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Comment by jes5199 | Hacker News Reader

do people still watch live TV? I’m only exposed it to when I stay in hotels and it seems to only be Seinfeld reruns and Shark Tank

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It's for sports and news (which both earn many many eyes and are most satisfying when watched live), not so much for reality or scripted productions. Even if you like channel surfing among the latter, you can do that in most service-specific streaming apps now.

At least for news, something like [PBS NewsHour](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/) is available free for cord cutters. Sports, you're mostly looking at illicit streams from dodgy sites.

It's great for when you don't want to choose something to watch

A lot of people including my brother do like to have TV as background. (Personally I hate it.)

Way back when I would travel in groups and sometimes have a roommate one of the nails on chalkboard things for me was people who would turn on the TV the first thing when they walked into a room.

I usually have music going in the background instead, which I would guess a lot of people would find just as annoying.

I don't find it as annoying--and sometimes even like it--but I don't routinely put music on as background especially if I'm reading/writing/etc.

My guilty pleasure have been the Roku Digital Channels. They have channels that are just a 24 hour feed of MST3K, or Cook's Illustrated, or How It's Made, or Antiques Roadshow. Just to turn on some background while I am making dinner or working on a project has been enjoyable, commercials and all.

I was recently on vacation where they had a roku TV and watched these. I watched some old Unsolved Mysteries episodes, honestly there weren't really that many commercials on this at all compared to my parent's cable subscription.

I recall that after well after I had cut the cord a lot of channels on cable had switched to just playing one show all day on some channels so the concept seemed to pre-date the roku setup.

Many of the smart TVs have similar (I think they're just repackaging what was already out there on Pluto etc; Sling also includes those same channels in their Freestream)

I actually watch a ton of This Old House on my Samsung TV in my home office.

I watch those occasionally. I couple weeks ago I happened across some South Korean movie that was their own version of a Tom Clancy war thriller. It was horrible but fascinating(1), and I would never have sought it out on my own. I like the stumble-upon factor that channels give you.

(1) Fascinating in how it depicted other nations. South Korea as competent protagonists who are threading the needle in a dangerous world, North Korea as a broken relation who needs to redeem themselves, China as a looming threat that can still be diplomatically dealt with, USA as clumsy good guys who have lost their way, and Japan as just horrible villains.

Sports fans watch a lot of live TV.

Based on the couple times I have watched sports recently, I would have thought it was a series of gambling ads interspersed with sports.

That’s because the TV system is going to collapse soon, and gambling and data neeed for gambling will replace that revenue.

Old people watch a lot of TV, so pretty much every commercial is targeted at them. Medications, retirement planning, predatory "manage your finances" apps, and of course commercials for thinly veiled clones of NCIS.

There's a large population of people from a prior generation to you.

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