2.3 Million Americans Have Pulled The Plug Since 2010

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/goodbye-cable-tv-23-million-americans-have-pulled-the-plug-since-2010-2012-2

This chart (below) from ISI Group tells you all you need to know about the fate of cable TV in the age of the iPad: Since Q1 2010, 2.3 million people have stopped subscribing to pay TV as delivered by cable TV companies such as Cablevision, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Dish, Verizon, and AT&T.

Currently, only 41.5 million Americans watch TV on pay cable.

I’ve been arguing for a while now that Americans are on the cusp of a dramatic change in how they watch video. They’re moving to video over the internet. Traditional TV is dying, in much the same way that in the mid-2000s we all largely stopped using hardwired telephones to make calls in favor of wireless mobile cellphones.

Hardwired phones are still a big business, of course, and most households still have them. But they’re really a vestigial offshoot of whatever bundled communications package you’ve bought.

It looks like cable is about to go the same way. Although its subscriber numbers are dwindling, subscriber numbers for satellite TV and broadband phone/internet service remain relatively healthy, as the second chart (below) shows. That suggests to me that there is a growing number of households choosing a broadband package with the internet as their top priority, and a dwindling number choosing it based on TV.

Ironically, the fall has come at a time when cable is making more ad money than ever. It’s a supply-and-demand issue: It may be that cable TV’s audience is dwindling, but it’s still one of the few venues that reliably delivers millions of eyeballs all at once.

First, the cable TV chart, based on numbers from ISI Group:

Here’s the market share situation. Note that 2011 was a threshold year, when cable slipped from having more than 50 percent of the market to less:

Please follow Advertising on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Does This Mysterious Mad Men Ad Reveal The Secrets Of Season 5?
• These Stunning New Bottle Designs Are Revolutionizing The Wine Business
• You Saw The Academy Awards, Now See Who Won BI’s Oscars For Ads

Executive compensation is one of the most ironic hotly-debated topics out there.  It’s hotly debated because people often complain that CEOs are overpaid.  It’s ironic because most of the people who complain about excessive pay have the capacity to do something, yet they do nothing.

You see, every year shareholders of a company are mailed a Form DEF 14A, also known as the proxy statement. In the proxy are the details of the company’s executive compensation plans, and they are typically written plain English.  If shareholders don’t like the plan, they vote it down.

But many shareholders will receive the proxy in the mail and throw it right into the trash. And by default, they vote in favor of whatever plan is recommended by the Board.

Anyways, research firm Obermatt (via The Economist) computed the excess pay of CEOs of the S&P 100 companies.  Excess pay is calculated as deserved pay less actual pay.  Deserved pay is measured considering earnings growth and shareholder return and the compensation practices of peer group companies.

On the top of the “Most Overpaid” list is Occidental Petroleum’s Ray Irani. Irani is widely considered the poster child of excessive pay.

On the bottom are fan favorites Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett.

Here’s a chart of Obermatt’s rankings courtesy of The Economist:

SEE ALSO: These CEOs Were Paid $100+ Million To Quit >

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• INFOGRAPHIC: It’s Not Easy To Be A CIO
• Apple Might Lose A $1.6 Billion Lawsuit For Using The Word ‘iPad’
• DOUG KASS: SELL EVERYTHING! EVEN ROUBINI IS BULLISH!

The social bookmarking site Delicious is back. Those who loved saving their favorite links to a public (or private) profile page will find that experience unchanged. But there’s a new central focus to Delicious. It’s called Stacks.

Stacks is a quick and easy way for users to compile a focused list of links to share. While there’s no limitations to what your list can contain, the idea is that people will pick a theme/topic and run with it. You supply the links, Delicious takes care of the formatting and presentation for you. They believe that navigating through stacks, as opposed to navigating through personal profile, will make exploration and discovery on the internet much more meaningful.

According to AllThingsD, YouTube creators (and former bosses), Chad Hurley and Steve Chen favor human curation over the quasi-random, algorithm-driven presentation of links. And while Stacks is what they’ve decided to focus on right now, they say more features are coming (I hope that will include the ability to embed stacks on other sites). For now, Delicious looks like a good way to get lost in the internet for while when you have nothing better to do. [Delicious via AllThingsD]

—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

Tags: ability, algorithm, AllThingsD, Bookmarking, care, central focus, creators, curation, Dead, Delicious, demo, discovery, drag and drop, email, email contacts, experience, exploration, exploration and discovery, favor, focus, formatting, Hurley, idea, Internet, list, New, news, news items, nothing, page, personal profile, Presentation, profile, share, site, Stacks, steve chen, theme, topic, Tow, video, video source, way, YouTube