# I think networks are going to have to get ahead of people 'cutting the cable' **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 8, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033 "2018-04-08T18:16:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/21 "2018-04-09T20:37:17Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > If it’s the local team, you actually might. I know when the Falcons are playing on Monday Night Football or Thursday Night Football, a local Atlanta affiliate puts them on OTA. I believe that, as a general rule, when NFL games are on cable networks (ESPN, NFL Network), they also have them offered on OTA stations in the participating teams’ home markets. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/22 "2018-04-09T20:45:18Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > As for not being able to air a local team’s games, I don’t know if it’s the regional sports networks complaining about it so much as some of the team owners. Increasingly, they’re becoming one and the same. Pro sports teams (and even college teams and conferences) are often investors in their local regional sports networks, if not outright owners. For example, the Giants (which you mentioned) are now part owners of NBC Sports Bay Area, the Yankees are a minority owner in the YES Network, the Cubs and White Sox (along with the Bulls and Blackhawks) are all part owners of NBC Sports Chicago, etc. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/23 "2018-04-09T22:39:29Z")
whats the difference between cable and paying 7 or 8 different places to watch everything i normally watch on basic cable tv ? I mean I have to pay the cable company for the internet in the first place then pay Netflix hulu amazon ect since no one will have everything I watch …I mean it seems like I’m getting a bargain because I don’t have the channels I never watch like the 25 all Spanish language channels that my area has …but that’s just an illusion … ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/24 "2018-04-09T23:38:39Z")
> [@BombVoyage](#): > > A couple of years ago, I ‘cut the cable’ meaning I do not have cable and rely on the Internet, Netflix and Hulu for show watching. Meaning you didnt’ cut the cable, you just switched from one cable to another. ---
**Author:** ![MindsEye\_Watering](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindseye_watering/32/3619_2.png) [@MindsEye\_Watering](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MindsEye_Watering)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/25 "2018-04-10T00:18:00Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Meaning you didnt’ cut the cable, you just switched from one cable to another. At half the cost. Or less. ---
**Author:** ![Mars\_Horizon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mars_horizon/32/2804_2.png) [@Mars\_Horizon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mars_Horizon)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/26 "2018-04-10T10:20:09Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Meaning you didnt’ cut the cable, you just switched from one cable to another. Isn’t that what all cord cutters do? I’m not sure if you’re being funny, pedantic, or don’t understand the concept. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/27 "2018-04-10T10:45:13Z")
We haven’t cut the cord. We’ve always had basic cable for the local news as well as for some programs we’d rather watch when they’re scheduled to air. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/28 "2018-04-10T14:26:43Z")
> [@Mars\_Horizon](#): > > Isn’t that what all cord cutters do? I’m not sure if you’re being funny, pedantic, or don’t understand the concept. Yup. “Cutting the cord” specifically refers to no longer having a cable TV subscription, and instead getting TV programming through streaming services and / or an OTA antenna. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/29 "2018-04-10T15:12:10Z")
> [@Mars\_Horizon](#): > > > [@TBG](#): > > > > Meaning you didnt’ cut the cable, you just switched from one cable to another. > > Isn’t that what all cord cutters do? I’m not sure if you’re being funny, pedantic, or don’t understand the concept. End game is people won’t watch many shows. This is going to be a challenge for content producers and distributors. When my family cut the cord, we watched fewer shows. Once people get used to not having all shows available all the time, but are picking and choosing what’s available, they’ll watch less. They’ll binge-watch a show and then find other things to do with their time waiting for another show. Doing other things is habit forming. This can start a downward spiral of fewer and fewer shows. Anecdotally, my peak show watching was while I was in high school. College and then grad school reduced my viewing time. Then jobs reduced it more and now a family means I watch almost nothing. Maybe one show a year. My spouse watches fewer. My kids watch a little more, about an hour on weekends. And as a side effect, we get almost no exposure to advertisements. ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/30 "2018-04-10T15:14:34Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Yup. “Cutting the cord” specifically refers to no longer having a cable TV subscription, and instead getting TV programming through streaming services and / or an OTA antenna. I’ve always taken it to mean cutting either cable or satellite, so it’s broader than that even. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/31 "2018-04-10T15:20:04Z")
