Posted on 04/25/2021 9:48:51 AM PDT by TomGuy
Five years ago, 63% of Americans mostly watched television through cable and satellite. Today, that percentage has dropped to fewer than half of all Americans, while the percentage of those primarily watching television via a streaming service on the internet has jumped 17 percentage points, from 20% in 2016 to 37% today. About one in 10 Americans watch their TV through a digital antenna, which replaced old-fashioned broadcast television several years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Would be a more encouraging article if people were cutting their Netflix and streaming services as well.
I only watch TV in hotel rooms as I haven’t had cable TV or TV channels per se for 25 years—I really only miss the Olympics, the Oscars, and the Presidential Debates.
When I’m in hotels I like the Cooking Channel (”Chopped”) and that’s pretty much it.
I’ve never watched the news or Fox or CNN or anything—and I stopped getting a daily paper in Oct 2020. I get all my news from Free Republic now, and from Scott Adams, and from Steve Bannon’s War Room. That’s more than enough news.
Their "news" is all left wing propaganda.
Sports has become too politicized to endure.
So, what's to watch?
It’s the only way to go.
I have never regretted going all wireless internet. Not one whit.
The amount of content available is simply astounding, with about 10% of it in UHD.
I subscribe to HBOMax, Amazon Prime and Netflix.
And I’ll never run out of stuff to watch in my lifetime, even after filtering the junk.
And you can put your TVs anyplace you have power.
Going to the Internet is not “cutting the cord”.
It’s having the cord surgically attached to your rectum.
Might as well have Winston’s Television installed.
Of course, this is bad news for cable and satellite companies, but I’m not sure what it says much about the viewing habits of Americans.
I “cut the cord” more than ten years ago, but subscribed to a streaming service during college football season most years since. At first the streaming services were a bargain, but the prices have increased steadily since.
I used to get all the channels I wanted from Sing TV for about $25 per month. Now they’ve split their service into two offerings and it’d cost significantly more.
And I used Youtube TV for $35.00 per month four years ago and now the same basic service cost $65.00 per month. Several multi-channel streaming services are now around the price.
The costs of multi-channel streaming services has increased steadily and that doesn’t even take into account services like Netflix and the traditional paid movie channels like HBO.
Local news that people watch on cable/satellite and streaming comes from broadcast. The CW and Peacock have made the jump to streaming from broadcast, so broadcast programming has a larger footprint than 10% whatever the delivery system is for the programming.
Roku and Sling
There is really no such thing as a "digital" antenna - the same old antennas of yesteryear will pick up broadcast signals - and of course these channels are still very much "broadcasting" - not sure why he would claim broadcast television was "replaced" - the signal type was changed from analog to digital, but not the concept of broadcast television stations. Some newer antennas come with newer technology to amplify signals to make channels more stable because with digital broadcasts either you have the station, or you don't, but the signals are still picked up in the same way on VHF and UHF bands. A lot of antennas on the market make a lot of bogus promises and may pick up next to nothing - you really have research to make sure it is a quality product.
Hopefully more will dump these "woke" services and discover the old fashioned antenna, and the numerous completely free streaming services...where you control what gets funded as with no ratings / no revenue.
We just dumped Comcast cable tv — we’ve had it here since 1983! Cut the cord just shy of 40 years. I would have never gotten it in the first place, but my wife is a sports nut and wanted her live sports games.
Unfortunately Comcast is our internet service provider, so I had to keep that. We had AT&T for Internet until ten years ago, but their reliability, quality and customer support were the absolute worst of any company I’ve dealt with. It took them forever to fix the squirrels-eating-the-wires and squirrels-in-the-pedestal problems. Our DSL service would often drop to 300 to 500 kbps — yes, kilobits! At least the Comcast Internet over cable service is fast and reasonably reliable.
The Internet + TV + phone service was over $200/month. I cut that in half by getting rid of the cable TV part.
I wish I could find a decent alternative ISP. I will never go back to AT&T. Based on their current reviews, it doesn’t sound like they’ve improved at all.
I use Netflix and Amazon streaming. I also rip a lot of DVDs and Blu Rays to my home server.
Same thing with an antenna and free streaming services...more channels on antenna over time, and there are more and more of those free streaming services coming online with high quality programming. “I’ll never run out of stuff to watch in my lifetime, even after filtering the junk” as you said.
For years, decades even, the public demanded cable providers offer cafeteria type selections. Big cable gave us the Finger.
They have finally got what they deserved. Streaming Internet is the only way to watch TV.
We are getting there.
I cut my cable five years ago and have been slowly cutting my streaming services since as I find other alternatives.
Recently I cut off Amazon Prime. Netflix is likely next, but I would be willing to pay them for streaming on demand for content I want to see. Just not a monthly fee that would subsidize the other crap.
Ironically, Netflix has a documentary called "The Last Blockbusters" which is about how the once mighty Blockbuster Video chain went to just one store in Bend, Oregon.
It will be interesting to see what is left of Netflix 5 or 10 years from now. I predict that they will be purely a content provider and not a content distributor (i.e. paying movie studios for streaming rights for certain movies).
We are very quickly moving to a world where all content is on demand directly from the content provider. No need for middlemen.
Now Netflix does have some original content they can - they were thinking ahead. So I think they survive.
Unfortunately, with antenna programming you still suffer through the commercials. Cable/Satellite solved that problem with DVR capabilities. I searched streaming services that would allow me to record and fast forward through commercials after I canceled DirecTV. Now I get the same programs (less the garbage channels) with streaming for half the cost of DirecTV. Happy Camper!
Right. Funding the Left - with subscription services, you can fund culturally damaging rot as they are not depending on “ratings” for revenue. They can put it up and still damage a huge part of the culture even if by normal standards it didn’t cut the mustard for “ratings” for views. With the antenna and free streaming services, views are what matters - no one watches = no revenue. The quality of the programming matters.
We cut the cord two years ago. Put up a regular antenna and we still never turn the tube on.
I spend $20 month to get YouTube without commercials. Also, I paid $65 for a year of vpn through ustvgo.tv which includes just about any cable channels plus hbo and showtime, all the sports channels,etc. You can check it out for free on some channels, but if you want more premium content you have to pay for the vpn. I figure $65 a year vs $150 month to concast is worth it to me.
bkmk
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