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

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

#171

Post by eropple »

cylinder wrote: post #45
chaz wrote: post #15

TV still has plenty of life in it. Be careful of those graphs with a non-zero y-axis minimum. But there is a shift happening. The biggest question to me is whether brand advertising dollars are/can/will shift with it. We need new ad products. Especially ones that will reach younger audiences who avoid current ad products. Maybe opportunities for Snapchat/Twitter. Also, content production is going to see some challeng…

TV is in its heyday. Dramas are at the highest quality they've ever been. The protocol , cable (and satellite), is dying. Almost nobody in my age range, or younger (late 20s), has cable. Everyone has Netflix along with some other streaming services combined with iTunes purchases and such. If you want to watch live sports, the NFL is free over the air, you'll just miss out on the NBA (oh well). Cable television has no…

> Almost nobody in my age range, or younger (late 20s), has cable.

Are you sure that's not just selection bias? I'm 25 and almost everybody I know around my age does have cable. Some are sports fans (and you miss out on much of MLB, the NBA, and the NHL by cutting cable--the streaming prices for each are extortionate and there are cable-area blackouts for local games), some just really can't be bothered to put up with the delays to get to Netflix or other streaming solutions (for many there is a strong social component to being able to see, and discuss, television programs simultaneously with your peers).

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

#172

Post by skrause »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #72
purringmeow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's not all! Insane copyright prevents a lot of people from legally watching popular series. I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series. So what do I do when I don't get proper service? Piracy - it gives me on demand HQ content. I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. The next network delivers cheap, on demand HD content worldwide will…

>> "I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series." You can't buy the box set anywhere? You can download it from iTunes or another legal service? I'm in Europe too (UK to be specific and can do both of those things). I'm guessing what you really mean is you can't watch it when you want to, you have to wait a little while longer.

In Germany the major problem with on-demand and streaming services is that a lot of content is only available in dubbed versions, of course you don't have the problem with Hollywood content in the UK.

If you're like me and don't like dubbed content and have already phased out physical media, there often really is no way of getting the content legally in at least a semi-comfortable way.

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

#174

Post by probably_wrong »

anon_d wrote: post #148
ufo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Sports will be an exception. Watching games live is always going to matter.

Twitch.tv! Youtube!

Sports are ridiculously sensitive to lag, though. In my former office we tried once to stream the World Cup in our internal network, and it worked fairly well... except for a 1-2 second delay.

The result? You'd hear the screams from the neighboring offices (and it was very easy to differentiate whether the team scored or missed based on those), but in your version the ball was still in play, so the emotion was gone.

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

#175

Post by probably_wrong »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #42

I wonder if switching from Analog signals to Digital has contributed to this... Not only do you have to buy the receiver box, which craps out and has a separate remote and interface, but Digital TV has really really terrible reception. I live in a large metro area and even we have tons of problems with reception, I can't image what it's like for people who live out further.

I'd love to see a correlation between this data and the advent of reality TV. I wouldn't even be surprised if part of this decline is due to the incredibly amount of garbage, Kardashian sisters and Honey Boo Boos on air.

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

#177

Post by VLM »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #157
VLM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an older guy I can assure you personally that when I have free time, the last thing I want to do with it is watch TV. Too much living to do. I do agree with your observation about old people and TV in that my experience with elderly ancestors is an extremely high correlation between watching TV all day and death within the next couple years. When you can't do anything anymore physically but open your eyes, the soc…

Maybe I'm a contrarian or I see lot of this here on HN for what it is but I find these comments funny and ironic. How do you find time to comment HN with all ths living to do?

By not watching TV, LOL. Supposedly in my age bracket, at least according to ad sales folks trying to peddle their time, its saving me on average 10 hours per day or some bogosity like that.

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

#178

Post by alan_cx »

probably_wrong wrote: post #174
anon_d wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitch.tv! Youtube!

Sports are ridiculously sensitive to lag, though. In my former office we tried once to stream the World Cup in our internal network, and it worked fairly well... except for a 1-2 second delay. The result? You'd hear the screams from the neighboring offices (and it was very easy to differentiate whether the team scored or missed based on those), but in your version the ball was still in play, so the emotion was gone.

Used to have much fun with an ex-neighbor. He was a massive football(the one you play with feet) fan, and when his beloved Liverpool played, I could literally follow the game via his excited, or gutted, out bursts from next door. He watched on Sky Sports. I, however, had the radio on. Sky was delayed by seconds compared to the radio broadcast. So, we realised that we could mess with him knowing that we knew what was happening 2-5 secs before he did, by cheering or groaning at the wrong bits!!!

Turns out, Scousers actually don't have the best sense of humor in the UK.

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

#179

Post by podperson »

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…

OK so let's assume we need to pay $200 per person and a typical household is a family of 4. Currently the difference between a broadband internet connection and a typical monthly cable TV with internet bundle is in the $50/month range. This means that the current typical household is paying $600 per year to get content in a ridiculously stupid way, versus the estimate of $800 per family of four just buying their content direct from the producers.

This doesn't seem like an unbridgeable gap to me. And in fact it's in the process of being bridged slowly -- the problem is that existing contractual relationships and infrastructure won't just reform themselves overnight.

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