16 ms·

TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

184 points by 001sky 13y ago

InclinedPlane 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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.
shiftpgdn 13y ago
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.
- paul9290 13y ago
  I have my Mac mini connected to my TV. With this set up I can watch marathons of whatever TV show I want on various legal streaming sites. Thus providing same background noise you speak of.
  - jcromartie 13y ago
    I've found that some sites (at least Amazon) don't allow HD streaming on PCs, while they do allow it on dedicated devices (Apple TV or PS3, for instance). I was all ready to ditch the Apple TV and use a full-fledged PC and then that happened.
- ajtaylor 13y ago
  I've recently purchased a Roku as well so I can use Netflix. So that combined with Plex + downloaded content means I hardly ever watch broadcast TV any more.
- jseliger 13y ago
  Good riddance The downside is that cable subscribers subsidize the handful of TV shows I actually want to watch. Individually, every person who quits makes a rational decision, but when everyone quits we don't get a lot of good shows. Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away.
  - selmnoo 13y ago
    > Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away. It already is. Netflix is funding a lot of new stuff (House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, lots of standup stuff). Note that this stuff is being received very well by normal consumers and critics alike. They're also funding canceled shows like Arrested Development, Lillyhammer, etc.
johnorourke 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
      - 13y ago
bluthru 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 :)
  - chipotle_coyote 13y ago
    A lot of it isn't exactly copyright, it's contractual obligation, I suspect. In America, the "old guard" networks are still tied to local affiliate stations, which are increasingly anchors rather than efficient distribution points. International distribution has always been a maze of weird contractual obligations, but just like the American local affiliate problem, it's a case of "it made sense at the time." The problem now is that there are still people making money from the way things are and they're going to fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo. > I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. 2016. That sounds glib, but that's my real prediction: my suspicion is that a lot of contracts are going to be coming up for renewal over the next 3-5 years and either they're not going to be renewed or they're going to take vastly different forms. The big problem is figuring out what "cheap" actually means, of course. Internet users sometimes seem to have kind of unrealistic expectations about pricing.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      Good luck getting a contract that bars the other person from showing your content when you don't have the copyright. It's true there's nothing about "copyright", the legal concept, that implies that there should be no legal way to watch The Walking Dead in Europe... but it's also true that setting up that sort of circumstance is the point of copyright law. Copyright law is what enables the contract clauses you're talking about.
hkmurakami 13y ago
TV may die, but content will not. TV shows may die, but our need for storytelling will survive.
- pan69 13y ago
  I don't think the article is disputing that. It's about the medium on which those stories are told that is changing.
  - thisiswrong 13y ago
    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.
obi-nine 13y ago
I was called and agreed to be part of poll commissioned by some segment of the media industry a few weeks ago. The caller was speechless that I had no "TV" and listened to no radio stations. Of course our two-person professional household has high-speed internet and a total of 8 "screens" including laptops, workstations, phones, tablets and a 50" screen for our media center.
a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!
bd 13y ago
The demise of TV in a single chart: http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in-front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-i... Younger the viewers, less TV they watch.
- andyl 13y ago
  Wow - these graphs show 20-46 hours of viewing per week. Per week. I had no idea.
  - VLM 13y ago
    The data is bogus. A full time job with modest overtime... watching TV? There is not physically enough time in the week.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      20 hours over the weekend plus 4 hours a day at night. It's possible.
    - tsotha 13y ago
      Not everyone has a full time job. The labor force participation rate is only about 63% in the US. Also, I think a lot of people need television as background noise. They don't necessarily watch it, but it's on while they do chores and what not.
  - vitd 13y ago
    Same here! I don't even have kids and I can barely fit in 8-10 hours per week. For my demographic, they're claiming 30+ hours per week. Next time my friends with kids complain about "not enough time in the day," I think I'm going to smack them!
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  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.
FrankBlack 13y ago
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 13y ago
  It's probably because "we" (the purveyors of such consumption behavior) are still not the majority yet. With time though... with time...
rfnslyr 13y ago
Never grew up with a TV, won't ever know what it's like.
chaz 13y ago
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 $100 million budget to produce 13 episodes. Shows need a lot of audience to make the numbers work, and I'm hoping we see some acceleration here.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  Question is, at what point does traditional TV channels become so unpopular that they're simply not worth operating anymore? Perhaps the better question is, when does traditional TV become so unpopular those satellites taking up geosynchronous orbit space get dumped into the oceans?
  - spiritplumber 13y ago
    Roughly never -- the satellites would just be repurposed. Sending mass to geostationary is EXPENSIVE. Like, 100k$/kilogram.
    - gibybo 13y ago
      I've been wondering what Direct TV will do with its satellites in 10-20 years when it doesn't make sense to use them for TV anymore. I haven't been able to imagine any significant uses, have you? There's weather services (for ships and aircraft outside of ground station range), radio (but this is really niche), high latency internet (for, say, cruise ships), maybe some other small niche services. But what's going to replace the $30 billion in revenue they get from TV subscriptions today? Who is going to buy their multi-billion dollar satellite fleet?
