More than a half million Americans severed ties with their cable and satellite TV companies in the second quarter of this year, underscoring a shift in how people watch TV.
According to Variety, 566,000 cable and satellite TV subscribers canceled their services. That figure was up from 321,000 who did the same in the first quarter of 2015.
A Breitbart article discusses the phenomenon known as cord cutting, when Americans ditch their cable service in favor of either no service at all or less expensive options like Roku and Apple TV.
"For around $100 a month pay TV is not only pummeling you with about 20 minutes of ads an hour, but forcing you to pay for a ton of networks you hate," John Nolte writes on Breitbart. "Moreover, many of these networks get a chunk of your cable bill. Even if you don't watch left-wing CNN and MSNBC, if they are on your package, chances are a part of your bill is going directly to both."
Nolte adds that almost 50 percent of CNN's revenue comes from people simply having the network on their cable package, regardless of whether or not they actually watch it.
Cord cutting
has largely affected subscriber numbers, which in turn hits big networks like ESPN, which take in huge fees from cable companies. More and more Americans are now watching TV through alternative means.
"I don't think the sky is falling quite yet, and I think that there is not enough programming weight yet in the Internet and in the over-the-top services that are out there to really entice a mainstream video customer," Cablevision Systems CEO James Dolan said, reports Variety.
A Wall Street Journal article last week, meanwhile, argued that the increased number of cord cutters could lead to less-than-healthy profits for key players in the cable and satellite TV industry.
"I was shocked at how far the ratings across the board have fallen this spring, and you can't really explain that easily. It's not just Netflix," former DirecTV chairman and CEO Mike White told the Journal. "It's clear that the millennial generation is having an impact, and every media company is trying to figure out how to connect with them."
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