On this week’s show we look at the new devices supported by Matter 1.2 and we ask you if you are a Quiet Quitter of your pay TV service. We also read your emails and take a look at the week’s news.
News:
Other:
The new device types supported in Matter 1.2 include:
We received an email from long time listener Mike LaBorde with a link to an article at TV Tech titled The `Quiet Quitters' of Pay TV Continue to Grow. Mike suggests that he is one and as I thought about my situation I decided I am one as well. So what is a Quiet Quitter and are you one of us?
A Quiet Quitter is someone who has largely stopped viewing pay TV programming but hasn’t dropped their pay TV subscription or “cut-the-cord.”
According to Inscape’s recent Q2 2023 TV Market Trends report, about 5% of U.S. cable/satellite households have outright quit viewing content via their satellite and cable TV options in the second quarter of the year.
Inscape found that 9% reduced their cable/satellite viewing by 75% or more from Q2 2022 to Q2 2023 (to account for viewing seasonality), but didn’t fully quit. Additionally, 8.4% of U.S. cable/satellite households had a drop of 50-75% in cable/satellite viewing time in Q2 2023 from Q2 2022.
I did some analysis on my own viewing habits and here are the numbers. Back in 2000 I spent one hour in the morning watching TV, mostly news, and four hours in the evening from 6:00 - 10:00 Monday through Friday. That is a total of five hours a day. I now listen to podcasts as I get ready in the morning which by itself reduces my pay TV usage by 20%. In the evening I watch Youtube for about 30 minutes and then I may turn to linear television for about 30 minutes to an hour while I wait for the family to assemble and watch TV. At this point I've already cut 1 ½ hours of my normal viewing.
Once we’ve settled in to watch TV for the evening it's not from the live TV or the DVR but rather from Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, Max, or Netflix. On a non-sports evening I have cut my linear TV by as much as 90%. So why do I keep my subscription?
It's those pesky sports teams that I follow. It's no fun watching delayed. You have to watch them live. The Dodgers, Kings, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and to a lesser degree Tennessee Volunteers keep me paying for DirecTV Stream. We also will record Hallmark Christmas movies and watch them during the holiday season. I count DVR’s programming a pay TV. You really have to ask yourself, is it worth it to pay $90 a month just to watch 25% of what you used to on a pay TV service. Unfortunately being a big sports fan has it's costs!
According to Inscape data, while streaming commands 56.5% of overall TV viewing time, that falls to 23.1% for sports and 14.7% for news. Cable/satellite/antenna, meanwhile, accounts for 43.5% of overall TV viewing time, but dominates in sports (76.9%) and news (85.3%).
Alternatively I can find a way to get my sporting fix through add-on services like “At Bat” for baseball and “Sunday Ticket” for Football but when you add everything up it more or less costs the same amount as having a pay TV service. So you may as well just pay for pay TV on the odd chance you have nothing to watch and all you have is Nick at Nite or TV Land!