TMCnet News
Hipster cable leaves traditional providers playing catch-up [The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) :: ](Morning Call (Allentown, PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) April 26--Shelling out more than $100 a month to watch TV is sooooo five years ago. When Sarah Tombler wants to watch "The Walking Dead," she watches "The Walking Dead." Who needs cable? It could be prime time, 2 a.m. or when the kiddies are watching Saturday morning cartoons. With a little legwork, Tombler gets her "Walking Dead" fix when she wants it for half the money she used to pay the cable company. The Bethlehem 30-year-old is part of a new generation of TV viewers that's more hunter-gatherer than couch potato. They snip their cable lines and use broadband Internet connections and services with names like Netflix and Hulu to pick out and watch programming on their own time. They also aren't below borrowing passwords to watch shows like HBO's "Game of Thrones" for free. Hipster cable, Tombler calls it. Its disciples say it's cheaper and more convenient than its traditional predecessor. And its growing number of devotees have cable companies scrambling to adapt. This month, Experian Marketing Services noted that one in five homes in the United States that use streaming video services like Netflix or Hulu don't have cable TV. Viewers who use those services are nearly three times more likely to drop cable TV, according to Experian. "It's the smartest money-wise," Tombler said. Before switching to hipster cable in February 2013, she and her roommate paid $160 a month for a basic cable and Internet connections. With hipster cable, the bill, all told, is about $82.50 a month. That's for movies, TV shows and documentaries, selected -- and sometimes paid for -- like buying a meal from a restaurant's bill of fare. Hipster cable subscribers make concessions, she said. She's a football fan, and that means she often either has to miss games or go to a local sports bar. Also, in most cases, she has to forgo watching a show live or at the exact hour on the exact day that the production company decides to disseminate it to the masses. Not a problem, Tombler said. "We didn't watch anything real time," she said. Instead, she and her roomie recorded shows on a DVR and watched them days later. Now she uses services like Netflix, which allows viewers to watch entire runs of series such as "Lost" and "Mad Men" for as little as $7.99 a month. Or she pays $1.69 per episode to watch new shows on Amazon Prime, a service that costs her about $90 a year, but includes free shipping on items from Amazon.com. Often, shows on Amazon Prime are only 2 days old. She does that for programs like "The Walking Dead," when she wants to see what's happening as soon as possible. It's no longer just a novelty. Netflix has 48 million subscribers worldwide who stream content. In 2014, the company will spend $500 million in marketing its services around the world, according to its website. When Netflix launched as an Internet-based mail-order DVD service in 1997, it helped bring about the demise of brick-and-mortar video rental chains like Blockbuster Video. Now it's taking on what its website calls "linear TV," or the traditional TV programming, which you tune in to for a given program at a particular time. For local cable providers RCN and Service Electric, each innovation in the hipster cable spectrum represents a new challenge. RCN is jumping on the bandwagon. On Friday, the company joined Atlantic Broadband and Grande Communications to partner with Netflix. The company will now offer Netflix as an app on the cable box viewers use to watch RCN programming. "The dynamics of this game-changing relationship are clear: more choices for the viewer via a simple, unified device," said Jim Holanda, chief executive officer at RCN and Grande Communications, in a news release. For now, Service Electric hasn't seen a dip in its roughly 100,000 subscribers in the Lehigh Valley because of hipster cable, spokesman John Capparell said. One reason: To use the a la carte providers, you need an Internet connection. Service Electric provides that. But Capparell acknowledged, "The future of the landscape of the way the individuals are receiving their video is definitely changing." So, the cable companies are reacting. For example, in July, Service Electric will release a service that will allow subscribers to use any device anywhere they can get a wifi, 4G or LTE connection to have access to all the cable channels they receive on their home TV, regardless of their location. Another Service Electric service offers access to 2,000 movies for $3.95 a month. Also, the provider is offering less expensive packages. A basic, 27-channel package was recently made available for $19.49 a month, he said. If something like that had been available, 45-year-old Billy Rodgers of Upper Macungie Township might still be a cable subscriber. Two and a half years ago, his $100-plus cable bill got to be too big to handle. So, when he got a BluRay DVD player with apps included, and a relative bought him a Roku box -- a flat device you plug into your TV to receive services like Netflix -- Rodgers cut off his cable. A year ago, when his father-in-law came to stay while recovering from surgery, Rodgers turned to RCN cable for about a month. "I missed it," he conceded. He missed watching shows when they were new. And he missed sports. When he cut the cord, Rodgers also installed an antenna atop his house to pick up network TV affiliate stations from Philadelphia, which come through in high definition, thanks to his Black Friday-purchased Vizio. "I'm not a big sports guy," Rodgers said. "But if you're a die-hard Phillies fan," hipster cable can present problems. Still, when an important game is on, Rodgers turns to another basic tenet of the hipster cable devotee -- borrowing. His brother-in-law gets cable through Xfinity, which gives some subscribers a user name and password that lets them watch programming online. So, Rodgers borrows his brother-in-law's information to get the programming. Allentown resident Eric Schmitt bites the bullet and buys MLBTV so he can watch Mets games. Services like MLBTV or another that offers access to National Hockey League games can cost $100 a season. Still, Schmitt, 36, figures by shutting off cable he saves $150 a month. "The only thing I really miss is [ESPN's] 'SportsCenter,' " he said. "I would really be willing to pay for just that." Hipster cable forces channel surfers to change their habits. "It made me prioritize what I wanted to watch -- and I watch less," Tombler said. That, Rodgers said, is one of the trend's nice byproducts. The hardware makes hours and hours worth of entertainment readily accessible. But frequently, the 47-inch Vizio remains dark. He and his family spent more time watching regular cable than they do the hipster variety. "Now that the weather's nice," he said, "we'll spend more time outside." [email protected] 610-820-6533 ___ (c)2014 The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) Visit The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) at www.mcall.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |