
TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It - 001sky
http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11
======
shiftpgdn
Good riddance. I cut the cord about a year and a half ago and replaced my
cable box with a Roku box. There was a brief period where I missed the
background noise but now I find broadcast/cable television unbearably grating.
Frankly I think the cable companies brought it upon themselves with the
constant loud commercial interruptions, the garbage programming, and the
utterly miserable cable box interfaces.

~~~
interpol_p
I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been
using Apple TV for Netflix.

TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully
annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's
impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.

~~~
Brakenshire
> TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully
> annoying.

The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch
many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns
transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct
everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or
more insidiously 'your parents should buy you junk-food, because that's what
happy, normal families do'). I actually saw one today which discouraged you
from asking your friends for help, apparently it's better to pay the company
to do repairs than go through all the hassle of having to repay a favour.
These sort of campaigns beggar belief, either they are ineffective, or they
must surely do serious collateral damage to shared values.

~~~
ericd
Shoot, I hope my thumb hit the up arrow. Sorry if not.

But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.

------
chaz
TV still has plenty of life in it. Be careful of those graphs with a non-zero
y-axis minimum.

But there is a shift happening. The biggest question to me is whether brand
advertising dollars are/can/will shift with it. We need new ad products.
Especially ones that will reach younger audiences who avoid current ad
products. Maybe opportunities for Snapchat/Twitter.

Also, content production is going to see some challenges without large amounts
of ads to support it. I think there's still --on average -- a big gap in
budget, revenue, audience, and quality between successful online-only shows
better suited for YouTube and near-filler content on niche cable networks that
have managed to stay alive with advertising. Cost of content production is
still quite expensive. House of Cards had a $100 million budget to produce 13
episodes. Shows need a lot of audience to make the numbers work, and I'm
hoping we see some acceleration here.

~~~
cylinder
TV is in its heyday. Dramas are at the highest quality they've ever been.

The _protocol_ , cable (and satellite), is dying. Almost nobody in my age
range, or younger (late 20s), has cable. Everyone has Netflix along with some
other streaming services combined with iTunes purchases and such. If you want
to watch live sports, the NFL is free over the air, you'll just miss out on
the NBA (oh well).

Cable television has no reason to exist. Get rid of it and use the bandwidth
for streaming. I just bought a TV after not having one for half a year, and
briefly considered getting Time Warner. After seeing what they charge for the
basic service, along with $16/month for the "equipment rental," why would I
bother? Life is better without cable anyways, the garbage on there just
stresses me out and makes me hate our society! You do _not_ need CNN, my life
is so peaceful not knowing what their talking heads are spewing off about.

~~~
eropple
_> Almost nobody in my age range, or younger (late 20s), has cable._

Are you sure that's not just selection bias? I'm 25 and almost everybody I
know around my age does have cable. Some are sports fans (and you miss out on
much of MLB, the NBA, and the NHL by cutting cable--the streaming prices for
each are extortionate and there are cable-area blackouts for local games),
some just really can't be bothered to put up with the delays to get to Netflix
or other streaming solutions (for many there is a strong social component to
being able to see, and discuss, television programs simultaneously with your
peers).

------
bluthru
Making me turn on the TV at a specific time and date to watch something is
such alien notion to me at this point. All of these shows worry about
schedules and what's on other networks, but that's eventually not going to
matter at all.

~~~
purringmeow
And that's not all! Insane copyright prevents a lot of people from legally
watching popular series. I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to
watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series.

So what do I do when I don't get proper service? Piracy - it gives me on
demand HQ content.

I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. The next network
delivers cheap, on demand HD content worldwide will make a ton of money :)

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking
Dead" or any other series."

You can't buy the box set anywhere? You can download it from iTunes or another
legal service? I'm in Europe too (UK to be specific and can do both of those
things).

