Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 197 posts

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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

cmsmith wrote: post #122
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hun…

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

cmsmith wrote: post #122
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hun…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

cmsmith wrote: post #122
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hun…

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by destroyAllCable »

cmsmith wrote: post #122
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hun…

Here in NYC with TWC, I threw cable in the garbage when my subscription for TV and internet (ONLY, no VOIP service) exceeded $150 a month. I didn't even have premium service. This was in 2010, I think.

One month I saw the bill and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall.

They run a wire to my house, so that the TV reception is better than an aerial antenna. That's what cable is. That's what cable does.

The internet service was rock solid, but when they bombard me with a constant deluge of ads offering introductory service at $99 dollars a month (for TV, VOIP and internet), every ten minutes, no matter what channel I'm watching, basically, I expect my bill to be $66 dollars for TV and internet only, AT ALL TIMES.

This is the same psychological process where we rationalize to ourselves that $99 is cognitively less than $100, so it must be a reasonable truth that I'm paying a better price than $100, if I'm only paying $99.

If they know who I am, because they know whether to enable my cable signal, based on whether I've paid my bill, and they show ME advertisements on MY TV, stating that I can get 3 things for a price divisible by three ($99), when we both know I'm only buying 2 things from them, then cognitively, we both know I should be paying 2/3 of what their hellish TV jingle blasts into my ears every 10 minutes.

I'm sitting at work, humming their damned jingle to myself, as I suffer through my 9 to 5 drudgery. Then I come home check the mail box. There are two bills. Cable and Gas/Electric. The cable is more. It's $150 dollars. I'm subscribed to two thirds of their products, and I'm humming their incessant jingle to myself about how all three of their products should cost two thirds of what I'm actually paying for the stinking two thirds of what they offer.

The jingle is thus:

  EYE! OH! DIGITAL CABLE! 
  WATCH A LOTTA CHANNELS!
  WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE!
  THE PRICE IS NICE! 
  LET ME PUT IT ON THE TABLE!
  ONLY NINETY NINE DOLLARS WHEN YOU SIGN THE LABEL!!!
There are trains underground, and I can enter and exit their tunnels twice a day, every day for a month, on trips as long as I can tolerate, and I'll pay less for that than cable. Trains underground cost less than cable.

Smart phones might be a secret government program engineered to earn the complicity of the citizenry, in volunteering to carry tracking devices on our person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So what?! It's still cheaper than cable!

Cable doesn't keep me warm in the winter. They don't do anything essential to my survival. They don't deliver perishable food to my door. Cable TV can burn.

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

#135

Post by massysett »

peter303 wrote: post #32

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…

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.

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

#136

Post by philwelch »

jseliger wrote: post #94
shiftpgdn wrote: post #3

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.

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.

I can live with going back to reading books and watching movies.

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

#137

Post by ericd »

Brakenshire wrote: post #117
interpol_p wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been using Apple TV for Netflix. TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.

> TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or more insidiously 'your pare…

Shoot, I hope my thumb hit the up arrow. Sorry if not.

But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.

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

#138

Post by philwelch »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #116
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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??

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…

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.

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

#139

Post by deepGem »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #3

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.

What I fear is the invasion of advertisers on the online channels. Youtube is already getting there. I just hope that it doesn't get as bad as TV though.

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

#140

Post by njharman »

cmsmith wrote: post #122
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hun…

There will always be enough entertainment to meet the demand of viewers. What we have now is a deluge of crap to meet the demands of advertisers wanting to sell eyeballs.
Post reply on HN