Why Internet Television Isn't Quite Ready To Save Us From Cable TV 304
smaxp writes "It's no surprise that few people love their pay TV providers. In May, Variety reported that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked cable television providers last in all consumer categories. Pent up frustration with cable and satellite TV providers fuels a steady buzz that Amazon, Apple, Google and Netflix will disrupt TV. These new entrants promise to offer variability in pricing and greater choice fueling notions that Americans have officially cut their proverbial cords. But true disruption is wishful thinking. Data from the PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC) global entertainment and media outlook for 2013-2017 doesn’t support a disruptive market scenario. Incumbent cable and satellite pay TV providers and over-the-top (OTT) challengers such as Amazon and Netflix are both forecasted to grow. OTT TV has only reinvented a single part of the TV business, streaming archival movie and television content over the internet replacing physical DVDs and time-shifted DVR replay of TV programs. To displace incumbents, OTT TV has to continue to change TV business models in ways that appeal to consumers and attract content owners. "
no shit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do sport fans age out? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting question. I am going to guess no. Sports are surprisingly tied to modern culture.
While it is clearly not 'high culture' in the way that Opera, art galleries, ballet, and such manage to, sports are surprisingly important to modern culture. Humans are competitive with one another. Sports are one of the few acceptable physical outlets for that. Competition in sports allow humans to compete with one another, either individually or in groups, without resorting to violence. Humans are tribal, and sports teams push several psychological buttons for people (belong to a group, and lets kick the ass of those other guys from across the river).
Individual sports may increase or decrease in importance over time, but I expect that some form of sports will continue to be culturally relevant and important as long as humans are both competitive with one another and want to impress women by showing off how dominant they are.
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Re:no shit (Score:2, Interesting)
As fast as show episodes can download, it's close enough to instant to be worthwhile.
Download a 480p episode of whatever and any device in your household can stream it.
Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable... (Score:4, Interesting)
I resemble that. We have a roku box in one room and a blu-ray player that includes netflix in the other room, and an ANTENNA (remember those?) on the roof so wife can watch football, and we've been cable-free for almost three years now.
Probably the biggest part of this is no longer caring if we see a show when it first comes out. We've talked about this in other threads, but waiting until a series accumulates a season or so, and then watching it in a few marathons allows one to pick up nuances that would be missed at one episode per week. I'm way WAY ok with not having seen whatever the guy across from me at work saw last night. We can still talk about series, but we talk about them like other people talk about movies. I saw this, it was pretty good, you should try it.
I don't recall the last time I saw a commercial. It might have been the last superbowl. (I don't watch football but I attend the parties because there's beer.) Moreover, the response to "what do you want to see tonight?" is never never NEVER "I dunno, what's on?" Because the networks no longer control what we can watch. (Or choose not to watch.)
> BTW, can we please stop calling it "over the top?" That implies something about the business model that's total nonsense: the idea that IP service is a side business, and cable is the real business. Where did this term come from, anyway?
Completely agree. The term comes from an erroneous assumption.
Not so much (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a lot of people will rant about Television being brain rot and all that, but for most normal people (hint: Not the
Re:It's been dead to me for years (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Flamebait article (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. My kids began watching normal cable TV (though less than 157 hours a month). After we got a Roku box and Netflix, they began watching that AND cable. Slowly, they migrated until they now watch very little cable TV* at all. Even more recently, they've taken to getting their entertainment from tablet computer games and the TV will often remain off entirely. Even if we accept that customers "need" X hours of entertainment every month, that entertainment can come from a variety of sources. TV is just one of those sources, not the only source.
* We're considering cancelling cable. The only reason it has remained is that Time Warner Cable gave us a great deal this year to keep us as customers. We watch some shows (e.g. Mythbusters) that don't show new episodes via OTA, on a station website, or on Netflix. Once you factor in paying for those shows, our savings shrink to the point that cancellation doesn't save us much. However, cable TV is constantly on the edge of cancellation with us and it's only a matter of time before it goes.
Re:A moral battle (Score:4, Interesting)
And, unfortunately, when someone does compete with P2P as a competitor and beats it, they treat that company as an enemy. Example, Netflix. It's an easy to use service and is on virtually all devices. You can buy an inexpensive Roku box for $50 and then get thousands of shows for $10 a month. How have the content providers treated Netflix? Many are trying to keep their content off of it as if having their content stream via Netflix (and getting paid for that) is a horrible thing. Imagine how much better Netflix's service would be if the content providers opened their vaults and let Netflix have access to everything? Even if Netflix doubled their price, it would be a wonderful service that millions more would sign up for. However, it would also seriously disrupt the business model that content providers know and love and so they try their best to withhold content from Netflix. Ironically, this just helps piracy, not the content providers.