I'm guessing what you really mean is you can't watch it when you want to, you
have to wait a little while longer.

~~~
skrause
In Germany the major problem with on-demand and streaming services is that a
lot of content is only available in dubbed versions, of course you don't have
the problem with Hollywood content in the UK.

If you're like me and don't like dubbed content and have already phased out
physical media, there often really is no way of getting the content legally in
at least a semi-comfortable way.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "If you're like me and don't like dubbed content and have already phased
out physical media, there often really is no way of getting the content
legally in at least a semi-comfortable way."

I guess this is my point. If it's available on physical media that seems
convenient enough to make it morally wrong to pirate. There is a moral
argument for piracy when content isn't made available but when it is available
in several versions and someone still chooses to pirate it because it isn't
available in the version they prefer that seems indefensible to me.

------
ljd
I cut the Time Warner Cable cord in Q3 as well.

We have an Apple TV which plays Netflix, Hulu, PBS, Rented Movies, Music and
YouTube.

After 2-3 months of us never switching off of the Apple TV HDMI port, I told
the kids I was going to cancel cable which they could never find anything of
substance to watch anyway and they didn't even put up a fight.

None of us watch sports so there was virtually no reason to keep cable
anymore.

What I found slightly disturbing was how hard it is to setup an over-the-air
TV setup. It's going to cost about $200 in equipment and another $100 to setup
on my roof. It seems almost insane how expensive free TV has become to get.
It'll still pay off because we were paying over $100 for TWC; it's just
strange to see something that used to be so simple become so complex and I
didn't care about it because I thought I would just have cable the rest of my
life.

~~~
frankydp
Over the air has been exceedingly hit or miss for me also. Even after the
equipment the actual delivery seems very scattered. I know in my head that the
delivery of digital with correction should be better than analog, but the
experience simply is not.

I am not a electrical engineer, so can anyone shed light on why the range for
channels on digital is so much lower than it was with analog, also is weather
much more impeding for digital than analog?

~~~
dmfdmf
OTA can be tricky because its not as simple as just throwing up an antenna and
calling it a day, the system has to be engineered. Check out www.tvfool.com
for some great info on properly designing a system. Also, avsforum.com has
some great info.

~~~
frankydp
Thank you for these links.

------
InclinedPlane
This sort of thing just makes me more upset about youtube. Google has the
future of video in the palm of their hands but they don't understand and don't
care. Typical of a bloated empire.

I just hope that google doesn't destroy their golden goose merely because they
are too incompetent to understand its value or importance.

Edit: Unrelated, I was annoyed by the quality of the "net subscriber adds"
graph since it's obviously dominated by an annual signal, so I created a
smoothed version (the raw data should be accurate to within ~5-10 pixels give
or take): [http://i.imgur.com/ffBzR8g.png](http://i.imgur.com/ffBzR8g.png)

~~~
pan69
> Google has the future of video in the palm of their hands but they don't
> understand and don't care. Typical of a bloated empire.

A little more reasoning would be appreciated.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Maybe I'll actually write something more substantive on the subject, there's a
lot of depth to it. For now I'll just point out that many young creators in
video are falling into the youtube sphere of influence.

A lot of independent video producers have switched from using their own
proprietary video distribution systems to merely hosting their videos on
youtube. The monetization difficulties are made up by the ease of
distribution, network effect, and lower costs.

Also, there are a fair number of kickstarter projects where the end result is
the creation of videos on youtube (such as Tropes vs Women). Within the Film &
Video category on kickstarter many projects in all sub-categories will release
their content on youtube and the webseries sub-category is almost entirely
youtube projects. If youtube had better monetization models and improved
ability to host paid and unpaid content almost all of those projects would
host on youtube.

Consider the many musical acts that have risen to fame through exposure or
maturation through youtube. Walk off the Earth, Julia Nunes, Pentatonix, and
of course Justin Beiber being just a few examples among many.

Consider that Bon Jovi's song "Living on a Prayer" recently made its way back
to #25 on Billboard's charts (27 years after release) almost entirely due to
the popularity of a viral video on youtube of a fan at a Celtic's game dancing
enthusiastically to the song.

(Edit: also look at the importance of youtube in the most widely heard pop
music such as Psy's Gangnam Style, LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem, Lady Gaga's Bad
Romance, Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know, etc. It's clear that youtube is
as culturally relevant as MTV ever was, and that's just a tiny fraction of
youtube's influence on the world.)

Or consider the veritable ecosystem of new funding platforms springing up to
help creators using youtube to monetize and support their work (such as
subbable.com, tested.com). Google's idea along these lines is to introduce pay
walls, whereas almost every creator prefers to use more of a pledge drive /
premium level model.

Google has tackled the technical bits of web video quite well. They built a
system that handles video uploads at greater than 6,000x real-time (over 6,000
seconds of video are uploaded to youtube every second).

Youtube alone is responsible for nearly 1/5th of all internet traffic.

Stop and read that again, it's important. 1/5th of the usage of the entire
internet is being dedicated to the use of youtube. And that figure is growing
by double digit percentages year over year.

Unquestionably people are increasingly spending their video viewing hours
watching content on youtube. And creators are increasingly turning to youtube
as their distribution platform.

So yes, I'd say it's fair to say that there's a very strong case that youtube
is the future of video. And yet google still treats it as a hindrance, as a
second class citizen. As mentioned above creators are desperate for tools to
help them support and monetize their video making but they have to turn to 3rd
party services to do so. Google has the expertise and capability to offer
creators everything they need in a one stop shop. They also have the ability
to invest in and support video makers to plant a seed of content creators on
their site. And they did, but half-heartedly and without sufficient follow
through. It's going to take years until more than a handful of people can
support themselves through youtube and even longer before we can see the sort
of content that a "youtube generation" of artists is capable of creating. In
the meantime such creators have to contend with google making arbitrary
changes to youtube for their own petty reasons with little thought for the
true potential of what they control.

