May
12

Comcast Downplays TV Cord Cutters – CEO Roberts: ‘not any real evidence’ of people moving to Internet video

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As we recently explored, Internet video currently isn’t much of a threat to the multi-billion-dollar traditional TV broadcast industry — though it’s only a matter of time before faster broadband and easy, cheap devices and services more seriously challenge old-school TV. Most “cable guys” are infinitely confident in their ability to hold off the Internet video challenge, and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is no exception. Speaking at The Cable Show this week, Roberts downplayed the threat of people cutting the TV cord, and then immediately seemed to admit it was still a threat:

“There s not any real evidence that consumers want to get rid of my distribution, whether it s satellite, cable, or phone, and just go to the Internet”…But the Comcast chief said that he has expressed concerns about cord cutting, and noted that he has had previously expressed more alarm about the trend than one of his top lieutenants, Comcast COO Steve Burke. “This is where Steve Burke and I are very different people. He wakes up every day, and the glass is half full. I wake up every day and the sky is falling,” Roberts said.

Of course it’s not so much a matter of cynicism as it is one of logic. Cable carriers (Comcast in particular) continue to have the lowest consumer satisfaction rates across any industry. They continue to impose bi-annual rate hikes on their customers. Should someone come along with a cheap, easy service that makes it simple enough for regular users to bypass cable operators — it seems very hard to believe there won’t be a number of people ready to make that migration — eventually.

Meanwhile, Comcast’s attempt to keep these supposedly non-existent cord cutters from cord cutting is called TV Everywhere — which as we’ve discussed provides existing TV customers only with a limited selection of paywalled TV content. Early reactions were somewhat mixed, but Roberts says there should be a new version of the platform arriving sometime in the next 90 days.
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Related posts:

  1. Moffett: TV Cord Cutters ‘Poor’ & Eating ‘Dog’s Breakfast’ – First cord cutters didn’t exist. Now they exist, they just don’t matter?
  2. Cord Cutters Still Rare – And cable industry hopes to keep it that way
  3. Comcast to Test IP Video at MIT – Expanding Trials to Employees Later This Year
  4. Comcast To Relaunch Internet Video Platform Next Month – Featuring ‘a less cumbersome sign-on and authentication process’
  5. Comcast Testing New Set Top Box – With a strong focus on Internet integration

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