> [@Driver8](#): > > I’ve always taken it to mean cutting either cable or satellite, so it’s broader than that even. That’s fair, and while the distribution method is different between cable and satellite, the gist of the service (you get a package of channels that’s pre-determined by the vendor) is essentially the same. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/32 "2018-04-10T19:38:09Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Meaning you didnt’ cut the cable, you just switched from one cable to another. No. “Cutting the cable” means moving from scheduled media to on-demand media, not physically taking shears to the coaxial or fiber optic cable. This is a true shift in how media is being made and consumed, and has already created whole new ways to approach shows: Binging is now the default, as opposed to something done by mega-fans who bought DVD sets years after the shows went off the air, and, as a direct result, respectable\* shows are now serialized long-form stories as opposed to _commedia dell’arte_ pieces with fixed characters and settings but little continuity from episode to episode. \*(As opposed to soap operas, which were never respectable and are now dying, ending multi-decade runs with remarkably little fanfare.) > [@Pleonast](#): > > And as a side effect, we get almost no exposure to advertisements. And this is a K-T extinction event-level shift in media. This is going to leave the equivalent of funereal iridium deposits in our collective mass culture, and it isn’t nearly done happening yet. The replacement of broadcast media with on-demand media means the end of old-fashioned advertising and its replacement with adtech, by which I mean advertisements which try their damndest to track and profile individuals to replace less-profitable untargeted ads with more-profitable targeted ads. This means collecting lots of data, which means lots of data leaks, and also means governments getting the idea that this stuff needs to be regulated. The EU is rolling out the [GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation), and it’s big enough to make them stick, even on companies which aren’t in the EU. Facebook is already in the hot seat over tracking and general data misfeasance and malfeasance, and these concerns aren’t going away. The early-2000s era of data siloing isn’t coming back any more than the pre-1990s era of unquestioned broadcast media dominance, and it isn’t clear that ad-based industries are fully prepared for the shift. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/33 "2018-04-10T19:48:17Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Binging is now the default, as opposed to something done by mega-fans who bought DVD sets years after the shows went off the air, and, as a direct result, respectable\* shows are now serialized long-form stories as opposed to _commedia dell’arte_ pieces with fixed characters and settings but little continuity from episode to episode. Personally, I blame the success of Lost for the rise in serialized dramas. Virtually every drama series on television (broadcast, cable or streaming) is serialized. Some do have storylines that conclude during one episode but they almost always have some other story that stretches over the entire run of the show, or at least the entire season. Law & Order, for example, was entirely an episodic show and really nothing carried over from one episode to the next. CSI was mostly episodic, but it also had season-long plotlines (like the “miniature killer” of one of the later seasons). And then there are a bunch of shows where the whole mystery isn’t resolved until the series concludes. Lost, as I mentioned, is the most notorious. And ABC has a new one called The Crossing that’s doing the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/34 "2018-04-10T22:29:06Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Personally, I blame the success of Lost for the rise in serialized dramas. Virtually every drama series on television (broadcast, cable or streaming) is serialized. Some do have storylines that conclude during one episode but they almost always have some other story that stretches over the entire run of the show, or at least the entire season. Law & Order, for example, was entirely an episodic show and really nothing carried over from one episode to the next. CSI was mostly episodic, but it also had season-long plotlines (like the “miniature killer” of one of the later seasons). And then there are a bunch of shows where the whole mystery isn’t resolved until the series concludes. Lost, as I mentioned, is the most notorious. And ABC has a new one called The Crossing that’s doing the same thing. Success always has multiple fathers, but _Lost_ is an example of how the long over-arching plots can fail, and badly: The ending made no sense, it _famously_ made no sense, and not in the _Twin Peaks_ way where nobody expected Lynch to ever make sense in a visual medium. The same thing befell _The X-Files_, where the myth arc petered out into rambling bullshit which, to be honest, approximated _real_ conspiracy theories a bit too much to be entertaining in terms of piling detail on detail with no consistent central framework. _Lost_ might have planted a seed, but it took a fertile ground to grow that seed and others, which were planted by much better gardeners. Without on-demand, and the concomitant rise of binging, _Lost_ would have ended up a weird footnote, not something we can retrospectively point to as the beginning of a huge trend. (And I think _The Sopranos_ fits better, by the way.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/35 "2018-04-10T23:46:48Z")
