Cable Rewards Cord Non-Cutters With a Bigger Bill

Even if cord-cutting is real, very few of you are actually going to do it. Your reward from the cable guys? A bigger bill in 2011.

That’s because the cable guys always raise their prices, year after year after year. It’s what they do. And the notion that some tech-savvy customers may be dropping their subscriptions in favor of some sort of Hulu/iTunes/Netflix broadband combo isn’t scaring them off.

The slightly less bad news is that it seems as if the price hike will be smaller than previous years’. But it will still be a hike. Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett shows you how much more you can expect to pay depending on which company sells you your TV shows.

There are some caveats here. Because Moffett’s sample size is relatively small for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, those numbers could end up moving around. And the Dish Network hike looks a little bit outsized because the company has promised it will freeze rates for the two following years.

But the main takeaway doesn’t change: None of this looks like an industry convinced its customers are really heading out the door, or are about to in the next few years.