Our Rebuttal to USA Today’s Cord Cutting Subscription Fatigue Story


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Latin woman looking disappointed at her laptopscreen, sitting behind her desk at the office.

Latin woman looking disappointed at her laptopscreen, sitting behind her desk at the office.Last week we warned you to expect a flood of anti-cord cutting stories. Today, we have one more to confront. This one is from USA Today pushing the idea that it’s too hard to manage multiple subscriptions.

Earlier this week, USA Today posted a story called “Cord cutters feel weight of subscription fatigue as video, TV streaming options multiply.” As you would expect, that quickly caught our attention and we decided to dig deeper.

The main argument of this story comes from a report by Digital Media Trends that looks at the current state of streaming and TV overall. According to Kevin Westcott, Deloitte’s vice chairman for U.S. telecom, media and entertainment, “Well over half (of consumers) say they are frustrated when shows they like disappear or are no longer on a streaming service and that they have to have multiple subscriptions to get what they want, so there is a little bit of subscription fatigue.”

The problem with that statement is it has nothing to do with cord cutting or streaming. You could have an extremely similar result if you asked if people are upset when a cable TV channel cancels a show or stops airing reruns of a show you love. (Who remembers the outrage when Adult Swim stopped airing King of the Hill reruns?) How about when a channel you loved on cable TV was suddenly in a more expensive package?

The other issue it ignores is the fact that many cable TV customers are fatigued with finding their price higher than expected with hidden fees and channels that are in a more expensive package than they started off in.

Cord cutting is not perfect, but the growing trend of stories going after any flaw in cord cutting but ignoring the issues with cable TV are unfair. Even though cord cutting is not perfect, it continues to grow as traditional pay-TV providers lost about 2.9 million subscribers in 2018.

So, the question now is what was your frustration with cable TV before you canceled? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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