What’s Left Of Cable TV Is Slowly Going To Hell
We just got done noting how 2023 was finally the year that streaming fully surpassed traditional TV in terms of overall paying subscribers. A very obvious cord cutting" trend that executives spent years claiming wasfake or a fad is now the majority norm.
But what's left of traditional cable TV isn't doing so well. Broadcast TV viewing accounted for just 20.8% of total TV watching in 2023. And as companies increasingly funnel their resources and attention toward their own streaming services, traditional television channels are starting to look downright ugly.
Take, for example, USA Network. Riding a high thanks to the success of great shows like Mr. Robot just a few years ago, the channel is now just a hollow shell of itself, mindlessly airing repeats:
Viewership is way down, and USA's original programming department is gone. The channel has had just one original scripted show this year, and it is not exclusive to the network - it also airs on another channel. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" for all but two hours, when it showed reruns of CBS' NCIS" and NCIS: Los Angeles."
The trend is the same across TBS, Comedy Central, MTV, and other channels, which have all become more like zombies than competently managed television channels. Much of this is just the inevitable impact of streaming's rise, and not necessarily a bad thing. Though given consumers still pay the same rates for cable TV, this sort of half-assery will only accelerate the transition from traditional cable to streaming.
That said, many of the executives who ran cable TV into the ground have jumped ship to streaming, and are repeating many of the same mistakes without having learned much of anything from history or experience. It's why we're increasingly seeing shittier streaming product catalogs, higher prices, pointless mergers, steady layoffs, and no shortage of annoying efforts to nickel-and-dime existing customers.
At the heart of the problem sits Wall Street's myopic thirst for improved quarterly returns at any cost. It's simply not good enough to provide people with a quality product everybody likes; the need for improved quarterly returns inevitably results in a quest for scale and growth that always cut corners and sacrifices product quality, opening the door, once again, to yet another round of disruption.
So as cable TV heads to its grave, streaming is intent on becoming more like cable. That in turn opens the door wider to alternative options like Twitch, TikTok, and whatever comes next, as the never-ending cycle continues.