~~~
pan69
I'm not to sure what you're trying to say but to me it sounds like you're
implying that Google owes people who want to create video content a living.
That Google should supply tools and a monetisation model to people who want to
make a living of making videos. I don't think it works that way. Google does
what it thinks is best for them and if the current model is that, than so be
it.

You rightfully pointed out some successful acts that have gained notoriety
through YouTube, and good on them. They were the top content creators and were
awarded for their efforts. YouTube seems to work if the quality of your work
is good and outstanding. Personally I think the current model works well.
Should all the crap that's being produced be monetizable?

I don't understand the Internet traffic thing. YouTube serves video which
naturally takes up a lot more bandwidth than textual content, i.e. Twitter. I
understand that YouTube is popular but you can't really measure popularity in
bandwidth.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Owes? Hardly. But it's stupid for them not to. Someone who earns a living via
their videos is someone who is able to continue to do so, which draws in more
viewers and keeps the talent within youtube's purview. Also, the more tools
youtube provides for monetization and the more money flowing into creators
bank accounts the more money youtube can make by taking a percentage, instead
of having to rely solely on ad dollars.

The ad market is huge, but the entertainment market is much larger.

Content on youtube, whether it's "crap" or not, should be monetizable if it's
capable of being supported. Currently the basic tool that youtube provides for
that is a crappy ad system and a tiny cut of the ad revenues. They could, and
should, do so much more. They have the opportunity to make their viewers and
their creators not just users but customers. They have the opportunity to take
a bite out of the multi-trillion dollar worldwide entertainment budget. They
have the opportunity to have works of legitimate value (not just viral videos
and pop phenomena) find a home on youtube and for youtube to become to be
associated with works of quality instead of works of frivolity.

There's already lots of good stuff on youtube, but most of the best stuff is
made at a loss. Youtube is perhaps the foremost instructional video publisher
in history already, for example, but almost nobody publishing those videos is
making a decent RoI on their efforts through youtube.

Web video is a medium and youtube is the apotheosis of that medium. To
downplay that medium is as short-sighted as downplaying literature or film.
There will be "youtube shakespeares" in the 21st century. There will be web
videos that we find as powerful and meaningful as any other form of art (if
there aren't already). I can say this with certainty because it relies on the
simple fact that humans will always create art in any medium. If you give a
man a steel barrel he'll create a steel drum, if you give a man a plastic
barrel he'll create STOMP. It's really only a matter of time.

But by the same token, the fewer tools that google puts in the hands of
creators and the more difficult it is for creators to make a living off of
their creations the more potential will be wasted. Imagine how different the
world would be if Elvis or The Beatles couldn't have made a living off of his
voice and guitar.

~~~
pan69
It's funny that you bring this up. The only reason Elvis and The Beatles were
able to make money is because of the distribution format of music at the time.
This distribution format has drastically changed in the past 10 years.
Everyone nowadays pretty much streams (and copies) their music which means
that music isn't sold in "units" anymore. Hence why the all so mighty record
companies were, and are, in such an uproar.

I think it was Mick Jagger who said something like that the time we've lived
in was kinda special. There has been no time in the history of humanity where
musicians were able to make such amounts of money and those times are pretty
much gone. If you're an emerging artist, whether a musician, movie maker or
what ever, you're pretty much to par with the troubadours of the middle ages.

Going back to Google, I think Google pretty well understand the ad market more
than anyone else on the planet and if there's money to be made they will and
it seems that your view isn't aligned with theirs.

------
bd
The demise of TV in a single chart:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-
time-i...](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in-
front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html)

Younger the viewers, less TV they watch.

