September 04, 2020 12:40pm PT by Rick Porter

As millions have cut the cord, cable companies raised prices, banking on sports to keep people hooked. During the pandemic, that strategy has started to backfire.

ESPN Plus is about to get pricier for sports fans who sign up for the streamer’s monthly plan. Now that sports have started back up after the months-long COVID hiatus, the Disney-owned progra…

Consumer Reports explains how to replace cable TV for less than $25 per month using three streaming services: CBS All Access, Disney+, and NBC's new Peacock.

However, the company did gain 323,000 net high-speed Internet customers, which the company called its best second-quarter number on that metric in 13 years. 

"The Witcher: Blood Origin" will be a six-part, live-action limited series

In an ever-expanding world of TV services, it’s only getting harder to find what you want

Three years after some of the regional sports networks that carry most Major League Baseball games started arriving on streaming TV, the last holdouts will finally shut up and take cord-cutters’ money.

AT&T touted the “successful” launch of HBO Max — with the new service helping to boost overall HBO and HBO Max customers by a net 1.7 million over the first six months of 2020. As of June 30, 2020, AT&T’s WarnerMedia reported 36.3 million total U.S. subscribers to HBO Max and HBO, up from 34.6 million at Dec. 31, 2019. That’s an increase of 5% over that time period.

Roku today announced findings from its annual Cord Cutting study, including new insights shared by U.S. consumers about how the COVID-19 pandemic is influencing the shift to streaming. The study found that approximately 32% of U.S. TV households do not have a traditional pay TV subscription (cable, satellite, telco), while another 25% of households identified as Cord Shavers cut back their service. When asked about intent to cut the cord fully in the next six months, 45% of Cord Shaver households said they were likely to do so.

Apple’s WWII drama Greyhound, starring and written by Tom Hanks, has become the largest opening-weekend release ever for Apple TV+

AT&T absolutely bled subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, even by the standards of cord-cutting that have accelerated. According to one measure, the company lost over a million video subscribers in the quarter, with DirecTV losing nearly 900,000 and AT&T Now losing about 138,000. This makes up for around half of the 2 million subscribers lost in the first quarter by major pay-TV providers in the U.S.

The efforts may be early, though.

Speaking earlier this week at the Credit Suisse Virtual Communications Conference - as reported on Twitter by analyst Rich Greenfield of Lightshed - Comcast's chief financial officer Michael Cavanagh said that video subscription losses will increase "at a similar absolute level" as they

HBO Max gives HBO subscribers a third streaming option, but Now and Go are sticking around for now. Go figure.

Netflix said Thursday it will ask customers who have not watched anything on the on-demand video streaming service in a year or more if they wish to maintain their subscription -- and will cancel their membership if it does not hear back.

If you currently have a live television streaming service like YouTube TV, Sling TV, or Hulu with Live, there’s about a 50% chance you’re a cable convert. According to a recent study from Leichtman Research Group, 44% of live TV streaming customers switched after canceling a big cable subscription.

The network that made the careers of Dave Chappelle, Stephen Colbert and Amy Schumer has laid off top executives while looking to make shows that are cheaper to produce.

Any Star Trek fan looking for a new way to enjoy the franchise while self-quarantining are in [...]

Traditional cable and satellite TV providers posted their most massive quarterly subscriber losses in the first three months of 2020, as the COVID-19 tornado started to hit the U.S. economy in March. What’s more, internet-delivered “virtual” TV providers registered a net loss in the period, too.