Power

Why cord-cutting more than doubled in 2019

Skinny bundles, once seen as the industry's savior, aren't immune to subscriber defections.

A Dish Network van in California

Cable and satellite TV subscribers left in droves in 2019.

Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Last year was another rough year for the pay-TV industry.

The major cable and satellite TV operators collectively lost around 5.8 million subscribers in 2019, compared with 2.3 million in 2018. In the fourth quarter alone, the top five operators lost 1.5 million subscribers in total. Cord-cutters have continued to move en masse to services like Netflix and Hulu, as well as newer, more affordable streaming services from Disney and Apple.

Get what matters in tech, in your inbox every morning. Sign up for Source Code.

Hidden in those numbers is another notable trend: Some internet-based TV services like AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now) and Dish's Sling TV, which were once seen as a way to win cord-cutters back, weren't able to cover for these massive losses. AT&T's service alone lost 674,000 subscribers in 2019. Sling TV managed to add 175,000 subscribers — not enough to make up for a massive defection of Dish subscribers.

This trend has a lot to do with pricing: After initially positioning these services as skinny bundles, operators are increasingly feeling the squeeze from growing content costs, resulting in higher prices for consumers. AT&T's internet-TV service in particular has seen massive price increases.

When AT&T first introduced the service in late 2016, it offered subscriptions for as little as $35 per month. During a series of price increases in October, it told some of those early customers that they would have to pay as much as $85 per month going forward — a tough pill to swallow for consumers who transitioned to streaming to save money. The average traditional cable bill is around $110.

Some of the internet TV services from companies not weighed down by a traditional cable business have seen growth in 2019. Disney announced earlier this month its live-TV service from Hulu had signed up 3.2 million subscribers by the end of 2019, and Google disclosed 2 million paying YouTube TV subscribers in its latest earnings release.

However, some of those gains may be due to industry consolidation: Sony announced the closure of its PlayStation Vue TV service in October. "Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected," the company said at the time.

Those same industry dynamics also all but assure that cord-cutting is going to continue at a significant pace in 2020 and beyond. Analyst Michael Nathanson estimated last year that up to 40% of the pay-TV industry's subscriber base may be at risk, with only hard-core sports fans sticking to their TV services out of necessity. Nathanson's remarks were echoed by Roku CEO Anthony Wood this month, who estimated that half of U.S. TV households won't have a pay TV subscription by 2024.

The cord-cutting trend will likely be driven on further by the growing emergence of cheap subscription video services. Disney+, which launched in November for only $6.99 per month, already reached 28.6 million paying subscribers earlier this month, and Apple TV+ is estimated to have 33.6 million subscribers. AT&T, meanwhile, is set to double down on streaming with the launch of its HBO Max service in May.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins