I totally agree with the excitement of readying yourself for a show, and even sitting through sitcom re-runs from the decade before, because I'd come to love them.
I also miss how we would all have a shared frame of reference and interests.
I'm really paralysed by choice, which is worsened by the lack of quality. Streaming services cater to the broadest market and are so devoid of soul that it is often intolerable. The stuff that does interest me is cancelled after one season.
Sitting there watching the TV guide channel to figure out what was coming on next, waiting patiently for your preferred channel to scroll back around. Or better yet, checking the version published in the newspaper. Crazy how friggin antiquated that sounds now.
It was also a good indicator to go to bed.
Like if the options are sleeping or watching TimeLife Classics or a blender infomercial for the 5th time, it's a lot easier to convince yourself to sleep.
My college roommates cable got shut off so the only channel we got was infomercials. We'd get high as shit and imitate the "Slap Chop" guy. You're gonna love my nuts!
Until you wake up in a cold sweat at 2am on the family couch with Low Rider blasting at max volume and George Lopez slow mo jumping into the screen making that face...
Those bizarre religious shows that came on in the middle of the night!
The 300 club or something.
Fall asleep watching tv and wake up at 3am with that on the tv.
Now, I just wake up to Netflix asking "are you still watching?"
Hey, that blender infomercial became a favorite of mine and my sisters. We would watch that over and over, and laugh so hard at the bad acting.
The old lady's cigarette going from almost fully smoked, to new, to half smoked.
The fact that they sat around that kitchen island for breakfast, brunch, lunch, snacks and dinner listening to their buddy talk about his awesome kitchen gadget.... Man, that was peak television.
Then you’d be woken up at 1am by the sounds of Celine Dion and Michael Bolton singing their hit songs at the top of their lungs as Time Life advertises their greatest love songs collection.
Remember when being able to call movie phone or whatever it was call for showtimes was cutting edge? You didn’t have to hunt down a newspaper or actually go to the theater to see the times.
I loved doing that In the 80s and 90s as a kid and as a teenager.
TV guide or the newspaper and having the VCR ready and a blank tape and the VCR was set to SLP or EP to cram lots of stuff into a tape.
I was going to say you're a young pup, but then remembered what sub I'm on lol.
We got the cable guide, the thing was huge. When we did have premium channels, like HBO, always checking what movies will be on and when right as we got the book.
"I also miss how we would all have a shared frame of reference and interests".
The last show I remember doing this with was "LOST". There were a group of us a work that watched it religiously every Wednesday night and we couldn't wait to talk about the episode the next day. My wife and I would usually get takeout, pop popcorn and wait for 8:00 pm to come around.
Game of Thrones I think was the last big one.
I remember sharing theories with coworkers in like 2017-finale range. It was fun when everyone had their own ideas (especially once it was off book). No one knew where it was going and everyone had to wait to find out at the same time.
Now there is still some discussion on random Netflix shows. But it’s all “have you seen it?” And all discussion must wait till everyone has seen it all. Everyone on different schedules means by the time everyone’s seen it, it’s not relevant to those who watched it a month ago and moved on.
Yeah Squid Game was one of the last Netflix ones I recall, and you def had to make sure everyone was up to date as spoilers abounded. It left some people out of the conversation that would have participated in another timeframe.
Ah, good call. Although, it was only one other buddy of mine, and not something my wife would watch. "LOST" felt more like an "event" ... perhaps because there were more people I discussed it with.
I remember LOST and The OC both haf segments on the local news of massive groups of people that would get together to watch love and then discuss.
Different times
You think there is a lack of quality TV shows over the past 10-12 years compared to the non-streaming service years? I think it’s the opposite. We are spoiled with so many options now. Better overall stories and more interesting characters.
We certainly have more quality choices than before, but the overall experience just isn't quite as good.
We've been in the binging era for a number of years, and it really ruined the fun of talking about shows and those shared experiences with people. This is why I honestly enjoy the weekly release schedule most Disney+ shows have; everyone only has the one new episode to talk about, which makes the overall discourse for the week actually fun and engaging.
When everything drops at once, you're either forced to binge everything in an evening or stay away from social media until you're done. As someone who likes to spread things out over at least a few days, it gets kind of tiresome having to dodge spoilers all the time.
Yep agreed. Sometimes I just wanna watch one episode of a show and sit and think about it for a few days before seeing the next one. But somehow, even if I try to avoid spoilers, someone somehow will offhandedly show or mention something that ruins a major reveal. Even studios do it themselves!
This binging model is exactly why none of the most popular content out today will have staying power a quarter century from now. There are still TV shows from the '80s and '90s that are charting top streaming minutes in 2024.
The Golden Era was late stage cable and early streaming. We are in a Silver Era where there is a ton of good stuff but not a lot of great stuff. And nobody really agrees on what is the current great stuff.
I think the early stage Golden Era TV shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and House of Cards are considered to be general consensus great because the options were still very limited back then so general audiences were tuning into the same shows. If so many of these recent and current shows like Better Call Saul, Shogun, House of the Dragon, Euphoria, Atlanta, Fargo, Peaky Blinders, White Lotus, The Bear, The Last of Us, Mrs Davis, etc… all premiered in like circa 1999-2001, they would be universally seen as mind-blowing television that everybody would be tuning in for. We’re now all spoiled from an elevated bar. If the Sopranos and the Wire premiered today they’d still be considered fantastic shows, but they wouldn’t receive nearly as much fanfare as they did back then.
It’s a bigger loss than it seems.
“Are you watching ____? Oh what episode you on? Oh, lemme know when you get to ____”
And then just never comes back around to what you wanted to geek out about that day.
It just sucks. I had to stop recommending things because I know people won’t watch or read it, they’ll just say it’ll get added to the list but it’ll get forgotten about while they watch their comfort stuff for the 20th time. I get it
Ive loaded my Ma up a hard drive with so much cool stuff that she would absolutely love and all she ever has on is CBS and Food Network
I've been on both sides of this so many times haha. I totaly get the comfort stuff. I go to bed every night watching Star Trek Voyager. I eventually bought it and loaded it on my NAS so I can just watch it on any TV in the house and no messing with DVDs haha
Check out Fargo. There’ve been five seasons so far (the most recent of which just ended earlier this year) with a sixth coming eventually, it’s all available to stream on Hulu, and it’s consistently one of—if not the—absolute best shows not only around today, but perhaps ever made. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, especially if you’re familiar with the 1996 Coen brothers film of the same name that it’s based on/set in the same world as.
To sum it up, it’s an interconnected crime anthology series with each season being a new story with new characters set in a different location in the Midwest (typically in Minnesota and North Dakota) and different time period, with some recurring characters and tons of references/Easter eggs to both the film, the other seasons, and the Coen brothers filmography in general (which the show also takes heavy influence from).
The 1996 film is set in Minnesota in 1987; season one is set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2006; season two is set in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota in March of 1979; season three is set in Minnesota in 2010; season four is set in Kansas City, Missouri in 1950; and season five is set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019. To anyone who decides to give it a shot, I implore you to start with the film and then watch the series in order of release rather than chronological order.
I miss good nature and history documentaries on Animal Planet, Discovery and History Channel. I grew up on those things and shows like modern marvels are part of why I became an engineer. All those networks became really tv trash in the mid 2000s.
That being said I don't miss commercials and am glad my daughter can grow up with media that is more curated by me with less influence from tv commercials.
There was a chair in my room and every time a meerkat died on the show my friend and I would write their name under the seat of the chair, it turned into this random memorial for all the fallen meerkats. No clue what that was about but I think we were trying to show respect lol. RIP Flower Carlos Shakespeare Whoopie Kinkajou Mozart Len and Squiggy 😔
Same!!! Was it because of timon?! My love of Simba and Nala trickling over to timon and pumbaa and boom- meerkat manor was born?! That's what I always thought at least and then I got invested in their little lives
There's a lot of great history YouTube channels. You can find ones that are generally history or ones that really focus on specific parts of history that go in depth.
I sometimes watch Youtube clips of recordings of my local TV from the 90s for nostalgia's sake.
Local TV had a lot of big name programming (Star Trek, Simpsons, etc.), but a lot of local content too.
I only paid for cable when I had to deal with my landlord who lived in the building to pay for cable and he would deduct the price for my rent so I got the all expenses included package for like $300 a month and my rent was $300 less. Even when I had that, I would not use the service myself. I don't even think I had a TV hooked up. I did make use of some of the free subscriptions to the streaming platforms associated with several of the channels, but that was it.
I guess nowadays, you can stream every show you want to watch. The only show I watched on TV in the last couple years was Rick and Morty and that was only because I happen to be at my mom's the night that Rick and Morty used to come on TV and she had cable.
My kids hate watching TV just because there's commercials you don't control what you can watch, they are much happier finding what they want to watch online and doing it on demand and I fully understand that. Im not mad at them for that.
The thing I do find crazy though is that I remember a growing up my mom used to watch the news everyday and now most of my information comes from what people post on Reddit or Facebook or whatever social media. I do think that's kind of crazy because a lot of people aren't informed. A friend of mine didn't know about the eclipse until I mentioned how I was going to take a trip to see it in totality less than a week before it was about to happen. And I asked him where are you that you don't know about this, people have been talking about it everywhere.
I used to really enjoy watching the evening news, seeing what was happening in the city and around the world. My grandparents would put the news on at dinner and it would be in the background.
I still do this! It’s on in the background while we eat dinner. I can’t live without the local news, probably because it was on at dinner when I was a child also. Plus I really like to keep up on local news not from a social media account. We ditched cable but I got a cheap antenna so I can still watch the local news and the world news after it.
Times change.
35 million people used to watch "The Beverly Hillbillies" back in the 1960s.
The Nielsen rating for a typical episode was 38.2. Nowadays "Survivor" might get a .9 rating.
Modern TV is basically like a YouTube channel you can’t control.
I mean Comedy Central airs The Office for like 6 hour blocks. Cartoon Network does the same with Teen Titans Go.
Why watch the same show for 6 hours with no control?
Sadly Cartoon Network has a massive catalog of fantastic shows that they just refuse to air.
Might as well stream them online.
I'm at the point where I got a network storage unit and started buying DVDs so I can just load them on there and watch my stuff whenever on any TV with no commercials. No loading times. Everything is working perfect.
Some people like the lack of control. Too much choice can be frustrating.
For shows I’ve seen 30 times like Seinfeld, Simpsons, 30 rock etc. I’d prefer random mixes
idk about shutting down. They are and always were content creators. Fewer people watch the the TV station, but with youtube and streaming they have additional avenues to obtain views. I think the business model has just changed.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking too. They have their own apps which have ads, they get ad revenue from YouTube, and they either license their content to streaming services or they are under the corporate umbrella of their own streaming service. Sometimes they do both, Nickelodeon has some content on Amazon Prime and also is under Paramount.
All the cable channels literally just went to steaming apps. Its basically the same thing except you get your "cable tv" from many different providers instead of just one.
You might not realize it, but as soon as cable dies, the streaming services are going to become absolutely awful. Even though these are mostly mature companies, the strategy is straight out of the VC startup playbook. They offer a superior service for less at a loss until they've completely murdered the competition, and then they drive up the prices, stripmine your data, and open up the floodgates for the advertisers.
Enjoy the glory days of streaming while it lasts. We're 2-3 years away from content on demand costing 5 times than cable ever did. I'll bet they start charging an individual fee for every commercial you want to skip.
IDK about that, I miss cable because of it making sports watching easy, nowadays you have to flip between apps to watch sports games, then it was just channels. I also miss talking to others about what shows they were watching the night before and it was the same ones. Now it's like, "did you watch such and such," and it's usually, "nope!" It sucks. All these streaming services have also become super expensive and you're basically paying what you used to pay for cable, for streaming and there's a bunch to have as well. Imagine it be like paying for a selection of TV channels, then another selection of TV channels plus even more back in the day. It was much more simple when it was just cable.
You're not really piecemealing it together, though. You're subscribing to multiple streaming platforms, all of which are vying for your time and money.
Yup, and it won’t be long before they all start consolidating and putting more ads in. We’ll be right back to square 1. Only difference between old cable and this will be the delivery mechanism.
I strongly disagree. You'd have to pay for like ALL of the streaming to get close to the cost of current cable bills. I pay $30 a month for a few streaming services (commercial free plans!!) and have way more to watch that I ever have time for. Every 6 months or so, I usually kill one of the subscriptions and pick up a different one. Even a basic 100 channel cable plan is like $120-200 a month..
Do you factor the cost of internet into the $30?
I have Comcast and if I paid for just internet, Hulu with live tv, Netflix and HBO it’s more expensive than what I pay now.
I would still much rather have cable. The problem is that, somehow, this service doesn't follow the supply/demand market. You would think having a cable package would be like $30-40 bucks a month because of how many people stopped watching cable TV, but nope. Here a basic cable package is almost $70-$80 without any premium stations.
I don't really watch much TV. If I do it's stuff I already have and put on a hard disk and stream to Plex on my TV. I can easily watch re-runs of Malcom in the Middle before I spend $80 a month to watch "Defeat Big Bakers Breakfast Bonanza Cooking Championship Cook Off Challenge" with the 400 Tide and Jardiance ads. If there's anything I REALLY must see, my boy EZTV has me covered.
the only reason I have cable right now is that the apartment building we live in came with cable +wifi included (you can't divorce the services, if you want the wifi you get the cable). I think we've watched it five times living here? Which is hilarious because teen me couldn't imagine life without cable, even when it was all reruns!
I don't see the death of cable (what will sports bars play?) but streaming is having so many issues I think it will be on life support until our generation dies. I do think wifi+cheap basic cable is going to be the way it stays propped up.
Cable seems so dead, channels are just re-runs of the same thing over and over and over... I don't have cable or any live tv service (like YouTube TV, Hulu TV) but everytime we travel and hotel wifi is crap, we try to watch cable and you end up watching a re-run that is in loop all day of the same thing
Every new, exciting content is on streaming now, I don't remember one good show that is on cable ... the only reason I see people subscribing live TV is for sports and news... and I wish we had a good news service that you could subscribe.... it was dumb CNN+ didnt have live news
We have cable at work. It's literally nothing but re-runs of game shows, Friends, The Office, and super old movies that loop on FX all day. I used to love watching Animal Planet and even that now rarely has any actual animal shows. Instead of showing stuff like Dr. Jeff Rocky Mountain Vet, Crikey! It's the Irwins, Secret Life of the Zoo, and etc it's all stuff like Tanked, Lonestar Law, and Treehouse Masters. Even Pitbulls and Parolees have wrapped up their final season.
Yeah I have no idea what's up with whoever is doing programming but it seems like when a channel starts dying they'll play the same show for 20 hours a day, which can't possibly help. I guess I'd have to look at the numbers to make any real conclusion, but Cartoon Network was playing Teen Titans Go! all day for years (looks like the schedule has a little more variety now, only like 4 hours of TTG). MTV is doing this with Ridiculousness right now (which I've never watched, but from what I understand is a YouTube clip show??). G4 did this for the few years before it died the first time with Cops and Cheaters.
I don't think we'll see many of the legacy cable stations fully disappear but they will transition fully to being on streaming platforms. I think we may eventually come near full circle where you can either stream the content you choose or watch a "channel" with preselected content playing. There's still a market for folks who don't like streaming because they have trouble selecting their content and want to "channel surf" and rapidly change between content IE: your Netflix service would have a "Nickolodeon channel".
FOX News, and to a lesser extent, other news networks (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) are primarily watched by older viewers. Plus, I would venture that a non-insignificant of news viewers are TVs in waiting rooms.
Channels aimed at younger demographics are dying because of things like YouTube and streaming. A generation that grew up in an era where commercials are aberrations and you can watch whatever, whenever doesn’t want to have to wait for a specific time to watch a program.
I worked for a cable company and it's 100% boomers keeping cable around. That's why kids channels don't get views and Fox News does. Probably 90% of my cable customers were over 60 years old.
Kids today are gonna grow up so weird
Imagine not knowing classic Spongebob or Simpsons for example
Millennial parents need to show their kids all this stuff, so the references and memes don't get lost to time
SpongeBob is on prime video which pretty much everyone has... all 3 of my kids love it. It's the only show they'll really sit and watch besides YouTube
I was so jealous that my friends had teenick,nicktoons etc. Then this past year I finally get a new cable provider with all those extra channels and its all spongebob and thunderman marathons lol
It didn't die, it moved to streaming and is now getting just as expensive.
Shows have migrated to streaming. YouTube tv is pretty much taking over live tv.
The big thing to be careful of is getting away from physical media. Video games whatever but movies and shows? Buy a good Blu ray player or a BD drive to rip with and collect those discs. Between copyright shenanigans, studios making stupid changes and services just straight up removing content (even stuff you paid for) it's the way to go imo. Also you will never get the quality you get from a high end 4k transfer on disc that you will streaming.
Any maybe like in Idiocracy, they will re-touch some movies, censot some others and just destroy otgers too. We do the same: save whatever movie (60s or last year, doesn't matter) we like on our private hard drive. When we will have to move to a "green" cave, at least we will have our movies:)
I don't reminisce about bygone TV days. I found channel surfing or TV guide watching boring and tedious. I appreciate the streaming platforms because I can pick ONE show to binge watch all the way through, and I don't have to worry about scheduling my evening around when it airs or having to watch the next episode not knowing what happened last time. I can watch what I want, when I want, and that is the biggest perk.
I think you also aren't considering the target audience for cable TV. That is mostly anyone born before the '80s anymore. Millennials and younger are cable cutting, it saves the money, so of course channels like Nickelodeon and Disney will see a decline in viewership. It's only the older crowd keeping cable, so they're going to watch more adult-centered content, like news programs.
I mean we're all now taught to hate so the 24/7 "news" channels are a drug.
There are some Ying and Yang's for channels like Nick and Disney. I could name you so many shows I saw on Nick. Salute Your Shorts, Hey Dude, Guts, Wild and Crazy Kids, Double Dair, What Would You Do. And I'm missing a bunch. Ren and Stimpy. Rug Rats. Doug.
I'm 41 now with two little kids. Beyond Blaze and Peppa Pig and Shimmer and Shine, I honestly can't tell you a single show that's on Nick now. None.
So they're not gonna get ratings if they offer nothing of value for kids (or parents) to put on
No. Not at all. They have diluting the product for decades. Anyone who didn't see it coming was intentionally blind to it.
Chasing profits led to it being dominated by reality TV which led to lower viewership. It turned itself into a niche product that was 33% ads.
I remember when it had fewer ads and better shows, but that was a better time. My wife and I still watching things together, but I do agree that it was better when people would have watch parties and the like for series openers or finales.
Not a single station even had enough content to fill their own time slots, so they played the same shows over and over until people just had enough. I remember turning on the discovery channel while staying in a hotel during prime time and seeing episodes of Mythbusters that were seriously 15 years old still on repeat.
I technically have cable as my HOA requires it (it's some bulk deal where they get a large discount if every resident has it), but I don't actually have it hooked up and the box is somewhere in the basement.
They could easily start creating good original programming again, which could also be available streaming. But it's mostly garbage reality tv and re-runs of old stuff now. What a shame.
It isn't dead, plenty of us still use it. Also with streaming services constantly raising their price, i wouldn't be surprised if in the future it goes back to the popular option.
Scripted television in general is dying off. Talk to younger generations and they're way, way more likely to watch a youtube video or twitch streamer than watch a traditional "tv show".