hrkristian 13y ago
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.
dpcan 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  > 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__ 13y ago
    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 13y ago
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.
jstalin 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
  - Vivtek 13y ago
    By means of ... negotiated content contracts?
  - jstalin 13y ago
    I don't know... and I don't care.
    - eropple 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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.
donquichotte 13y ago
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.
ljd 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      Thank you for these links.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Lots of VHF broadcasters switching to UHF as part of the transition? Not all have done so, but "many" have. All things being equal, an ancient coax cable with X milliliters of water contamination or Y amount of corrosion will have more loss at UHF than VHF. Pretty much everything is more critical at UHF. Even antenna aiming. The other way its a problem, which is actually pretty funny, is marketing of "HDTV" antennas where HDTV means UHF only, which works great if all your local broadcasters moved to UHF with the transition; As you can imagine a UHF antenna doesn't work so well if you live in an area with one of the few remaining VHF-Lo band transmitters which you "need". To say this is a local issue would be an understatement. I'm sure you'd get a better answer from a neighbor than HN.
andyl 13y ago
TV is unbearable after abstaining for a few years. The non-stop Viagra ads! Who would let this trash into their house?
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    It seems like he was also objecting to the character of the ads... I left the U.S. in the '90s. However I do occasionally see some American TV on trips, and it seems different than what I remember, full of creepy bizarre ads for drugs and the like. TV ads in the old days obviously weren't great art, and were often annoying, but there seems something palpably ... wrong with the state of things now. "Creepy" seems the best description.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! Sadly, most recent commercials lack even the charm of that. I have an OTA antenna just for occasional live sports, but TV is just abject now. One time I found like three celebrity gossip shows on at the same time, on broadcast networks! The networks used to be more dignified than that. So just to protect my will to live, I always change my tuner to the Mexican station before I turn the TV off. Not that Mexican TV is any better, but my intelligence is that much less insulted when I don't understand what they're saying, and it is ever so slightly more surreal to watch than the Chinese stations and occasionally has soccer highlights.
peter303 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
frankydp 13y ago
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.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
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.
- dublinben 13y ago
  A tiny minority of TV viewers were relying on broadcast both before and after the transition to digital. Those that were, also aren't the same demographic that are not "cutting the cord."
- acdha 13y ago
  I've gotten the impression that the reverse has been happening: broadcast digital TV removed quality and reduced number of channels as a reason for sticking with cable. I know a number of people here (Washington DC) who've talked about dropping cable TV because they really only used it for live things (e.g. the Olympics, disasters, etc.) and a $20 antenna works well enough for that to make paying an additional $50+ per month completely unappealing.
- probably_wrong 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
brownbat 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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.
  - brownbat 13y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy. Ha, yeah, fair point and reasonable analysis. The dozen misleading graphs that don't quite support his point are looking more suspicious by the minute. I kind of want to call Jim Edwards and tell him this is an interesting direction for a story, but he should probably chuck this rough draft and start from scratch before someone accidentally puts this on BI's site.
  - schnable 13y ago
    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.
jhallenworld 13y ago
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.
VLM 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    "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?
VLM 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > "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.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  Yes, no one goes to a movie theatre to see a movie any more. You definitely know what the world is like. Good job not being simplistic and simply assuming the world fits in whatever bias you have ... :)
11thEarlOfMar 13y ago
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?
Edmond 13y ago
Been without cable since 2004..haven't missed it a day...on the other the productivity boost is priceless.
hnriot 13y ago
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.
joars 13y ago
I trust these stats because i dont immediately see conclusive proof of the simplistic headline.
kephra 13y ago
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.
6thSigma 13y ago
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.
DigitalSea 13y ago
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.
jredwards 13y ago
The day Netflix signs a deal to stream NFL games is the day TV finally dies.
cybp 13y ago
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.
clarebear 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 ...
duskwuff 13y ago
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.
somberi 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
goggles99 13y ago
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-in-front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-i...
brent_noorda 13y ago
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.
belorn 13y ago
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!
mrweasel 13y ago
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 13y ago
  TV news grates on me. Here's a good reason: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort-one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-...
leoplct 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
ctdonath 13y ago
"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.)

