Many of those old enough to remember what a burden cable once seemed to be, and plenty young enough to never have truly experienced those days, find themselves similarly longing for the ease and freedom of everything just being on the TV. NotYellowstone, a long-time favorite, being on this service whileThe Last of Us, that new one that’s supposed to be amazing, is on that service, andYou, the thing your spouse has been waiting for, of course, has to be on one of the other thousand streaming services. That certainly wasn’t the general mood by the end ofcable’s hold on the television landscape, with there being more a feeling of wanting to dance on the grave of this cumbersome relic, but human emotions can be quite cyclical, and the time is right to miss that old battle ax known as cable TV.
Television as we know it, or knew it (since much has transitioned to some kind of streaming service), was something the last few generations got to watch evolve in real-time. While technically1928 was the launch of personal TVsin homes (lucky viewers were treated to a woman smoking and a man playing ukulele), it would be another few decades before they became commonplace. Even up until 1950, the number ofTVs in homes topped out at 9%of America, but jump ahead a decade to 1960 and that 9% becomes 90%. The number of networks, channels, and TV stations grew exponentially every year for decades. It seemed as though the sky was the limit, but by the 90s that unreachable ceiling was very much in sight. Having dozens upon dozens of channels to choose from is one thing, but cable TV reached the point where the selection numbered in the hundreds and hundreds, and the cost of cable began to reflect that. Throw in extra fee channels, likeHBO(which is, in fact, TV, as evidenced byHBO’s regular Sunday night lineup), and those responsible for the household cable bill were finding themselves in a quandary. As Americans, TV was a national pastime, but how much more price gouging and drowning in excess could people take?
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Too Many Channels, Too Much Money, Too Little Time
Despite hundreds of channels to choose from, the public finally seemed to reach that point of desiring change enough for it to happen in the new millennium. Nobody really wanted to scroll through endless channels in search of something to watch (only to pick one of the same networks, as usual), butcable TV charges kept increasing, so seeing what’s on all those channels being paid for almost felt like a requirement. Somehow, the act of watching TV, which was a relaxing luxury not too long ago, morphed into a kind of chore that cost money and it seemed like there had to be another way. The idea of cutting cable loose entirely and simply not watching TV any longer surely appealed to several, but by and large TV is a standard appliance in American homes and that’s just part of the deal now. It was more a case of finding a cable provider who offered most of the desired channels and kept the government-approved bureaucratic extortion to a minimum because there really weren’t any other choices unless one was willing to stop participating in the whole TV game cold turkey. Suddenly, however, streaming services came along and there were other options. The TV-watching world opened up and seemed free again, as cable TV was no longer the only way to watch TV.
The idea of being able to cut cable and still watch the same favorite shows, plus new ones, became an achievable reality thanks to various streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or the latest addition to the club. It involved patience as waiting until the next day became standard, but in some ways, it was even better, since commercials could be ditched–for a fee, of course–and it seemed like the beginnings of a new, better TV-watching era. Instead of having to pay for hundreds of unwanted channels, consumers had the option to pick this streaming service or that one, leaving some things unavailable, but the choices of streaming service were still fairly sparse enough that things largely fell into one boat or the other. It wound up being less expensive than cable TV, too. That temporary period where consumers could actually experience the best of both worlds was just the calm before the storm, however. Instead of taking multiple decades to reach a point of instability, it seems the world of streaming options has barely taken over a single decade for things to get as unwieldy as they were when the wheels fell off of cable providers’ hold on the television industry.
Freedom From Cable Becomes Fealty To Streaming
If, for example, one was interested in watching the 2022 Emmy-winning shows from the main categories (Drama/Comedy/Mini-series, Actor/Actress, Supporting Actor/Actress), shows likeTed Lasso,Succession,Squid Game,Dopesick, andAbbott Elementary, it would only take subscriptions to Apple TV, Peacock, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO to do it. At only around $70 for those five, it reeks of ease and freedom! The award ceremony itself could easily be watched on NBC,not that many Emmy viewers still tune in, so at least viewers without all those streaming services got to learn about shows they can’t watch.It’s also notable that even regular networks have started dividing their available media among different internal services. Having the use of NBCand CBSdoesn’t mean things on Peacock or Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) are available, for instance, as companies saw chances to extract more money wherever possible and leaped. The ideal possibility of the consumer having the freedom to be able to pick and choose which channels they wanted to watch was almost kind of a reality, but only for as long as it took media companies to seize the profits they saw laying all over the place with a good old-fashioned divide and conquer mentality.
Services like SlingTV and YouTube TV are available for those interested in something that’s a bit of a cable TV/streaming service hybrid, but neither is quite the best of both worlds. It’s more like the average-est of both worlds, though at least they alleviate a lot of the need for a half dozen different accounts that still only amount to a fraction of what’s available. So, enjoy the “freedom” from cable TV; enjoy the freedom of all the different login pages, billing cycles, incremental price increases, and various other privileges the illusion of choice brings. Or just get cable TV again and see if it’s really as unpleasant as memory suggests.
