The Last Throes of Cable Television?

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Technology Thursday

In the age of Netflix and Tivo, who watches real-time cable television anymore? My husband and I were very early adopters of the Tivo. We got a free Tivo back in 2000 or 2001 for sending in a poem about why we thought Tivo was cool. (Something like that; the details are lost to history now.) We still have that Tivo although a few years later we bought a second one with more capacity. Ironically, both Tivos are now useless because earlier this year we canceled our cable television and gave away one of the two tvs. These days, we figure we'll watch "tv" by waiting for episodic television that we're interested in to be released on DVD, and then we'll Netflix it. This summer, though, we even paused our Netflix subscription for a few months because we simply were not spending any time watching anything.

Our schedules haven't lightened up any, really, but we're both so worn out that we re-activated Netflix a few weeks ago just to give ourselves some mindless downtime watching movies or tv now and then. Netflix is but one of many examples of new technologies and new business models trumping old ones, and potentially eventually killing off an entire industry.

After we'd had our original Tivo a month, I swore that if Tivo (now any digital-video-recorder technology) went away, I would simply never watch television again. When I travel and watch tv in hotel rooms, I hate feeling completely handicapped by not being able to live-pause. With the advent of Netflix coupled with faster-cycle times in getting shows out on DVD, I may simply never watch live/real-time television again, except for the occasional live sporting or political event.

The other day a friend of mine mentioned that she was looking forward to trying out her new Roku. I said, "Who? Wha?" Roku is a device that allows you to stream Netflix movies or shows directly from the Internet to your television. No need to even wait for the DVD anymore, and no need to watch whatever you get on a small computer screen. I was vaguely aware that Netflix is now offering the ability to stream some movies directly to your computer, but didn't know there was an easy way to get them to show on your television. Nifty!

Wired had an article recently titled "Netflix Everywhere: Sorry Cable You're History" that goes into more detail about the disruption Netflix+Internet is causing the cable industry and the business model and licensing arrangements Netflix is having to work out to move towards its CEO's vision of every movie on every screen everywhere.

Netflix has taken the boldest step yet toward a world in which consumers, not programmers, determine not only what they watch but when, where, and how. The dream of routing around cable companies just may be in sight.

You'll never hear Hastings point that out, however. Unlike many in the tech world, he's a quiet disrupter, sabotaging business models silently and irretrievably. His first hit was to the DVD business. Netflix, which lets subscribers hold on to movies for as long as they like, was cheaper, easier, and more convenient for consumers than building film libraries; DVD sales have plummeted as Netflix has grown. And while his streaming service would seem to present a similar threat to cable companies, Hastings argues that their real challenge comes from the Internet in general, not just Netflix.

It will be some years, I expect, before my 1-year-old demands his own Netflix queue (or equivalent), but the prospect of being able to easily be deliberate about what video content he's exposed to, as opposed to being at the mercy of what the advertisers on the broadcast networks deem worthy of paying for, is definitely appealing. It will be interesting to see what other standard components of every day life today are disrupted over the next 5-10 years by technology and/or networking innovations and breakthroughs. As Tom Limoncelli argues in this article, the Internet is just getting started.

Comments

[Frederick]

You're too right! Netflix+Roku is simply an unbeatable combination. And if you are a an active parent who wants control over what is viewed in the house and also wants a vast library of high-quality family programming (not mindless commercial pabulum from Disney or Nikelodeon) this device is a must-have. Keep in mind that Netflix is only one of three current channels on the dead-simple and versatile Roku box. The OnDemand content from Amazon is 4x larger. The other channel is Major League Baseball which shows live and archived games OnDemand. More channels are coming soon!

[Katherine]

We have gone the opposite direction and cancelled Netflix in favor of a Verizon provided DVR. The bundle price was too attractive to resist: $100 a month for high-speed Internet, unlimited local & LD phone and all the TV channels I could possibly want. But I thank Netflix and Comcast for the pressure that I'm sure keeps those prices reasonable.

[Lyn]

Yeah - it's interesting to read about various calculations that people make. Diane over at Nobody Knows Anything incorporates iTunes and AppleTV into her family's assessment: http://www.nobody-knows-anything.com/2009/09/57-channels-not-even.html