http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/cord-c

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/c...07378.html

It's official: cord cutting has gone mainstream.

No longer strictly reserved for early adopters and the extremely tech savvy, more and more average Americans are now ditching their cable and satellite TV subscriptions — "cutting" the cord, both figuratively and literally — in favor of new, low-cost streaming and video-on-demand alternatives.

In fact, according to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, the shift away from pay TV services is actually accelerating, with both publicly traded and private cable, satellite and phone companies reporting a net loss of as many as 400,000 total video subscribers in the second quarter of 2012. That's up from 340,000 net defections in Q2 2011. Overall, the number of U.S. households subscribing to pay TV services declined by 1.5% or 1.5 million in 2011, according to Nielsen.

And remember, the pay TV industry had never in its history posted a quarterly subscriber decline until 2010.

So what's going on? Options, that's what. For the first time, viewers now have choices when it comes to their in-home video entertainment, and not all of them are tied to the traditional pay TV model (a fact that many broadcasters aren't exactly thrilled about). Internet-based streaming services, on-demand downloads, over-the-air HD , the list of new cable alternatives could go on and on, but the selling points for viewers are simple: greater variety in programming and, assuming they cut out their cable bill by taking advantage, savings that can total as much as $200 per month