Netflix offered us sofa sitters a happy alternative to paying for 500 TV channels that we mostly didn’t watch. In the TV industry, there was also a slow realization that clinging to the old ways might be fatal. Cable TV companies stopped fighting so hard to keep people from defecting and were happy to instead sell you zippy internet service for streaming binges.
Once the cable TV edifice started to crumble, entertainment companies like Disney decided that they couldn’t go-all out to prop up the system that had sustained them for decades. They’d prefer to become their own Netflix.
Old TV still has some life left. For now, Americans spend a majority of their TV time watching conventional television rather than streaming video. Streaming is also a tough business. And including the quasi-cable-TV services from online companies like YouTube and Hulu, about two-thirds of U.S. households pay for some old-school TV channels. An optimist would say that it’s stunning that cable TV has stayed this resilient.
But it’s clear that the cable TV system that for decades brought joy and headaches to tens of millions of Americans is petering out. The wild card, as Moffett, the investment analyst, wrote in a private report to his clients this week, is whether Americans keep turning away from cable and satellite TV relatively slowly, or whether it will “abruptly collapse, like a Jenga tower.”
And the ripple effects may only have just started. For example, major sports leagues like the National Football League have thrived on the money in the cable TV system. If the cable model topples, it could torpedo sports as we know them.
I have always loved TV. I felt like a real grown-up when I first started to pay a mammoth TV bill, partly to watch my favorite football team. I had scaled back my cable TV package, but then a few months ago I was notified that my bill was going to increase by about $10 a month. That was it. I’m a no-cable household now, too.