Around the Net
Dish Network: Kids Not Into Cable
- GigaOm, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 12:23 PM
The kids might be alright, but because of their unwillingness to pay for content, cable isn’t. So says Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, who, according to GigaOm, is trying to figure out how to keep pay TV subscribers who are increasingly watching over-the-top video. “While there’s still some debate over how many users are ditching pay TV in lieu of cheaper online options, Ergen said on Monday’s earnings call, there’s a bigger macro trend developing, with young people choosing to forgo pay TV subscriptions altogether,” GigaOm writes.
“Young people who move to an apartment or get a house for the first time don’t subscribe to any MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) and they just… get their network programming from Hulu and they get Netflix,” Ergen said this week. “As an industry where people pay between $70 and $92 a month, that’s a lot of money to a young person today. .. They can go out and watch Hulu for free and Netflix for $7.99. So it’s a threat.” Worse still, in the short term, a weak economy is putting pressure on the pay TV industry, as it struggles to get new users to sign up for cable, IPTV and satellite services, GigaOm notes.