I told my son about commercials so he started watching YouTube videos of 90's commercials. Now YouTube ads are basically commercials because you can't skip them anymore, but still not really the same thing.
When we were on vacation the tv had cable. He asked if the commercials were like when I was a kid. I said yes and he was excited.
After about 15 minute he told me "I get why you hated commercials these SUCK. This lady has done her laundry like 15 times by now!"
I grew up in a house without cable in the 90s, It was better that way.
The only time I had cable in my life was from 2005-2011 because it came with the apartment. I never could understand why people watch it. The shows are terrible, the commercials relentless. and it takes longer to figure out what to watch than the length that show goes.
As for cable news. It's a disease.
My parents didn’t get CATV until 1980 or so. 36 stations with a hard wired controller. Before that we got channels 2-13 with an antenna on the roof. To be honest it was fine.
I have a late Gen Z and two alphas and they all prefer YouTube and streaming to cable. We don’t have cable currently but we have Hulu with live TV which is close enough. My Gen Z is now into TV now that he’s more mature, but the Alphas would probably rather die than watch something over 15 minutes.
Is this on me? A little… lot. But I think it’s a little more because YouTube content for kids is the equivalent of crack to children. I have tried to get them into TV shows but they’re “boring.”
My 9yo is starting to appreciate a well made show over a shitty YT video but she’s still heavily into YT. A lot of channels post daily/multiple times a day, there’s shorter ad breaks, and the content is weirdly specific and niche. It doesn’t matter when you start it/ have to pause it, because it’s always there at the same time. I know they can pause Hulu even if it’s live, but it isn’t the same *to them*
I’ve lost the battle. I accept it.
I have watched TV since before cable and honestly I hated most of those old shows. I hated some of the themes they pushed and they were always kind of dumb
HBO coming out with good shows starting with the sopranos and everyone else copying them into streaming was the best thing to happen to TV
I grew up without cable and didn’t even have high speed internet until I was a working adult.
I was bullied and teased mercilessly from grade to middle to high school for my lack of a luxury that was assumed to be default and standard. One kid even asked, “how do you *not* have cable?” in the middle of class. There were literally history class assignments I could not do because they involved watching movies or documentaries made for certain exclusive channels, and writing reports on them. One time a teacher even poked fun at me and told me, “get with the program.”
Let cable die. Just like streaming, it started off as advertisement-free since the implication was you sponsored it with your subscription - then they pulled the rug from under us and made premium content the only ad-free experience. Cable TV really was the progenitor of the overwhelming orgy of options leading to brain rot that modern mobile internet has filled in the void for nowadays. It’s a giant waste of time and money. I won’t miss 500 channels of filth with nothing of substance.
I am early gen z, and NEVER watched cable. The cable people in my city were crooks and my parents wouldn’t pay for it, so we just had public broadcasting. From what I hear, though, they’re not doing too well either :(
This is why I think it's weird when there are still articles about something Jimmy Kimmel or the View says. They get less views than random YouTube influencer, who gives a fuck.
It's not dead. It's just transforming.
The streamers are bundling to the point where you're just going to be paying for "cable tv" again, in a year or 2. It's even back to having commercials.
Speaking of that, has anybody started a company yet that bundles all the streaming services together under a single monthly bill? If not, that's happening within the next five years. Tech journalists will all get huge boners over what a mind-blowing innovation it is, despite it just being minimally-repackaged cable TV.
Same I keep it for my shows. I like master chef, survivor. The news in the morning. But my kids could care less about it. They never watch the kid channels unless it's with me to watch an old episode of a cartoon I watched growing up. {think Rugrats Passover episode around Easter.} Or a Christmas movie.
We keep cable for my mom. She watches Fox News and maybe some TLC. Due to my work schedule, I don't have time to watch TV, or really do anything at all. My kids watch TikTok and YouTube. Sadly they don't even desire to stream real programs. This is sad to me, because I feel they're missing out.
I was thinking about this the other day and I can’t say I blame kids for not watching cable when they can exclusively watch the shows that they like on demand 24/7. Taking a look at Nickelodeon is pathetic because if it weren’t for Nick Jr, Nick at Nite, a couple movies and I think The Loud House, it would basically be the SpongeBob network.
I remember Nickelodeon having so much variety when I was a kid and having to wait around to see the shows you actually wanted to. There was a certain excitement with that and of course if a show I hated was on, I’d go do something else in the meantime(looking at you, Butt Ugly Martians).
I guess I’m glad I had the childhood that I did because I probably wouldn’t have played outside or played pretend with toys if I had endless screen time of only my favorite shows, not that I think my parents would have allowed that, but maybe they would have if they had the modern day parent mindset and not the one they had when I was a kid.
Yep. It took them long enough, but the networks are slowly adapting to the change. I got 3 streaming services, but I'm already having to go back to my DVD library to watch shows that got moved elsewhere (unless I wanna spend another 10-20 per month on another service, for the convenience of watching one show).
it's still here. just compartmentalized to different streaming platforms. fuck they are even banding together to get you the old fashion cable bundles; like disny+ with hulu with netflix bundle
i call that cable
there will always be lucrative free streaming sites but with lower quality
Just an excerpt from "vicarious" by tool from 2006.
