[Quote]:
These are confusing times in the living room. The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of “cord-cutting” — a term that has come to mean canceling traditional pay TV and replacing it with programming from a grab bag of online sources.
But so far Americans are not doing this in any meaningful numbers. “Nor is there any evidence of it emerging in the near future,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of Leichtman Research Group, which studies consumer media habits.
This is all the more remarkable, industry analysts say, because it seems to defy the way the Internet has disrupted and challenged virtually every other major form of media — from music to newspapers to books.
In part that is because the television business took action to avoid the same fate. Heavyweight distributors and producers have protected their business models by ensuring that some must-see shows and live sporting events cannot legally be seen online.
Apparently it’s still easier to dump TV altogether than to replace it with an online version..
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Yeah, if you’re attached to watching specific shows on HBO or live sports games that aren’t available online, then switching isn’t going to work so well.
I can say though that even if you just want to watch an occasional movie, and not get it from a torrent, it’s a mixed bag. About a year ago we had several experiences of flipping through Netflix’s streamable catalog and not really seeing anything we were excited about. (So I killed that subscription.)
And Hulu has its problems too: the episodes get dropped after a few weeks, so if you miss the start of a season you’re out of luck. It’s like insisting on bringing the worst of broadcast TV (the fact that one (or one’s DVR) has to catch it when it’s on) to internet TV.