Has Big Cable’s Legacy of Bad Service Made it Easier for Streaming Services?

High prices and poor customer service helped pave the way for Internet TV, but it’s not entirely the cable companies’ fault

[...] with constant price jumps and a reputation for adversarial customer service, incumbent cable companies may have helped facilitate their own disruption.

Hale Boggs, the chairman of Manatt Digital Media, told TheWrap that while the rise of streaming can’t simply be chalked up to escalating bills and interminable calls with customer service representatives, traditional cable and satellite providers didn’t exactly help themselves by taking a proactive approach.

Taxi services maintained an old-school phone dispatch system and nebulous tipping policies up until ridesharing companies like Uber cannibalized their business — and by then it was too late.

“Many television viewers simply believe they are not getting reasonable value from their cable companies because too many channels exist that they do not watch — and they do not want to pay extra dollars,” Rothstein said.

High-end cable and satellite packages provide more than ever for those who can afford them, from literally thousands of channels to dozens of films on demand and a smorgasbord of live sports, but younger viewers who are tight on cash – or simply don’t want to lock themselves into a byzantine cable contract – aren’t necessarily finding value.

Streaming companies – even those owned by traditional TV providers like DirecTV Now and Dish Network’s Sling TV – are marketing directly against those old service models, highlighting the month-to-month, cable box-free aspect of internet TV.

The dwindling subscriber numbers certainly speak for themselves, but Boggs said he believes there will always be a market for a premium, fully-loaded cable or satellite service, which the incumbent players are best positioned to continue to deliver.

[...] even though the decline of cable subscribers is a real concern — ESPN has been an albatross on Disney’s stock price, even as its movie studio barrels toward a record year — Boggs says it’s wildly premature to declare the era of Big Cable over.

To him, that means they view their cell phones as absolutely a requirement, while TV is an optional diversion that can be cut back on.

The stats seem to back that up – according to a Pew survey, 64 percent of Americans said they viewed a TV set as a necessity in 2006, but that number dropped to 42 percent in 2010.