This is the pattern of the time because every channel has a cable and/or streaming system where they want to shift programs. It will grow even more in the next couple of years.
The good news is that most of these shifted shows are so niche, they are carrying only dedicated viewers. Some are very good, most are utterly unimportant.
And the situation will continue that way because people cannot afford to subscribe to everything and the bundles you can buy are restricted to only certain channels.
I don't know that I need anything on HULU. In the long run, I do believe the intent is just to eliminate free TV.
Posts: 10529 | Location: New York | Registered: November 20, 2007
Originally posted by Tommy C: Someone commented on the fact that you can't get any of the "popular" shows on free TV anymore.
I think that would depend on what "popular" is. It used to be a simple matter of ratings. Network TV requires multiple millions of viewers to be a hit show because the coverage is so large. On a cable channel, subscription is so much smaller, 2 million viewers may make up the #1 hit show.
How many times do card collectors come out for a particular title that is "popular", but then the support of the cards falls short because there really aren't that many fans.? Sci-fi and comic fans may make for blockbuster movies, but they don't all support the same TV shows. They aren't going to subscribe to a bunch of different channels to follow them all.
Posts: 10529 | Location: New York | Registered: November 20, 2007
Watching TV has certainly gotten more complicated. Isn't "free TV" pretty much gone already? It seems almost everyone has a cable package through Direct TV or Dish or Xfinity though I do have friends who've dumped cable and just watch movies and stuff on the web. My brother still has a TV antenna on his roof and might go back to watching just what's local.
Maybe Hulu and services like it are the future but I'm not going to pay extra to watch "Orville" or the new Star Trek show but I watched both when they were available through an average cable package ("Discovery" played its pilot on CBS). "Game of Thrones" was a big deal but I didn't subscribe to HBO to watch it. Maybe a show can survive on 2 million viewers, but if cable services continue to make it just a little more difficult/costly to watch their shows, they're going to lose viewers. I've seen too many kids and adults perfectly content with watching stuff on You Tube or listening to podcasts. Are we all going to be making our own content and trading that in the future?
Posts: 4620 | Location: San Jose, CA, USA | Registered: December 23, 2002
Originally posted by catskilleagle: Watching TV has certainly gotten more complicated. Isn't "free TV" pretty much gone already?
I don't know what runs in your neck of the woods, but where I am there are more channels on free TV every year. Of course whether or not you want them is a different matter.
Over the air pulls in all the major networks and many subs that play old movies and reruns of old TV shows and game shows. If you have favorite old shows someone is showing them for free.
Come August 1st many of my local stations are changing frequencies, so we all have to re-scan our TVs for over air channels to get the new ones. Maybe we will pull in more, maybe we will lose some. Don't know yet, but it will be enough for me. I only have so much time anyway, so whatever shows move to cable channels, they aren't getting any more money from me.
Posts: 10529 | Location: New York | Registered: November 20, 2007
I dropped cable in 2014 and picked up an antenna. I have ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, 4 PBS stations, Bounce and a station that seems to run Fraiser/Mash/Andy Griffin on a loop. I have Amazon Prime (That I pay for) and I still have more television then I can watch.
We do not have cable or any other packages. Our family has Verizon for phones and internet, that is it. We've been told by Verizon that it would be an extra $ 100 a month for TV stations beyond "free" TV. Why spend that ? We could use the $ 100 a month for other things.
The only show our kids like is "American Ninja Warrior", on NBC. My wife and I watch PBS, also. Both stations are free. Plus we have hundreds of DVDs of old shows and movies from the 1980s, so we are happy.
Plus if we had cable or something else, we'd have to shield our curious kids from too many shows with questionable content--violence, language, etc. Why should we have to deal with that ?
Posts: 4814 | Location: Bayonne, NJ, USA | Registered: May 06, 2001
Back when I was a kid, most sports teams showed their games on basic cable or over the air TV - The exception was the NY Islanders, who moved all their games to Sports Channel (which at the time was a payed channel). To this day (30 years later) there are way more NY Ranger fans since they could watch their team for free
When the Cable Movie Channels came around (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax), you could only watch certain movies, depending on which channels your parents subscribe to. I bet this led to some kids watching and becoming fans of some movies while others never had the chance to see them so don't have the same connections or memories.
Now with all these different pay services (Netfilx, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, CBS All Access, Disney+) it will be very interesting to see what effect this has on kid in the years to come. Will their conversation be something like "Remember watching Stranger Things or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and then going around the room "No, Yes, Yes, No" depending on what services you had.
AWR, that reminds me of when I was a kid in the 1980s.
All of my neighbors had seen "Fraggle Rock" and talked about it, but we could not, as we did not have cable
I also remember how some cartoons like "Inspector Gadget" were originally on free TV, but then later on they had new seasons, new episodes that were on Nickelodeon, which we could not see, and were unaware of.
Posts: 4814 | Location: Bayonne, NJ, USA | Registered: May 06, 2001