184 points by 001sky 13y ago

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 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.

shiftpgdn 13y ago

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.

paul9290 13y ago
I have my Mac mini connected to my TV. With this set up I can watch marathons of whatever TV show I want on various legal streaming sites. Thus providing same background noise you speak of.
- jcromartie 13y ago
  I've found that some sites (at least Amazon) don't allow HD streaming on PCs, while they do allow it on dedicated devices (Apple TV or PS3, for instance). I was all ready to ditch the Apple TV and use a full-fledged PC and then that happened.
ajtaylor 13y ago
I've recently purchased a Roku as well so I can use Netflix. So that combined with Plex + downloaded content means I hardly ever watch broadcast TV any more.
jseliger 13y ago
Good riddance The downside is that cable subscribers subsidize the handful of TV shows I actually want to watch. Individually, every person who quits makes a rational decision, but when everyone quits we don't get a lot of good shows. Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  > Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away. It already is. Netflix is funding a lot of new stuff (House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, lots of standup stuff). Note that this stuff is being received very well by normal consumers and critics alike. They're also funding canceled shows like Arrested Development, Lillyhammer, etc.

johnorourke 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
    - 13y ago

bluthru 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 :)
- chipotle_coyote 13y ago
  A lot of it isn't exactly copyright, it's contractual obligation, I suspect. In America, the "old guard" networks are still tied to local affiliate stations, which are increasingly anchors rather than efficient distribution points. International distribution has always been a maze of weird contractual obligations, but just like the American local affiliate problem, it's a case of "it made sense at the time." The problem now is that there are still people making money from the way things are and they're going to fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo. > I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. 2016. That sounds glib, but that's my real prediction: my suspicion is that a lot of contracts are going to be coming up for renewal over the next 3-5 years and either they're not going to be renewed or they're going to take vastly different forms. The big problem is figuring out what "cheap" actually means, of course. Internet users sometimes seem to have kind of unrealistic expectations about pricing.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Good luck getting a contract that bars the other person from showing your content when you don't have the copyright. It's true there's nothing about "copyright", the legal concept, that implies that there should be no legal way to watch The Walking Dead in Europe... but it's also true that setting up that sort of circumstance is the point of copyright law. Copyright law is what enables the contract clauses you're talking about.

hkmurakami 13y ago

TV may die, but content will not. TV shows may die, but our need for storytelling will survive.

pan69 13y ago
I don't think the article is disputing that. It's about the medium on which those stories are told that is changing.
- thisiswrong 13y ago
  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.

obi-nine 13y ago

I was called and agreed to be part of poll commissioned by some segment of the media industry a few weeks ago. The caller was speechless that I had no "TV" and listened to no radio stations. Of course our two-person professional household has high-speed internet and a total of 8 "screens" including laptops, workstations, phones, tablets and a 50" screen for our media center.

a8da6b0c91d 13y ago

Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!

bd 13y ago

The demise of TV in a single chart: http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in-front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-i... Younger the viewers, less TV they watch.

andyl 13y ago
Wow - these graphs show 20-46 hours of viewing per week. Per week. I had no idea.
- VLM 13y ago
  The data is bogus. A full time job with modest overtime... watching TV? There is not physically enough time in the week.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    20 hours over the weekend plus 4 hours a day at night. It's possible.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    Not everyone has a full time job. The labor force participation rate is only about 63% in the US. Also, I think a lot of people need television as background noise. They don't necessarily watch it, but it's on while they do chores and what not.
- vitd 13y ago
  Same here! I don't even have kids and I can barely fit in 8-10 hours per week. For my demographic, they're claiming 30+ hours per week. Next time my friends with kids complain about "not enough time in the day," I think I'm going to smack them!
anigbrowl 13y ago
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.

