Cables are being cut on old TV boxes. My problem with cable is the pure amount of nonsense on it. Do I want to watch ads for the rest of my life? No. To me, cable is just that. More and more people continue to switch from their main source of entertainment on their TV from cable to streaming.
As a result of the entertainment world switching from cable to internet services, entertainment companies have had to pivot just to stay afloat. This was even more amplified for some movie companies because of the pandemic. The fact that viewers couldn’t go out and watch their movies forced them to create services so that they could still make revenue from movies like Disney, which premiered Black Widow online on Disney+.
Now, with parents using Youtube and devices to keep their kids entertained, there is no space for the Disney channel. Forbes reports in an article about the decline of channels on cable that, “the Disney Channel ranked second among all cable networks averaging 2.65 million viewers in primetime. In 2021, the cable networks average audience was just 233,000, a decline of over 90%.” Losing almost all their viewers they focused on making a streaming platform to get back their audience.
Streaming has had a huge rise into the spotlight of the entertainment world and has now overtaken cable. Most Americans watch normal cable TV for mostly one or two channels. Now that there are ways to do that on the internet, so more people are leaving cable in the past. Of course, there are some who are stuck. Such as my father. He grew up on cable TV and that’s how he watches TV while he falls asleep on the couch. That is an example of an outlier. There is now ESPN+ where you can watch sports anywhere and Hulu with Live TV now. Cable TV is now going the way of the tape recorders, due to the fact that there is something way more efficient to watch our favorite TV shows, movies, sports, and news.
Shira Ovide of the New York Times summarizes what’s happening to the existence of cable, saying, “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…, is whether Americans keep turning away from cable and satellite TV relatively slowly, or whether it will ‘abruptly collapse, like a Jenga tower.’” There is a new king on the hill in the entertainment industry and that is streaming, not TV anymore. Now more and more companies will and are switching to streaming websites.
There is an advantage to streaming compared to cable. Such as access to new shows and movies. To watch them you need to go through a paywall and subscribe to their streaming channel just to watch one movie or show. Then just to watch some TV series, you need multiple streaming services and be subscribed to them. As many know it is costly to be subscribed to multiple streaming subscriptions. For Disney+, Netflix, Peacock, HBOMax it’s $32.96 a month. That is $395.53 per 12 months. Cable price points differ, a report from the USNews journalistic company says that the bare minimum for cable is $25 on average and for more than basic cable it’s $71. For the price, you get on cable it’s not worth it compared to streaming. Cable cannot compete with streaming for prices and exclusive shows anymore and it is only alive due to news and football still being on cable.
The positives of streaming are far greater than cable. Overall, if I or anyone wants to sit down and watch a TV show it will be on Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or on any streaming service and not on cable TV.
MOOSE PRINTS 