~~~
anigbrowl
I would be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from that. Younger
viewers are also more likely to have school work as kids or college students,
and as young adults they spend more time running around exploring the world,
seeking a mate, and so on. On the other hand, when they settle down viewing
patterns can change. Also, bear in mind that now many current shows are
competing with older shows available through services like Netflix; they make
less money up front, but the 'long tail' gets fatter for quality or cult
shows.

~~~
InclinedPlane
But you can see that the trend is downward in each younger demographic. Also
you'll notice that the figures from comparable cohorts stay pretty steady over
time. For example, the 2011 18-24 figures are similar to the 2013 25-34
figures, and the 2011 12-17 figures are similar to the 2013 18-24 figures. The
data from just that chart is not complete enough to follow a particular group
as it ages but still it looks like the chart supports the idea that younger
folks simply watch less TV and will continue to do so even as they get older.

~~~
anigbrowl
I see your point but don't fully agree. There's only 3 data points for each
cohort, and the change seems to be within the margin of error, at that. Have
you considered that the year-on-year decline might also be correlated with the
modest increase in economic growth over the last few years? This occurs to me
because I notice that the older two cohorts (which would have the highest
number of retirees) actually show a slight increase in viewership for this
year over 2012.

I do think TV is in long term decline, though as I explained in a nearby
comment I think that's more to do with the model of TV distribution than
production. The subheading on the graph actually acknowledges this (saying
that streaming video services are disrupting the traditional pay TV audience
model), but the headline is misguided - I'm not convinced people are spending
that much less time sitting in front of the TV than before.

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised the decline isn't steeper, although I'm
basing that partly on changes in my own viewing habits (n=1) as the selection
on Netflix improves - Iwatch about 6 hours of news and 4 hours of
entertainment on TV in a typical week, but since rescuing a dog has made it
hard to go to the movies, over the last few months we've been systematically
working our way through every episode of _Star Trek_ instead.

------
FrankBlack
I think most of the networks stream their shows for a short time on their web
sites. At this point I just wonder, why not just cut out the middle-man and
get on with it? I'll pay for subscriptions, but not for endless commercials
and 490 of 500 channels that I don't even watch. Not for TV shows that have
stupid animations in the corner every five minutes. Since the cable and
satellite companies refuse to give us the choice we want, we simply choose to
opt-out. Once communities start installing their own low-cost fiber and free
wi-fi en-mass without the litigation, the last hope of Time Warner and such
fossils will be gone. TV isn't dying, it is dead and just too stupid to
realize it.

~~~
hkmurakami
It's probably because "we" (the purveyors of such consumption behavior) are
still not the majority yet.

With time though... with time...

------
dpcan
"The old way of watching TV" is dying, and TV itself is just aging, and
finding its place among Internet options it seems. It's now just another
option among many, but I don't see that as meaning it will "die".

I subscribe to Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Cable TV.

This way of getting entertainment is actually frustratingly expensive.

And to make things even dumber, sometime NONE of these services have what I
want without an additional convenience fee. So my wife and I will stop at a
Red Box and get a movie for about $1/2, LOL. It's crazy.

When 3 or 4 more $10 per month options pop-up, and everyone is watching some
great show exclusive to that service, then what? Things get WAY worse.

Someone needs to start a company where I pay $80-$100 per month, and I get
EVERY one of these services streamed through 1 site to every room in my house
:) Someone get started, make the deals, get this going, OK. Good luck.

~~~
eikenberry
> This way of getting entertainment is actually frustratingly expensive.

That's because you still have cable. Dump it and you'll get down to a
reasonable cost.

Hulu + Netflix + Prime is around $23/month.

~~~
__david__
Sadly that's still not enough to completely replace cable (the HBO series
don't show up there). And even with Netflix and a cable TV subscription, I
still find myself torrenting certain things. Sadly, torrenting is just so much
easier than most of the legit ways to get shows.

------
mickdarling
The total number of hours watching video is still increasing through. You also
have to consider that the cost of production is dropping, and the number of
big players in the TV market is still tiny. The huge players are (Disney/ABC,
NBCU/Comcast, Time Warner, Fox/Newscorp, CBS/Viacom) and they own an enormous
percentage of TV Networks and TV production, both domestically and
internationally.

So individual shows rating may be dropping and rating for networks may be
going down, but they are spreading their revenues across a lot of the more
niche properties. They also make a huge amount from Cable licenses for the
whole package of networks to ensure they have as many channels available to
viewers as possible.

They are now learning to monetize their properties across digital media, and
you will see that growth into online media and consolidation there soon.

I work with major media groups helping them with social media and the growing
time-shifted audience, so I've heard a lot of the plans for the future. They
see the writing on the wall, and while broadcast and cable might be shrinking,
the content creation and advertising around video entertainment will keep
growing, of that I am certain.

------
brownbat
"TV is Dying" isn't the crazy part of this article.

It claims people are chucking broadband subscriptions and using tablets and
mobile internet, or more often, just free wifi from Starbucks (or neighbors?).

Fascinating. If everyone dropped broadband, TV, and phone lines into the home,
what's that world look like?

