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KPU to ditch cable TV service

L

lukesams

KPU, based in Alaska has announced its cable TV service will be completely shutting down in 2024.

cordcuttersnews.com

One More Cable TV Company Announces They Will Shut Down TV Service in 2024 Because “It Just Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore” | Cord Cutters News

KPU, a small cable TV company in Alaska, recently announced that it will be shutting down its TV service in 2024. Ketchikan, Alaska, will no longer have cable TV service because the only other option in town shut down a few years ago. Ketchikan was the first town in Alaska with cable TV and in […]
cordcuttersnews.com cordcuttersnews.com
 
A few comments:

- KPU will still provide telephone and home/business internet services, so residents in Ketchikan, Alaska, where this CATV service was located, will likely not miss out on many of their preferred programming choices - they'll simply need to stream them rather than pull them in via a traditional cable box.

- Evidently, as has been discussed in other Radiodiscussions threads, one of the things that hurt KPU's CATV business the most were the carrier fees that were demanded by many networks and stations. Even the largest cable TV carriers complain about and fight against those. They can be crippling for smaller systems like KPU operated.
 
Looks like much the same thing is happening with Duo Broadband in Russellville, KY:

DUOTV - DUO Broadband

Dumb question, if they're the only game in town, doesn't that leave the whole town high and dry as to television that isn't either OTA or delivered by satellite dish? IOW, places such as Ketchikan and Russellville just don't have cable anymore?
 
It won't just be Ketchikan and Russell. The whole model of a linear video service delivered by cable is becoming obsolete very quickly. Spectrum/Charter has indicated it wants to wind down that part of its business and focus on being a broadband provider. Frontier has stopped offering video packages in its FiOS markets and is now just reselling one of the streaming services.

The demographics are terrible - nobody under 40 gets cable anymore - and the costs of maintaining an aging cable plant alongside broadband only keep going up.

I'm 51 and am a week away from giving Spectrum the heave-ho here, now that we have a proper fiber to the home solution here. It will be the first time since 1991 that I haven't paid a traditional cable company for service, and I don't expect I'll miss it.
 
fybush said:
It won't just be Ketchikan and Russell. The whole model of a linear video service delivered by cable is becoming obsolete very quickly. Spectrum/Charter has indicated it wants to wind down that part of its business and focus on being a broadband provider. Frontier has stopped offering video packages in its FiOS markets and is now just reselling one of the streaming services.

The demographics are terrible - nobody under 40 gets cable anymore - and the costs of maintaining an aging cable plant alongside broadband only keep going up.

I'm 51 and am a week away from giving Spectrum the heave-ho here, now that we have a proper fiber to the home solution here. It will be the first time since 1991 that I haven't paid a traditional cable company for service, and I don't expect I'll miss it.
Click to expand...

We cut Spectrum loose a few months ago and haven't missed it. We get an abundance of channels with all different sorts of programming OTA, and streaming on top of that.
 
Have to wonder if a company like Comcast will be one of the last one’s to discontinue cable service since they own so much of the content (channels) distributed via cable, unlike most other cable providers.
 
I have YouTube TV for TV. More channels better picture lower price. Unfortunately still have Spectrum for internet as right now it is the only broadband provider in my area.
 
I would imagine that 95% (or more) of these cable TV companies ending TV service are still offering high speed internet (and may be able to actually increase those speeds)
 
IM42A said:
Looks like much the same thing is happening with Duo Broadband in Russellville, KY:

DUOTV - DUO Broadband

Dumb question, if they're the only game in town, doesn't that leave the whole town high and dry as to television that isn't either OTA or delivered by satellite dish? IOW, places such as Ketchikan and Russellville just don't have cable anymore?
Click to expand...
I was staying at Lake Cumberland State Park in October and that's the cable provider there. That message ran on one of their 3 "bulletin board" channels.
TV Everywhere was ending 12/31/23 and linear cable will be ending 12/31/24. (At least people have a year to prepare)
At that time they will strictly be an ISP. So they say.

This area is approximately 100 miles from ANY major TV market (Louisville, Lexington, Nashville and Knoxville).
OTA would be impossible here.
Duo Broadband serves three counties: Cumberland (Nashville DMA??), Adair (Louisville DMA), and Russell (Lexington DMA). Dish or a streaming service that provides locals may be the only options. IMHO
 
As Scott said; between the cost of maintaining an aging technical infrastructure and rising programming fees, operating already unprofitable regional cable systems becomes unsustainable. I recall back twenty years ago the company I worked for asked me to do a technical and business analysis on whether to purchase several rural cable systems in California and the Midwest. Even without considering programming fee escalators over time, I discovered these businesses' profit margins were 5% or less as they stood. Then when you add amortized capex to upgrade facilities and replace all that coax with fiber, the margins all changed to negative numbers potentially over many years. The main reason I attributed to the lack of population density. Rural areas especially places like Alaska, could have dozens or hundreds of miles between homes/businesses/customers. The lower the population density, the more cable spanning is involved.
 
KD4YQR said:
I was staying at Lake Cumberland State Park in October and that's the cable provider there. That message ran on one of their 3 "bulletin board" channels.
TV Everywhere was ending 12/31/23 and linear cable will be ending 12/31/24. (At least people have a year to prepare)
At that time they will strictly be an ISP. So they say.

This area is approximately 100 miles from ANY major TV market (Louisville, Lexington, Nashville and Knoxville).
OTA would be impossible here.
Duo Broadband serves three counties: Cumberland (Nashville DMA??), Adair (Louisville DMA), and Russell (Lexington DMA). Dish or a streaming service that provides locals may be the only options. IMHO
Click to expand...

I'm guessing they could get at least the major networks, from the DMA to which they're assigned, via YouTube TV or a similar OTT service. Just skipping through these lineups on TVTV.com (which can be very inaccurate) it looks like some services omit this network or that
 
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