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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

A huge contingent of the population, especially internationally and among US boomers will keep their cable bundle.

Not just Boomers. I've seen numbers showing that Gen X is getting tired of jumping through hoops to watch TV, so they're going back to cable, or going * gasp * OTA.

The numbers also show that Gen Z seems to embrace "owned" physical media a lot more than Millennials, and that they're also more likely to go full OTA just because they see little value in paying for multiple streams or a cable subscription.

It seems that Millennials love streams and subscriptions, and everyone else is rethinking whether that's a good idea.

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As a millennial, there was a "golden age" for video streaming that has now passed where Netflix was the biggest game in town and had most of the desirable content. Now that there are 6 or 7 streaming services each with their own exclusives (and regional differences) streaming is becoming much less appealing.

Netflix was never that great for movies but you could always subscribe to their DVDs. Unfortunately, more and more titles are becoming unavailable. (I resubscribed for a while during the pandemic but just canceled it again.) Of course, you can often just rent a la carte as well.

It is a very fragmented landscape. On the other hand, I find I can subscribe to a few services and get access to far more good content than I have time to watch. There's very little that I just have to see and, if there is, I can just spin up some service for a month.

Circa 2007-2011, before their deal with Starz expired, Netflix streaming usually had any movie, new or old, I ever wanted to see. The catalogue was massive. Now, around 3/4 of the time (my estimate) I'd be forced to rent or stream elsewhere.

https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/...

I guess we have different tastes. I actually canceled Netflix streaming when they started charging separately for it and only picked it up again when House of Cards came out. And I still remember telling a Netflix exec I knew that their streaming movie catalog wasn't very good. His response was that people come to Netflix for movies and stay for the TV shows.

I read people saying what you did but it just doesn't match my experience; I kept a DVD subscription the whole time until fairly recently.

But I don't think any of the streaming services are great for movies. I watch what they have and then either rent from RedBox, buy a disc if it's something I think I may want to rewatch, or pay for a streaming rental.

No, Netflix had a massive catalogue at one point. It was even much later than 2011. Probably up until 2015, was when they really started losing content.

Netflix had every movie when the production companies viewed streaming as a minor distraction.

Every movie.

Now that every corporate interest wants a streaming site of their own, bittorrent looks attractive again.

>Netflix had every movie when the production companies viewed streaming as a minor distraction.

That is simply wrong. Why would they even have maintained a DVD rental service under those circumstances? All my "movie buff" friends always maintained a DVD rental subscription.

Because broadband penetration at the time wasn't as large as it is today.

Sports alone are a huge reason that keeps many people on their cable bundle--and it tends to be something a lot of people want to watch on their TV rather than a computer.

>It seems that Millennials love streams and subscriptions, and everyone else is rethinking whether that's a good idea.

I'm a bit skeptical of a lot of generational stereotypes. I think many people are having some subscription fatigue especially with video. But I can't say that I've seen a lot of evidence that Gen Z is particularly addicted to accumulating "stuff" especially media in physical form.

e.g. https://www.rev.com/blog/how-gen-z-and-millennials-consume-v...

I think sport is the next thing the streaming services will look at. Amazon has started to do this, and now has some (a small percentage) of the England premier league soccer matches in the UK.

Amazon (and netflix, apple, etc) has way deeper pockets than the current rightsholders (Sky, which was owned by Murdoch until he sold to Comcast recently, and BT Sport, which is also completely dwafered by Big Tech).

It's difficult to see them not going big for this next time the rights are up for renegotiation. Amazon and Netflix have extremely high household penetration already, with their apps prebundled on so many TVs.

only a matter of time before all ESPN and Fox Sports are bundled into Disney+, since Disney owns both.

I would hope they keep it as an option. Sports make up a big chunk of an overall cable bill. So if Disney bundles it in, expect that to put big upward pressure on the price of a subscription.

Pretty sure Fox Sport is one of the Fox properties not included in the sale?

oh you're right. looks like Disney just owns Fox Sports Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Sports

Cable operators already offer skinny bundles with only news/sport for lower cost, so you'll get a new leg down just from that + full cord cuts. But that's just delaying the inevitable I think - they'll abandon cable TV when margins turn negative (half a decade or so), and live off their broadband businesses.

A lot of sports streaming requires a cable subscription, to even be allowed to stream the content.

Except the games that are streaming only, and you can’t watch on cable.

It is very consumer hostile experience.

Those who are tired of paid streaming services can just go torrenting.

Either Gen Z has become absolutely technologically inept or these numbers are used to shape a narrative that pleases the news conglomerates.

Gen X and older Millenials are the most technologically adept age cohorts if we're talking about computers. Younger Millenials and Gen Z grew up with computers as appliances.

It took me a long time to get over the hump of canceling cable TV. But, then, I don't get any OTA. If I got good broadcast TV signals, I'd probably have taken the leap much sooner.

I'm also not sure it's useful to distinguish a cable bundle from streaming if that streaming includes YouTube TV or whatever. You're really just getting the bundle in a different form at that point--and not really saving a lot of money.

> I'm also not sure it's useful to distinguish a cable bundle from streaming if that streaming includes YouTube TV or whatever. You're really just getting the bundle in a different form at that point--and not really saving a lot of money.

Expect one you can cancel and purchase within seconds whenever you want or need to, and can watch on any device you want, and deal with fewer ad breaks.

Cable TV is on no way a comparable product to the streaming services. People complaining about the horror of clicking a few buttons to cancel and resubscribe on a website gave no idea of the type of horror that awaits when dealing with a cable company.

Fair enough, although that only applies if you want to dip in and out or watch on different devices. Had I actually watched cable TV latterly sufficient to justify what I was paying for it, I'd have had very little reason to switch to YouTube TV or whatever. The content is pretty comparable and the issue for me was that I just wasn't watching it nearly as much as other services that cost a lot less. I still wish I had live TV now and then but not enough to pay for it.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that when I canceled cable TV and my landline from Comcast they didn't even put up a mild fight. (I still have Internet from them.)

I guess I'm Gen X. Or a very young Boomer. I've just stopped watching TV altogether. "News" is a joke, and everything else seems like a waste of time.

This. And I refuse to watch serials anymore, just feature-length films. Why? Because I’m tired of being strung along. Here, watch this season now. But wait 12-18 months for the next season. Repeat. By the time that next season rolls around, I just don’t care about the characters anymore.

Fiction writers love to play this trick with book trilogies and book series. So I don’t start a book series unless all books are already in print.

They're just different forms. Films, multi-film series and connected series, miniseries, episodic TV, serialized TV, blends of episodic and serialized, anthologies, shorts, etc. are all different and have their own pluses and minuses.

It's obviously fine to prefer some and not others.

You can equally see TV seasons as giving the opportunity to take a break from something for a while.

So you loved True Detective then? Beginning, middle, end, all crystalized in the writer/producer's mind before they even began shooting?

I also don't like the season-after-season thing you're referring to, but I am encouraged that over the last 3 or 4 years we've seen a small increase in the number of stories being told with a defined story arc, and no sequels.

Xer here. If by joke you mean it's brainwashing and propaganda, I'm with you. A joke, randomly oriented, I could take, the one sided preaching that news, TV and movie broadcast 24x7 is just infuriating.

OTA? With ads every 15 mins? I don't think so.

Netflix (and later amzn video and to a slightly lesser extent hulu) was the way out of that hellhole, and I don't see even boomers like me "going back".

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