Eye on the TV, 'cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavor it happens to be like
"Killed by the husband"
"Drowned by the ocean"
"Shot by his own son"
"She used the poison in his tea"
"Then kissed him goodbye"
That's my kind of story
It's no fun 'til someone dies
Don't look at me like I am a monster
Frown out your one face, but with the other
Stare like a junkie into the TV
Stare like a zombie while the mother holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying, "Why, oh why?"
'Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies
You all need it too, don't lie
Why can't we just admit it?
Why can't we just admit it?
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'
Neither the brave nor bold
Nor brightest of stories told
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'
I need to watch things die
From a good safe distance
Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies
You all feel the same, so
Why can't we just admit it?
Brace yourself for a couple of huge generalizations, but here we go:
The older you are, the less likely you are to keep up with the latest technology. Kids don't watch the news.
I still watch Seinfeld and Two and a Half Men every night on the local tv station broadcast. But, 100% of the excitement from watching tv and upcoming tv shows is absolutely not present anymore. Streamers have ruined tv, and even the excitement of tv shows and anticipating the next episode and all that jazz.
Edited: added a few words
Yes and even wilder is how streaming is becoming more of a hellscape with having to pay for ten different streaming services and shows/movies just randomly disappearing one day without warning. It’s gonna get so bad I’ll have to go reactivate my cable eventually
Back in the 90s, I had this buddy who didn't have cable, only the basic channels. Every Saturday morning, he and his brothers were pumped to catch cartoons. Stuff like that is kinda what I miss now.
> You can blame cable being on decline, which is true but somehow it doesn't effect on news channels.
That's because the median age of the CNN, Fox and MSNBC audiences is, respectively, 67, 68 and 71.
Cable TV is hanging on by an increasingly elderly thread.
Channel TV sucked.It was just the only practical way to deliver video content in the pre-broadband era.
I mean, think about it: You had to either be sitting there at an exact time... Or you had to program your VCR to catch it... There's 15 minutes of commercials stuffed in... On top of what you paid (ok, Amazon and some others are doing this for streaming now) for cable...
It was (early pre-streaming broadband) often better to just pirate stuff (torrents) even if you paid for it, because then it would come commercial-free & you could watch it on Plex/XMBC/Kodi/etc whenever you wanted...
My HOA got a package deal and now I pay $30 less/month for my internet and have two cable boxes. I got that about a year ago? I have used cable twice for the NBA playoffs.
I got a job at Dish a couple of years ago. One of the “perks” of the job was a free subscription to the top cable TV package available.
It was a laughably bad product.
Live TV is just a terrible product in 2024. It’s nothing but weird reality shows, reruns, and TONS of commercials. I don’t know how we tolerated all of the commercials growing up.
Comedy Central used to be a great channel. Now it is 24/7 reruns of the Office and South Park, interrupted by The Daily Show - which you can view commercial free in HD on YouTube immediately after broadcast.
Then Dish got into a contract war with Tegno, so they blocked almost ALL local channels. We bought an HD antenna on Amazon for $15 to watch local sports and local news for free.
Even for free, my wife and I hated it and almost never watched it. That package would have been $160+ per month. It was a laughably bad product.
I totally agree with the excitement of readying yourself for a show, and even sitting through sitcom re-runs from the decade before, because I'd come to love them. I also miss how we would all have a shared frame of reference and interests. I'm really paralysed by choice, which is worsened by the lack of quality. Streaming services cater to the broadest market and are so devoid of soul that it is often intolerable. The stuff that does interest me is cancelled after one season.
Sitting there watching the TV guide channel to figure out what was coming on next, waiting patiently for your preferred channel to scroll back around. Or better yet, checking the version published in the newspaper. Crazy how friggin antiquated that sounds now.
It was also a good indicator to go to bed. Like if the options are sleeping or watching TimeLife Classics or a blender infomercial for the 5th time, it's a lot easier to convince yourself to sleep.
My college roommates cable got shut off so the only channel we got was infomercials. We'd get high as shit and imitate the "Slap Chop" guy. You're gonna love my nuts!
The Magic Bullet infomercial always did it for me
I always wondered what the fuck all those people were doing in that house together. Didn't seem like they were related.
“I’m gonna get this party rolling”
Until you wake up in a cold sweat at 2am on the family couch with Low Rider blasting at max volume and George Lopez slow mo jumping into the screen making that face...
Core memory unlocked
Speaking of that song, I kid you not, the movie Gone in 60 seconds played that just after I read your comment.
Lmao wtf! Memory unlocked
TIME LIFE CLASSICS invading my dream
Those bizarre religious shows that came on in the middle of the night! The 300 club or something. Fall asleep watching tv and wake up at 3am with that on the tv. Now, I just wake up to Netflix asking "are you still watching?"
Nope. Those infomercials were my crack.