~~~
chc
I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy.

They promise a graph showing in hard numbers that broadband subscriptions are
down, but never actually provide one. They just provide a graph showing, as
best I can tell, that total customers for cable companies are going down. In
fact, they confusingly state that customers are moving from cable with
broadband to "telco companies like AT&T and Verizon who offer TV as a package
with high-speed internet access."

From the description, this apparently isn't referring to mobile Internet, but
AT&T U-verse and the like. So high-speed Internet from AT&T doesn't count as
broadband on the grounds that they're a telco.

My best guess is that when this whole article is founded on the strange
understanding that TV through a cable provider is the only real TV while
getting the same content through satellite or what-have-you is "mobile," and
cable Internet is "broadband" while anything from a "telco" like AT&T is a
totally different thing. A rise of alternative providers is an interesting
story, but it's a pretty different story from the one they're trying to tell
here where everybody is just taking their iPads to Starbucks and watching cat
videos.

~~~
schnable
Yeah the article is pretty selective in statistics. Time Warner may have lost
broadband subscribers, but other cable cos have seen increases in broadband
subscribes while television subs decrease. And broadband is MUCH more
profitable for cable cos than television because there is no content cost to
pay.

On that note, he, and commenters, and saying cable is "killing itself" by
raising rates. Subscription rates are actually rising more slowly than the
content costs cable cos pay. The content creators are driving this process.

------
jstalin
I cut the cable TV cord three years ago, when it was costing me over $100 a
month. I don't miss it one bit. In fact, when I go over to a friend's house
and watch some TV I feel like it's just grating noise.

I have broadband Internet at $35 a month (about 20mbps), Hulu Plus, Amazon
Prime, and Netflix, and I have more than I need. I spend a lot less time
wasting time flipping channels and watching commercials. I total about 3-4
hours a week of watching anything on TV.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
So are all the shows you watch on Netflix purely ones created by Netflix and
not ones that came from one of those ... those TV channels?

~~~
jstalin
I don't know... and I don't care.

~~~
eropple
It is in your best interest to care, because otherwise these commons get
mighty tragic. You are getting content without paying a representative cost of
that content. Which is good for you! For now. But be prepared for that to
change, and probably sooner than you'd like.

~~~
randomdata
I've found content on Youtube by independent productions to be far better than
what is on Netflix, so perhaps it is not that tragic. My tastes are probably
not representative, but those types of productions are bound to improve as
mainstream production quality declines, kind of like we've seen with music.

~~~
eropple
The begged question that mainstream music quality has declined is one of the
more curious things I have read in quite some time, to say nothing of the
implication that the same will happen with, say, dramatic content.

You may not like, say, Miley Cyrus (I don't), but artists and groups like Daft
Punk and Radiohead are quite mainstream, quite successful, and quite good as
well. The broadening of what is "mainstream" has added a lot of choice for
pretty much everyone and a lot of it is quite good.

------
johnorourke
Who needs stats... my teenage kids pretty much ignore 200 satellite channels
and instead watch youtube, read forums and IM their friends.

When they were growing up I allowed them to be bombarded with information - TV
on, web access, phones from an early age - and they've developed the ability
to filter it quite well and just ignore things that don't interest them.

The only down side is:

"awww dad I didn't get anything done today" "why, son?" "some Internet
happened"

~~~
shubhamjain
I don't think TV will ever die because when your kids will be bored with
forums, or have nothing on their watch list they will switch on their TV. When
TV came, people thought it was an end to the film industry but nothing like
that happened. Though, statistically speaking the future seems obscure for
television and usage is declining but I am sure something for it will come up
that may revive it.

~~~
slackpad
My 8 year old has only experienced real-time broadcast television when staying
at a hotel, where he was frustrated and perplexed that we couldn't rewind it
(he has no clue where the concept of rewinding really comes from). He has
always experienced media he can control on YouTube or Netflix. I can't imagine
he'd ever subscribe to something like cable in the future. Maybe if TV could
associate itself with Minecraft somehow they could reach this cohort, but I
suspect it's a lost cause.

