The Slow , Dying , Death of Cable TV ...

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Its one of those things in life that is called "The cycle of life" . For folks who shop back in the days there was these outlet stores. But as time passed someone came up with putting all these big retailers like JCPenny , Sears etc under one big mega roof. It was the birth of shopping malls. And the Malls became a big deal from the 1970's to 1990's. For 3 decades this was the big deal for Americans to go to each weekend....




As a teenage kid in the 90s , going to the F'n Mall as Brody would say from Mallrats was fun. Going , hanging with friends for hours and goofin around at places while getting comics was a fun deal. Those were some great memories of my local mall.

Then times came and the internet. You had the rise of online retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart spreading further across America into towns. This all led into the DEATH of the Malls. Now people can go to these new outlet stores around Wal-Mart's to shop while also going online to various retail sites. The circle of life...marches on....

But this isn't about Malls.






Cable TV really exploded onto the scene in the 1980's. As a kid then we had at 1st one of those big satellite dishes. The kind you would type in channels and as kids we'd see it move to get signals etc. I discovered a lot of great cartoons and ...Bozo the Clown that aired in Chicago in the 1980's. So it was a great deal. Then cable really took off as it was joked a new cable company popped up every day.

MTV , Nickelodeon , VH1 , etc etc all were epic cool channels that rose up then. MTV and Nickelodeon are considered the grandfathers of cable TV in essence given they both came about within a couple years of each other. Nick popped up in 1979 , MTV in 1981. As time grew more and more cable channels came about as the 1990s and even 2000's came on.

Beyond cable tv , the film industry itself was running along very well. The movie studios started home video market with VCR tapes (they chose that over Betamax as we know). Comically the costs of VCRs and tapes were absurd then. Go google a price of a movie from say , 1985 or 1986.... YEAH CRAZY ! As the market expanded and more people owned these VCR's , the prices went way , way down.

Like every circle VCR's gave way to DVDs and the home video market marched on.

But the world was about to change then...one that were seeing today....




Cable was running along as was home video market for films. But as we saw in early 2000's a movie/tv rental chain Blockbuster got this weird offer to buy a company with a DVD rental shipping business called...Netflix. Blockbuster executives laughed like that scene from that FB Meme of Republicans gathered around. The cost of this buy ...$50 million ! Its said the CEO laughed and thought ..."What is this ? A joke company !?"

So no one then realized or Blockbuster that this would spell the doom of the movie rental business years later or that it would change the world as we know it for cable TV.


But the deal was one people look back at as Blockbuster is now faded into dust. There is 1 store running but its not part of that classic chain at last check. No this store is in some town and its ran locally. Today Netflix has over 100+ million subscribers and earns billions of dollars a year. And the company's move towards streaming changed the world.

Cable itself has seen companies be bought our or mergers. Altice bought Suddenlink , AT&T bought Time Warner as the deals continued. The lack of those hooked to regular cable has seen the industry falling more. But Netflix begot more streaming services as the media companies (Paramount , Disney , AT&T) decided that Netflix concept worked. That they could have that money directly. Who needs money from a slowly dying cable industry that is slowly dying like coal industry every year ? Not when we can get money directly like Netflix.

The media companies themselves realized that they had the content and could make their own streaming services. The WWE itself saw this early and in early 2010's created their own streaming app to get money off their content library in WWE Network. So the money was there for this. And we saw them all explode onto the scene....

Hulu
Disney+
ESPN+
BritBox
Paramount+
HBO Max
Shudder
Peacock

There is likely some I'm forgetting but now the streaming sites have grown in power and even there is free ones like Tubi and Crackle. So its just wild to see these sites slowly eroding Cable industry. As the media companies put out special TV series , movies etc for the streaming sites.

Sure Cable has some bright spots and still exists but we have to wonder if it will be around in 10+ years or will we see the media companies just go direct to streaming and get subscribers to make $$$. Which would seem to make more sense as time passes. Is the circle of life gonna end up doing to cable what we saw with shopping Malls ?

[AndrewCrossett]

Yeah, I think 10 years from now everything will be streaming (to computer, device or TV). People will pick the services they want and probably pay one monthly bill that gets divvied up among them. You'll have complete choice over what services you get and pay for, unlike cable.

But the party won't last long. Once everything is streaming the services will realize people will tolerate anything as long as it happens slowly enough and there is no alternative. So prices will rise, commercials will start to appear, and pretty soon it will be just like cable again in terms of pricing and experience.

[Noodle]

I think it will be a while before streaming outright replaces cable. I mean, even by using your own comparison, there are still shopping malls around.

Streaming itself is still trying to figure out what it is, and you're slowly starting to see a backlash against it from the general public. It was once touted as being a cheaper alternative to cable, but with the number of streaming services starting and needed to see all the stuff you want, that's becoming less and less so. I have a strong feeling you're going to see some of these fold like Quibi did and the number of services get paired down by a decent percentage.

Then you have things going cross-service, such as South Park. When it went to HBO Max it was advertised as the home for streaming of the show, but then they made two specials specifically for Paramount Plus. That annoyed a number of their fans.

These services are starting to burn what good will they had with the general consumer in the pursuit of more money and exclusivity, and until they work through that I don't think you'll see a full switch from cable to streaming.

And all that's not even considering parts of the country that just plain don't have good internet reception and streaming just isn't a reliable option.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Are the internet companies trying to push streaming?

I recently tried Comcast, and the channels they offered me were little more than steaming piles of dung. I couldn't get Fox news or CNN (not fond of either, to be clear), but got OAN and Newsmax. The basic package seemed to exclude the stuff that was basic for decades, like History, Discover, etc. I went back to Xfinity pretty quick after that.

[Derek Metaltron]

It's interesting that over here in the UK we're getting the same questions with the BBC which, ironically celebrating a hundred years this year, is having issues because the British Government has forced a freeze on any rise in the TV licence (which now only concerns the BBC and no other core channel - you don't need it to see ITV, Channel 4 or Five related content on their on-demand services) for two years, and it only has a certainty of existing until 2027 now. But there's a growing minority of cord cutters and the younger generations don't have the range of options for their own content as others do. I still like the BBC and hope they stick around but even I would like to see them adopt some kind of Netflix like service in the medium to long term.