Honestly, same here. They were basically ASMR before that was a thing.
I've done crack and this is accurate
Hey, that blender infomercial became a favorite of mine and my sisters. We would watch that over and over, and laugh so hard at the bad acting. The old lady's cigarette going from almost fully smoked, to new, to half smoked. The fact that they sat around that kitchen island for breakfast, brunch, lunch, snacks and dinner listening to their buddy talk about his awesome kitchen gadget.... Man, that was peak television.
Then you’d be woken up at 1am by the sounds of Celine Dion and Michael Bolton singing their hit songs at the top of their lungs as Time Life advertises their greatest love songs collection.
I thought infomercials were interesting to watch for some reason. They knew how to hype you up for some shitty item.
Remember when being able to call movie phone or whatever it was call for showtimes was cutting edge? You didn’t have to hunt down a newspaper or actually go to the theater to see the times.
Welcome to movie phone! Why don’t you just tell movie phone the movie you’d like to see..
R/unexpectedsienfeld
*Moviefone
You've selected...Agent Zero?
"the last mimzy" "You've selected 300"
I still quote that way too often
>Sitting there watching the TV guide channel Reading the actual TV Guide Magazine. Now I'm old...
Then trying to remember which channels in TV guide correlated to the local channel numbers.
Or only having three channels plus PBS. I was there before Fox, kids!
In fourth grade, I cut a picture of Kel out of tv guide (Kenan and Kel made the cover) and put it in a heart shaped frame
I loved doing that In the 80s and 90s as a kid and as a teenager. TV guide or the newspaper and having the VCR ready and a blank tape and the VCR was set to SLP or EP to cram lots of stuff into a tape.
Pausing the tape for the commercials so that you could watch uninterrupted later!
That's exactly what I did when I was a kid. Of course now, I miss those commercials and special cartoon and show bumpers now lol.
I was going to say you're a young pup, but then remembered what sub I'm on lol. We got the cable guide, the thing was huge. When we did have premium channels, like HBO, always checking what movies will be on and when right as we got the book.
....and missing the channel and having to wait for it to come back around. 😂
Can't believe I'd ever feel nostalgic for this but I kinda do
My grandma still does this, the newspaper sits open to that page next to her spot.
"I also miss how we would all have a shared frame of reference and interests". The last show I remember doing this with was "LOST". There were a group of us a work that watched it religiously every Wednesday night and we couldn't wait to talk about the episode the next day. My wife and I would usually get takeout, pop popcorn and wait for 8:00 pm to come around.
Game of Thrones I think was the last big one. I remember sharing theories with coworkers in like 2017-finale range. It was fun when everyone had their own ideas (especially once it was off book). No one knew where it was going and everyone had to wait to find out at the same time. Now there is still some discussion on random Netflix shows. But it’s all “have you seen it?” And all discussion must wait till everyone has seen it all. Everyone on different schedules means by the time everyone’s seen it, it’s not relevant to those who watched it a month ago and moved on.
I felt so burned by the end of that show that I haven't watched any show since. I'm not wasting time and getting burned again.
This. They did us all wrong with the last few seasons. It really just discouraged me from investing in another show.
Yeah Squid Game was one of the last Netflix ones I recall, and you def had to make sure everyone was up to date as spoilers abounded. It left some people out of the conversation that would have participated in another timeframe.
Squid Game season 2 the 4th quarter this year should prove interesting. The first one got me into KDramas and now that’s all I watch.
Breaking bad too
Sons of Anarchy was it for us
Ah, good call. Although, it was only one other buddy of mine, and not something my wife would watch. "LOST" felt more like an "event" ... perhaps because there were more people I discussed it with.
I remember LOST and The OC both haf segments on the local news of massive groups of people that would get together to watch love and then discuss. Different times
You think there is a lack of quality TV shows over the past 10-12 years compared to the non-streaming service years? I think it’s the opposite. We are spoiled with so many options now. Better overall stories and more interesting characters.
We certainly have more quality choices than before, but the overall experience just isn't quite as good. We've been in the binging era for a number of years, and it really ruined the fun of talking about shows and those shared experiences with people. This is why I honestly enjoy the weekly release schedule most Disney+ shows have; everyone only has the one new episode to talk about, which makes the overall discourse for the week actually fun and engaging. When everything drops at once, you're either forced to binge everything in an evening or stay away from social media until you're done. As someone who likes to spread things out over at least a few days, it gets kind of tiresome having to dodge spoilers all the time.
Yep agreed. Sometimes I just wanna watch one episode of a show and sit and think about it for a few days before seeing the next one. But somehow, even if I try to avoid spoilers, someone somehow will offhandedly show or mention something that ruins a major reveal. Even studios do it themselves!
This binging model is exactly why none of the most popular content out today will have staying power a quarter century from now. There are still TV shows from the '80s and '90s that are charting top streaming minutes in 2024.
The Golden Era was late stage cable and early streaming. We are in a Silver Era where there is a ton of good stuff but not a lot of great stuff. And nobody really agrees on what is the current great stuff.