~~~
marquis
I went to see the last Batman franchise film last year, which I found horribly
boring. I actually had a moment where my hands reached out in the dark for the
fast-forward button, which took me by surprise as to how used I am to having
those controls now. I'm well into my 30s so I can only imagine how reactive it
is for young kids to not have this ability.

~~~
peferron
That's the exact reason why I love the movie theater: no one has any control
at all outside of walking out, so everyone pushes their ADHD to the side and
commits to the movie for two hours. Once the movie is over, you might still
think it was shitty and a waste of time, but at least you gave it a fair shot.

Try watching a slow movie like Gattaca at home, with a dozen devices and apps
competing to take your attention away, and see how many people drift off and
watch it from the corner of an eye or don't even finish it at all. Does the
movie deserve that? Maybe; if only short-form content or frenetic Avengers-
like action can hold people's attention from start to finish, then that's how
it is. But I, for one, appreciate immensely when people commit fully to
something, the way it was intended to, for better or for worse.

And that's why I love the movie theater.

~~~
marquis
I completely agree. For just a short time in your life, you can let go and
trust the author with your mind. Having said that, when it comes to Batman 3
my mind was very annoyed (and would have left if it weren't for friends).

------
clarebear
When we stayed in a hotel and my preschool kids were subjected to cable, they
were confused and angry. Why couldn't they choose the program they wanted? And
on e they found a program that was acceptable, why did it keep stopping? They
actually thought we were punishing them with commercials and could not figure
out what they were doing wrong. Interesting to see it through their eyes.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
These were preschool kids right? Confused and angry ... Is that uncommon for
preschool aged kids? What other kinds of things can we learn about the world
based on these data points ... ? I feel like there is a Malcolm Gladwell book
here ...

------
cybp
Good at lying with statistics. The plots don't say what the text does. Non-
zero y axis makes tiny effects look big. Worst culprit are the age plots,
which show retirees watching more tv than young'uns. It doesn't change over
time, but text claims youngsters do not do tv.

------
hkmurakami
TV may die, but content will not.

TV shows may die, but our need for storytelling will survive.

~~~
pan69
I don't think the article is disputing that. It's about the medium on which
those stories are told that is changing.

~~~
thisiswrong
Yet its is important to bring this up. The MAFIAA/government will always
manipulate this argument to give the illusion that content and culture is
dying. Thus the MAFIAA gets to keep its propaganda monopoly and the government
its censorship.

------
jredwards
The day Netflix signs a deal to stream NFL games is the day TV finally dies.

------
brent_noorda
Me: Cancel my TV service. I'm going to watch TV over the internet.

Comcast: OK... Done. We'll miss you as a Comcast customer. Will there be
anything else?

Me: Yes. Please sign me up for internet service. I'm going to watch TV over
the internet.

Comcast: OK... Done. We'd like to welcome you as a Comcast customer.

------
hrkristian
This is clearly because of pirates and VHS!

Sorry, and on a more serious note, I should hope this doesn't come as a
surprise to anyone. Moving out a few years ago I ordered a 25/25 fiber line
and completely dropped any form of cable/satellite package.

Norway, similar to the UK and probably many other countries, has a "TV
Licence" which I still gladly pay, even though by law I am not required to do
so as I don't technically have any TV channels in my house. NRK (Norwegian
"BBC") provides a fantastic internet service on par with BBC's player, that
does _not_ require me to handle the archaic technology that is decoders and
their 1990's era hardware running millennium software.

------
donquichotte
Of course it is dying, and I'm glad it is. TV is one of the most obnoxious
formats of distributing information, shoving adds in your face without giving
you a chance to turn them off or skip them and forcing its schedule onto your
limited time.

------
ctdonath
_" Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be,"_

One word: Kodak.

(They had no idea customers would turn to digital photography so fast and so
completely. World-dominating brand now defunct.)