**[Moderating]** > [@BombVoyage](#): > > Bless your heart, Fear Itself! Believe it or not, a few non-Southerners have learned what “Bless your heart” means. It’s an insult that’s deliberately meant to pretend that it’s not an insult. Which is still forbidden outside of the BBQ Pit. This is an official Warning. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/36 "2018-04-10T23:51:42Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Success always has multiple fathers, but _Lost_ is an example of how the long over-arching plots can fail, and badly: The ending made no sense, it _famously_ made no sense, and not in the _Twin Peaks_ way where nobody expected Lynch to ever make sense in a visual medium. The same thing befell _The X-Files_, where the myth arc petered out into rambling bullshit which, to be honest, approximated _real_ conspiracy theories a bit too much to be entertaining in terms of piling detail on detail with no consistent central framework. I’d put _Battlestar Galactica_ on that list, too. The producers made the viewers believe that they had the entire story arc planned out from the start, but it became clear that they really weren’t sure how to tie things up at the end – and, in fact, one of the big reveals (the hidden Cylons) was essentially decided by process of elimination at the last moment. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/37 "2018-04-11T04:46:55Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > \ > The replacement of broadcast media with on-demand media means the end of old-fashioned advertising and its replacement with adtech, by which I mean advertisements which try their damndest to track and profile individuals to replace less-profitable untargeted ads with more-profitable targeted ads. This means collecting lots of data, which means lots of data leaks, and also means governments getting the idea that this stuff needs to be regulated. The EU is rolling out the [GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation), and it’s big enough to make them stick, even on companies which aren’t in the EU. Facebook is already in the hot seat over tracking and general data misfeasance and malfeasance, and these concerns aren’t going away. The early-2000s era of data siloing isn’t coming back any more than the pre-1990s era of unquestioned broadcast media dominance, and it isn’t clear that ad-based industries are fully prepared for the shift. We’re not only going to see tracking and profiling, but we’re already seeing data throttling. Rather than spoiling our viewing experience by forcing us to see ads we don’t want to see, they will spoil our viewing experience by slowing down the streaming services to brutally slow levels. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/38 "2018-04-11T18:02:51Z")
> [@BombVoyage](#): > > Because I forgot about them. Why? Because, unlike Lucifer, I have to wait until the end of the season and _ **then one whole year** _ to watch them! That is… unusual behaviour. Binge watching TV shows, as a trend, began long before Netflix shifted to being a video streaming service. Netflix was aware that people were doing this when it was still mailing DVDs to people – and is the reason it has developed a business model around bingeing. Networks and individual channels are facing challenges in much of North America and they’re reacting exactly the way you’d expect: cutting costs and trying to do more with less. [I don’t know if you remember the glory days of local TV, but in the '60s and into the '80s it was \*normal\* for TV stations to produce multiple programs in addition to their news programming. Now the only thing left is news, and producing as much as possible as cheaply as possible.] But I have to disagree with **Pleonast**. People who use on-demand services watch just as much as anyone has in history - they just get to dictate what they watch based on what service they subscribe to. ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/39 "2018-04-13T23:44:11Z")
We couldn’t afford satellite anymore, the only affordable cable had channels we didn’t want, and the antenna barely picks up anything. I have discovered that I don’t spend as much time in front of the TV as I used to. Now I either stream shows or watch DVD’s. I miss sports, but nothing else. I wonder why we pay for cable. Remember when it started? One of the biggest selling points was that if you pay for it, you don’t have to watch the ads. That went away very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033/40 "2018-04-14T00:34:37Z")
> [@CelticKnot](#): > > One of the biggest selling points was that if you pay for it, you don’t have to watch the ads. That went away very quickly. That’s still true on some channels. I honestly do miss TCM sometimes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-networks-are-going-to-have-to-get-ahead-of-people-cutting-the-cable/812033.md?page=3)