in some places they are required to publish them. In my rural area (where they are the only real option):
$139.99 gets you "Select+ Includes Limited Basic, Expanded Basic, Digital Preferred Tier and HD
programming for primary outlet, 20 Hour DVR Service, and Blast! Internet"
You can't buy ALL the channels as s bundle but the top tier bundle is $189.99/mo (plus fees)
The prices don't sum reasonably at all and it's not really feasible to calculate a price for TV without internet (and its very difficult to order such a thing)
I heard Comcast (Xfinity) business model is forget about the threat of Cordcutters, and just keep raising prices, hoping the consumer doesn't notice the costs.
I head this from a Xfinity employee.
My mom showed me her bill and it was $240 month, for basics channels, internet, hbo, and one other lousy feature she doesn't use.
I trying to get it down, but their contracts have early termination fees in the contract.
They offer reasonable packed rates only to new customers. They know most people won't take back their equipment, and go a few days without service, in order to save $100 plus a month. I don't know how they legally get away with their business practices.
She has bern a faithful customer since 1972.
She is in Marin County, USA.
If anyone knows of a different company please give me some advice.
(I looked into AT&T, but they have almost the same business model as Comcast.)
The price for essentially just 120Mbps (sold as 200) down and 6 up is over 100 for internet + 15 for the box if you don't get your own. With TV and a few premium channels it would easily be $200. They are also have only one competitor of note in the downtown of a city of 50K people, a DSL provider offering a service slow enough that its not technically considered broadband anymore by present standards.
