More and more Canadians are cutting their cable, and the $25 basic TV package isn’t helping to stop the trend, according to Mario Mota, with Boon Dog Professional Services, an Ottawa-based research and consulting firm (via CBC News).
After looking at the numbers he got from the country’s seven major TV providers (that of course includes Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw), Mota found that they lost close to 100,000 TV in the six-month period between March and September.
That compares to the 11 million Canadians who still use cable TV, which seems minor, but Mota says this will get worse. He estimates that the stage is set for cable TV service providers to lose almost 200,000 subscribers this year, an all-time high.
That’s despite the option Canadians have to pay only $25 for a basic package, mandated since March 1. By June, only 1.57% of Canada’s TV subscribers had signed up for that skinny package. Expectations were around 5%.
But Mota doesn’t rule out the potential of the upgraded skinny package that will be mandated starting next month. Service providers must allow customers to add any specialty channel they want, which could be an individual channel or a group of channels, for a certain price. He doesn’t put too much hope in its effect, however, because some service providers, such as Bell, Telus and Shaw, already offer a variety of pick-and-pay channels.
How about you? Are you planning to switch to Netflix or the like?
