Agency News
Cable service providers are not faring so well in the eyes of the public. The American Customer Service Index depicts– that regardless of which company you source your television feed through—the overall category of providers is receiving poor marks across the board.
DirecTV obtained the best overall score, but still saw its score drop 4.4% from the previous year.
Time Warner Cable’s troubles continue. They were viewed least favorably in the prior year’s report (2013) and they took a 7% decline in 2014’s cable company rankings.
Cable providers are struggling with people “cord cutting.” They have decided that cable is too expensive! The PM Group mostly attributes this consumer behavior to stagnant wages for nearly six years compounded along with rising retail prices and higher housing & medical costs.
Middle income families are giving up non-essential expenses to help make ends meet and cable is one of the primary casualties of that reality. Since 2011, ESPN alone has lost an estimated 7 million subscribers, according to Nielsen and The Wall Street Journal……and they are not alone! Many of the most popular networks like TNT, TBS, USA Network, The Food Network, CNN, Discovery and many more—have all experienced subscriber losses.
There is a lesson here for many businesses; carefully weigh the challenges with raising prices for your goods & services in this environment. Cable has priced themselves out of many customers by raising prices continuously and the cost to reclaim those customers usually costs about 7x the value of the lost revenue.
An old wise man once told me……”pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.”
