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I recently talked to several clients who are expecting an increase in cable TV programming costs of between 8.5% and 9% for next year. They are able to forecast this because most of the contracts for programming cover at least three years of baked-in rate increases.

Every one of these clients is bleeding cable customers. We hear about how the big cable companies are experiencing impact from cord cutting. Last year the big companies altogether lost about 1.7 million customers, which is a little less than 2% of their customer base. But my small clients seem to be losing cable customers at a much faster pace. Cord cutting is obviously a real phenomenon and I’ve seen recent estimates that the big companies are expected to lose around 1.9 million customers this year. But while the big companies are losing customers at a steady pace, smaller cable operators are seeing a much bigger impact.

I think there are a number of reasons that small cable providers are suffering more.

• Most of my small clients don’t pay the same billing games as the big cable companies. The big companies have created a number of ‘fees’ such as a local programming fee or a sports fee to disguise the real cost of cable. Many customers think these fees are taxes of some sort and they believe that the base price of cable shown on their bill is the actual price they are paying. That lower number is the one that they use when comparing to other alternatives.
• The big companies are also far more aggressive with their bundling. They work hard to force customers into bundles and they penalize customers for leaving a bundle. Customers often don’t know what they pay for any specific product in a bundle and when they try to drop one product the full bundle savings are applied to that product. Even when small companies have bundles they don’t create a huge financial disincentive to leave the bundle.
• Big companies are willing to give ‘special’ pricing to keep customers. They tend to give special pricing discounts aimed at new customers to anybody else who is willing to wade through the customer service minefield to ask for it. I think since smaller companies often don’t advertise ‘special’ prices they are far less likely to even be asked to reduce rates.
• My smaller clients are generally more rural than the big companies, and as such they face far stiffer competition from the satellite companies. Both of the satellite providers now have a ‘skinny’ bundle that a lot of customers are finding attractive.

Why are the programmers raising rates so aggressively when it’s clear that the price of cable service is the number one driver of cord cutting? I have several ideas why they might be doing this:

• These are all publicly traded companies and to some degree they don’t have a choice. Over 90% of cable channels are bleeding customers much faster than the rate of cord cutting. This shows that many customers are cord shaving and downgrading to smaller, less expensive packages. The programmers are compelled to increase profits, and with declining sales they can only compensate by raising programming rates. That sounds insane because it sounds like the beginning of a classic death spiral. But you must remember that any large publicly traded company that performs poorly is subject to being purchased by somebody else who will then force profits back up again. Our dreadful quarterly profit driven economy is forcing the programmers into a path that is not in anybody’s best interest.
• They are all chasing hit shows. There are now a lot more companies like Netflix and Amazon creating unique programming, which adds to the pressure on the programmers. The financial rewards from producing even one hit show is gigantic, so they all keep spending money trying to find that next big hit, and raising rates to cover the cost of producing content.
• Another theory is that the current rate increases are their last hurrah. They can see where the industry is headed. I saw an interview with the head of programming for FOX and he said that he expects that the company is going to have to ultimately collapse most of its many channels as they keep losing customers. And so perhaps these rate increases are the chance for making big profits for a few more years before the wheels come off. It seems that end is coming anyway, so maybe raising rates now is a way to milk every last penny out of a fading industry.

Programming content is certainly never going to go away. But companies like Netflix and Amazon are showing that there are reasonable alternatives to the huge TV bundles. I just wish I knew what to tell my clients. The most common question I seem to be getting these days is, “Should I even be in the cable business any longer?” I’m starting to think that the answer for many of these businesses is no – or it will be no within a few short years.