FrankBlack 13y ago

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 13y ago
It's probably because "we" (the purveyors of such consumption behavior) are still not the majority yet. With time though... with time...

rfnslyr 13y ago

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

chaz 13y ago

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.

hrkristian 13y ago
Question is, at what point does traditional TV channels become so unpopular that they're simply not worth operating anymore? Perhaps the better question is, when does traditional TV become so unpopular those satellites taking up geosynchronous orbit space get dumped into the oceans?
- spiritplumber 13y ago
  Roughly never -- the satellites would just be repurposed. Sending mass to geostationary is EXPENSIVE. Like, 100k$/kilogram.
  - gibybo 13y ago
    I've been wondering what Direct TV will do with its satellites in 10-20 years when it doesn't make sense to use them for TV anymore. I haven't been able to imagine any significant uses, have you? There's weather services (for ships and aircraft outside of ground station range), radio (but this is really niche), high latency internet (for, say, cruise ships), maybe some other small niche services. But what's going to replace the $30 billion in revenue they get from TV subscriptions today? Who is going to buy their multi-billion dollar satellite fleet?

hrkristian 13y ago

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.

dpcan 13y ago

"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 13y ago
> 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__ 13y ago
  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 13y ago

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.

jstalin 13y ago

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 13y ago
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?
- Vivtek 13y ago
  By means of ... negotiated content contracts?
- jstalin 13y ago
  I don't know... and I don't care.
  - eropple 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.

donquichotte 13y ago

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.

ljd 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    Thank you for these links.
- VLM 13y ago
  Lots of VHF broadcasters switching to UHF as part of the transition? Not all have done so, but "many" have. All things being equal, an ancient coax cable with X milliliters of water contamination or Y amount of corrosion will have more loss at UHF than VHF. Pretty much everything is more critical at UHF. Even antenna aiming. The other way its a problem, which is actually pretty funny, is marketing of "HDTV" antennas where HDTV means UHF only, which works great if all your local broadcasters moved to UHF with the transition; As you can imagine a UHF antenna doesn't work so well if you live in an area with one of the few remaining VHF-Lo band transmitters which you "need". To say this is a local issue would be an understatement. I'm sure you'd get a better answer from a neighbor than HN.

andyl 13y ago

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

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  It seems like he was also objecting to the character of the ads... I left the U.S. in the '90s. However I do occasionally see some American TV on trips, and it seems different than what I remember, full of creepy bizarre ads for drugs and the like. TV ads in the old days obviously weren't great art, and were often annoying, but there seems something palpably ... wrong with the state of things now. "Creepy" seems the best description.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! HEAD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD! Sadly, most recent commercials lack even the charm of that. I have an OTA antenna just for occasional live sports, but TV is just abject now. One time I found like three celebrity gossip shows on at the same time, on broadcast networks! The networks used to be more dignified than that. So just to protect my will to live, I always change my tuner to the Mexican station before I turn the TV off. Not that Mexican TV is any better, but my intelligence is that much less insulted when I don't understand what they're saying, and it is ever so slightly more surreal to watch than the Chinese stations and occasionally has soccer highlights.

peter303 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

frankydp 13y ago

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.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

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.

dublinben 13y ago
A tiny minority of TV viewers were relying on broadcast both before and after the transition to digital. Those that were, also aren't the same demographic that are not "cutting the cord."
acdha 13y ago
I've gotten the impression that the reverse has been happening: broadcast digital TV removed quality and reduced number of channels as a reason for sticking with cable. I know a number of people here (Washington DC) who've talked about dropping cable TV because they really only used it for live things (e.g. the Olympics, disasters, etc.) and a $20 antenna works well enough for that to make paying an additional $50+ per month completely unappealing.
probably_wrong 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

brownbat 13y ago

"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 13y ago
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.
- brownbat 13y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy. Ha, yeah, fair point and reasonable analysis. The dozen misleading graphs that don't quite support his point are looking more suspicious by the minute. I kind of want to call Jim Edwards and tell him this is an interesting direction for a story, but he should probably chuck this rough draft and start from scratch before someone accidentally puts this on BI's site.
- schnable 13y ago
  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.

jhallenworld 13y ago

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.

VLM 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  "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?

VLM 13y ago

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 13y ago
> "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.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Yes, no one goes to a movie theatre to see a movie any more. You definitely know what the world is like. Good job not being simplistic and simply assuming the world fits in whatever bias you have ... :)

11thEarlOfMar 13y ago

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?

Edmond 13y ago

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

hnriot 13y ago

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.

joars 13y ago

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

kephra 13y ago

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.

6thSigma 13y ago

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.

DigitalSea 13y ago

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.

jredwards 13y ago

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

cybp 13y ago

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.

clarebear 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 ...

duskwuff 13y ago

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.

somberi 13y ago

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 13y ago
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?

goggles99 13y ago

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

brent_noorda 13y ago

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.

belorn 13y ago

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!

mrweasel 13y ago

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 13y ago
TV news grates on me. Here's a good reason: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort-one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-...

leoplct 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

ctdonath 13y ago

"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.)