------
peter303
I'd say the opposite is happening, depending whether you use the definition of
"old tv" or "new tv". Old TV is passive video broadcast from a central source.
New TV is screen video of any size from watch to theater wall. People are
spending more time than ever glued to their new screens of any type - old tv,
movie theater, game boxes, smartphones, tablets, and newest wearable screens.
It is said children are spending less time than ever in history playing
outdoors or in sports.

~~~
massysett
Exactly. I don't get folks who say they don't watch TV, but then they prattle
on about all the stuff they watch on their iPads and Netflix.

------
kephra
Some points from Europe:

Germany is now forcing to pay every household for state TV propaganda, even
those who do not own or watch TV.

Greek instead closed state TV stations, because they can not afford them.

------
hnriot
The cable and phone companies need to realize that they are ip providers only
in the future. Either get with that picture or die. TV is moving to internet
distribution (has moved for many) and mobile phones are computers with a voice
modem that's not really needed. Just compare the audio quality of facetime
audio to a phone call to appreciate the difference.

Mind you, what do i know, I gave up TV in 1991 - there's just for more to do
on the internet.

------
somberi
The Sandra-Bullock movie "Gravity" cost as much to produce as the Mars mission
recently launched by India (~ 100Million USD).

Gravity made 500Million USD.

Something does not sit right.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Shh ... We are supposed to believe no one goes to the theatre any more because
that's the lamestream media or something ... Right, that's the correct echo
chamber view?

------
DigitalSea
This is why it baffles me, day in and day out without fail everyone speculates
Apple are going to revolutionise TV with Apple TV. Television is a dying
medium, I download and consume all of my media on my phone and computer. The
only time I ever use my TV is when I want to watch downloaded content on a
larger screen and copy it to a USB drive to watch on my TV. Good riddance.

------
VLM
Another interesting aspect of the discussion, not discussed much, is what will
the new purpose be for TV?

What I'm getting at is people used to go to movies to see a movie. But thats
technologically obsolete and frankly with all the previews and ads and hyper
expensive junk food its too offensive to experience. However, movie theaters
currently exist, and will exist in the future, solely for younger teens dating
/ makeout sessions, a social party atmosphere, that kind of stuff. And thats
apparently a lower level yet stable and mostly constant line of business.

So what will the TV analogy be after most people no longer watch TV? My guess
is sport fanatics (despite the stats showing dramatic declines in watching pro
sports). Also I think mindless shovelware while people eat. Propaganda such as
religious shows or news reporting? Imagine a world with only three cable
channels remain, EWTN, ESPN, and Foxnews.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> "What I'm getting at is people used to go to movies to see a movie. But
> thats technologically obsolete and frankly with all the previews and ads and
> hyper expensive junk food its too offensive to experience"

.... in the U.S.

------
mrweasel
Everyone seems focused on TV shows. I'm not really concerned about TV shows,
it's the news I'm interested in.

Granted, the news in TV, radio and most newspapers aren't any good as it
stands now, but if we keep moving from TV to on-demand services like Netflix,
funding serious news broadcasting will become an issue.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in many European countries, like the
UK, Germany and Denmark, the public are required to pay for public
broadcasting). This in part is suppose to pay for news and journalists... In
reality it pays for crappy talentshows.

Still what's the model for serious news broadcasting going to be in the
future? The models that seems to "work" is having a rich sheikh pay (Al
Jazeera) or government funded (RT.TV / Press TV / France 24). This doesn't
give you the best of news, but then again neither does ad funded news live
CNN.

~~~
aestra
TV news grates on me.

Here's a good reason:

[http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-
human-...](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort-
one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars)

------
jhallenworld
Heh, we got rid of cable years ago (in favor of Netflix, Amazon, and more and
more Hulu+) and when we do see cable, the only channel we seem to watch is
International House Hunters on HGTV. It's certainly not worth $60 / month.

------
11thEarlOfMar
I am not too worried about the cable companies. They've made the shift from
television to Internet and phone just fine.

Television, however, is going through the same metamorphosis that music,
retail sales and newspapers are enduring.

I'm not worried about the music industry. They've made the shift from vinyl to
cassette to CD to digital, and may owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jobs.

However, newspapers and brick & mortar retail have been decimated.

So the question is, will TV go the way of music? Or newspapers?

------
belorn
In Sweden, the Swedish national public TV has simply defined that any
computer, be that one without a graphic card or software, is an TV.

So the stats are going up up and up!

------
ChrisNorstrom
I wonder if switching from Analog signals to Digital has contributed to
this...

