Cable Dissatisfaction

Ouch! Not only did most cable MSOs get punked by their video customer bases in this year’s J.D. Power US Residential TV Service Satisfaction Study, but telcos and DBS ops both performed exceedingly well by comparison. Also, cable lagged far behind the pair in both service recommendation intent and satisfaction with prices paid—the latter a serious issue since 74% of overall video subs who plan to change video providers this year cited price as the impetus. Save for a few solid performances—Cox and WOW! demand notice—perhaps the only good news for cable was J.D. Power’s claim of healthy gains in DVR adoption rates and VOD access. Oh, and the industry did score quite well recently among phone subs (Cfax, 9/16). Still, a somber tale is told below. Note the disturbing incidence of below avg regional scores for multiple MSOs, a trend that has endured for multiple years.