Although there are many industry voices saying that cable TV is dead or slowly dieing, the latest numbers on the issues show exactly the opposite.

The numbers are not going down. According to data from Bernstein Research, in the fourth quarter AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, Time Warner and DirecTV signed up 441,000 subscribers. The number of subscribers was up 50,000 compared to the same period last year.

Moreover, it seems that most of those voices actually are from the online video industry.
For a regular customer who watches TV a lot, online video can not replace the cable TV. There are a few customers who cancel their cable TV, but they do it to save money and because they have just a few shows they are watching and they discovered that the shows are available online as well.

Most people watch numerous programs and most of those are not available online. Even if you have just, let’s say, three favorite shows and they are available online, what about baseball and basketball games? And imagine trying to watch the HDNet channel online.

Another aspect of this issue is that the experience of watching TV content on a computer is really not the same.

In other news related to the subject, Comcast and Time Warner are reportedly planning to give paying cable subscribers access to cable programming online, at no added cost, the Wall Street Journal said in a report. The other companies that might get involved in the deal might be content holders Viacom and NBC Universal, which own many of the most popular cable networks such as TNT, USA and the MTV family.