Not only do you have to buy the receiver box, which craps out and has a
separate remote and interface, but Digital TV has really really terrible
reception. I live in a large metro area and even we have tons of problems with
reception, I can't image what it's like for people who live out further.

~~~
probably_wrong
I'd love to see a correlation between this data and the advent of reality TV.
I wouldn't even be surprised if part of this decline is due to the incredibly
amount of garbage, Kardashian sisters and Honey Boo Boos on air.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Hm, you may be onto something. It might just be the overall negative tone that
TV brings into the home. Negative news, scare techniques, negative culture,
negative morals. If people feel like TV is making them unhappy or destroying
their family values they're obviously going to leave TV. Same thing goes for
the internet.

------
6thSigma
With the NBA and NFL starting to allow online streaming of their games, I am
seeing less and less reasons to keep my cable. Netflix, Hulu, NBA League Pass,
and NFL Sunday Ticket would cover 90% of my cable consumption. The other 10%,
HBO, is rumored to be considering a standalone subscription service.

------
duskwuff
The bit at the end about people "cutting the cord" on broadband and going to
free wifi rings... not just false, really, but simply ridiculous. To a
reasonable approximation, nobody is relying on Starbucks (or whatever) for
their Internet access - that's simply not a substitute.

------
frankydp
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/140433670/TV-Consumer-Freedom-
Act](http://www.scribd.com/doc/140433670/TV-Consumer-Freedom-Act)

This is a crazy law to even propose, but the idea behind it should be
considered by the cable industry hard and fast.

------
leoplct
Do you think that, if there is a tool that scans all channels through looking
for something good to watch, things could be better?

~~~
normloman
We already have that. It's called TiVo Suggestions.

People aren't cord cutting because they can't find anything good on. People
are cord cutting because their cable bill is too high.

------
Edmond
Been without cable since 2004..haven't missed it a day...on the other the
productivity boost is priceless.

------
joars
I trust these stats because i dont immediately see conclusive proof of the
simplistic headline.

------
andyl
TV is unbearable after abstaining for a few years. The non-stop Viagra ads!
Who would let this trash into their house?

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Because of ads? Isn't that only thing that makes these weekend projects that
are basically yet another photo sharing app worth billions of dollars??

~~~
frankydp
Except most of the users of those weekend projects do not pay $100 dollars a
month to access the site, and then still have ads everywhere.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I think the idea there is people would rather see ads than pay the mi h larger
sum that would be required to fund those shows without ads ... Funny thing,
economics.

------
goggles99
I used to watch a fair amount of TV, now I have three young kids and watch
less than an hour per month. I wonder what I actually got out of those 30+
hours a week of watching television. What a waste of life. how many people on
their death bed say... I wish I had watched more television. Some people are
going to spend 1/4 of their life watching television. Seriously? think of what
you could have done with that time.

Online gaming is becoming as much of a time drain. It at least does not have
as much of a social, political and interpersonal agenda as television (though
it does warp you mind in other ways) but still, what a waste of precious life.

What would the world look like if television was gone tomorrow. No more
marketers and hidden agenda writers and directors programming your mind
subtlety.

What happened to board games? getting together with family and friends to
socialize? I would like to see numbers on what television, media, and gaming
has replaced (as far as time spent). Eventually, humans won't even act like
traditional humans. All social skills and collaboration, perhaps even empathy
one day will be far diminished or lost. Our very humanity.

See how much your demographic watches (or is influenced/brainwashed by):
[http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-
time-i...](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in-
front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html)

------
rfnslyr
Never grew up with a TV, won't ever know what it's like.

------
a8da6b0c91d
Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!

------
VLM
One truism of humanity is if you free a person, they try to enslave themselves
as hard as they can. Sounds dumb, but its a wise observation of an older guy.
Applied thru all aspects of life.

Anyway the relevance to this discussion is as TV dies out, what will be the
analogy of the Janet Jackson superbowel half time show? Who will legions of
mindless drones mail (email?) complaints to, regarding reddits gonewild
showing about 3 square inches more of flesh than you'd see at a beach or the
mall? Who will the super-conformists conform to if their holy altar of
worship, the TV, goes away?

I guess what I'm saying is a darling of the censored neutered content biz is
dying, but that doesn't mean weirdos (or prudes or whatever you want to call
them) are going away any time soon.

So aside from this interesting and overlooked observation, whats the likely
result of the final death of government censorship? Or will it be the final
death...

~~~
GhotiFish
It will be interesting to watch, for sure. Informing weirdos and prudes that
their opinions are irrelevant and they don't matter is one of 4chans
specialities. So I'm definitely looking forward to it 20 years down the road.

The tide seems to be that, all things considered, the internet will have free
speech. Actual, real free speech.

~~~
VLM
"Informing weirdos and prudes that their opinions are irrelevant and they
don't matter is one of 4chans specialities."

Its hard to imagine politicians not pandering to the prude weirdos or
neopuritans or whatever they call themselves and instead embracing 4chan or
reddit (or HN?) culture, but maybe its inevitable?

