TV Time
If you’re like me, you’re probably not watching much broadcast or linear TV. Even if you do watch - mostly for news and sports (and even that’s changing as streamers buy rights to some televised sporting events) - your life is filled with streaming services.
A recent Park Associates study found that 87% of US households now subscribe to at least one OTT (Over The Top) streaming service. In my house, I think we have five (or more, I’ve lost count).
We may be the outliers since nearly half of those households service-hop, adding and removing the streamers based on the latest shows. So, for instance, when The Last of Us showed up on HBOMax, the service probably got a lot of fresh subscribers. It’s possible many left as soon as Joe and Ellie rode off into the sunset. However, it’s obvious that HBOMax is well aware of this trend, so it queued a new season of Succession right up behind The Last of Us. The study backs that up by noting that the reason 48% of respondents sign up for a new streamer is because of a specific program.
I was surprised to learn that 44% are still paying for cable TV but I wonder if this is mostly about inertia. In my home, we’ve been talking about “dropping cable” in favor of an all-ala carte streamer menu. Obviously, this doesn't mean we end our relationship with the cable company, which provides the Internet that delivers all those streamers.
We’ve hesitated though because we’re still not sure the math when you add up all our streaming services will work in our favor. And when we discover that there’s a content piece we’re missing without Linear TV, like sports (my Mets) or news (CNN or Live with Kelly and Ryan that I occasionally appear on), will we try to find another streaming service to fill the gap? Probably. And when we do this, will the sum total be as much as what we currently pay for cable and Internet combined? Maybe.
I have no doubt that the future is one where cable TV is dead and all shows, ones delivered on a broadcast schedule and on-demand streaming, are available through OTT. But we’re in the messy part right now and many of us have a decision to make.
Oh, and the other decision is how we’ll pay for the services we enjoy because of password sharing. The study found that 40% of us are currently sharing credentials and if there’s one other thing I know about the future of TV watching, it’s that streamers are all about to clamp down on that habit and make everyone pay.
Ticking down
Yesterday was supposed to be the day Twitter removed all legacy verified Blue Ticks from anyone who refused to pay $8 a month. It didn’t happen.
What’s going on? Was this Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s greatest con ever? Was he messing with us? I doubt it. Instead, there may be some recalibration at play as many notables, including high-profile celebrities like Lebron James, said they won’t pay.
I still expect Musk to act but there’s a tiny chance he might make some sort of adjustment. We’ll see.
April Fooled
It was a surprisingly quiet and embarrassingly dumb-prank-free April Fool’s Day. The jokes were so spare, I had to hunt a few down. There was the side-by-side toilet-seat lift system, Dave Bautista’s Netflix Standup comedy special (maybe the most inspired), and a lengthy story about Elon Musk recanting the Cybertruck in favor of a $20k electric pickup. That last one managed to make it, without any explanation, to Google News.
As I congratulated myself on not offering a single April Fool’s prank myself, I wondered when I’d become such a grumpy, old man. I used to like jokes and pranks and not only enjoyed but fully engaged in April Fools, shepherding stories about humans spreading computer viruses, DaVinci making the original Google Glasses, and Conan O’Brien taking over Mashable to I assumed entertained audiences.
Now, I’ve got nothing. The world is not in a great place and silly jokes about Elon Dusk eyewear that let you tweet from a pair of sunglasses are just out of step with our harsh reality.
Or late April Fools 😉. I’m just too lazy to come up with great April Fool’s ideas anymore. Hope you survived the day OK.
See you soon.
Be Good to each other