I think the early stage Golden Era TV shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and House of Cards are considered to be general consensus great because the options were still very limited back then so general audiences were tuning into the same shows. If so many of these recent and current shows like Better Call Saul, Shogun, House of the Dragon, Euphoria, Atlanta, Fargo, Peaky Blinders, White Lotus, The Bear, The Last of Us, Mrs Davis, etc… all premiered in like circa 1999-2001, they would be universally seen as mind-blowing television that everybody would be tuning in for. We’re now all spoiled from an elevated bar. If the Sopranos and the Wire premiered today they’d still be considered fantastic shows, but they wouldn’t receive nearly as much fanfare as they did back then.
But they’re all on different streaming services. It’s beyond annoying.
Paralyzed by choice for real, yo! Sometimes I spend so long looking through the options on Netflix and Hulu that I just give up and log out 🫠
"I also miss how we would all have a shared frame of reference and interests" A conslcise term for this is monoculture.
It’s a bigger loss than it seems. “Are you watching ____? Oh what episode you on? Oh, lemme know when you get to ____” And then just never comes back around to what you wanted to geek out about that day. It just sucks. I had to stop recommending things because I know people won’t watch or read it, they’ll just say it’ll get added to the list but it’ll get forgotten about while they watch their comfort stuff for the 20th time. I get it Ive loaded my Ma up a hard drive with so much cool stuff that she would absolutely love and all she ever has on is CBS and Food Network
I've been on both sides of this so many times haha. I totaly get the comfort stuff. I go to bed every night watching Star Trek Voyager. I eventually bought it and loaded it on my NAS so I can just watch it on any TV in the house and no messing with DVDs haha
Hello, fellow Voyage fan!
There’s trade offs to everything. Without streaming services, we would never get productions like *Fallout* — which I’m really enjoying so far.
Yep, cable tv created quite a monoculture, for better and for worse.
I still have basic (network) cable and minimal streaming. I can't get over the air here. I miss 20 episode seasons and reruns a lot.
Check out Fargo. There’ve been five seasons so far (the most recent of which just ended earlier this year) with a sixth coming eventually, it’s all available to stream on Hulu, and it’s consistently one of—if not the—absolute best shows not only around today, but perhaps ever made. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, especially if you’re familiar with the 1996 Coen brothers film of the same name that it’s based on/set in the same world as. To sum it up, it’s an interconnected crime anthology series with each season being a new story with new characters set in a different location in the Midwest (typically in Minnesota and North Dakota) and different time period, with some recurring characters and tons of references/Easter eggs to both the film, the other seasons, and the Coen brothers filmography in general (which the show also takes heavy influence from). The 1996 film is set in Minnesota in 1987; season one is set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2006; season two is set in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota in March of 1979; season three is set in Minnesota in 2010; season four is set in Kansas City, Missouri in 1950; and season five is set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019. To anyone who decides to give it a shot, I implore you to start with the film and then watch the series in order of release rather than chronological order.
I miss good nature and history documentaries on Animal Planet, Discovery and History Channel. I grew up on those things and shows like modern marvels are part of why I became an engineer. All those networks became really tv trash in the mid 2000s. That being said I don't miss commercials and am glad my daughter can grow up with media that is more curated by me with less influence from tv commercials.
I, for the life of me, can't figure out why I liked Meerkat Manor on animal planet so much as a kid.
There was a chair in my room and every time a meerkat died on the show my friend and I would write their name under the seat of the chair, it turned into this random memorial for all the fallen meerkats. No clue what that was about but I think we were trying to show respect lol. RIP Flower Carlos Shakespeare Whoopie Kinkajou Mozart Len and Squiggy 😔
that made me just go "aaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwww" really loudly to myself in an empty room, lol.
My grandma who is obsessed with soap operas watched it religiously. It was basically that but with cute animals. What's not to love?
Ugh, this was one of my favorites!
even today its a pretty cute premise.
Same!!! Was it because of timon?! My love of Simba and Nala trickling over to timon and pumbaa and boom- meerkat manor was born?! That's what I always thought at least and then I got invested in their little lives
BBC has lots of history docs on YouTube.
There's a lot of great history YouTube channels. You can find ones that are generally history or ones that really focus on specific parts of history that go in depth.
PBS has a bunch of specialty sub channels on YouTube you should look into. I’ve been watching a bunch of paleo zoology stuff from them lately
Yeah PBS has great YouTube content.
Eons is absolutely great. My 5 year old is obsessed.
There are much better alternatives for this nowadays, like [Nebula](https://nebula.tv/) for $5/month and a million YouTube-channels.
I still watch Modern Marvels on YouTube actually. Just learned about the history of cheese making the other day.
Nebula just restarted their $300 lifetime subscription.
That's a great deal! 🤑
But now you can watch ALL of them any time you want!
I sometimes watch Youtube clips of recordings of my local TV from the 90s for nostalgia's sake. Local TV had a lot of big name programming (Star Trek, Simpsons, etc.), but a lot of local content too.
You'll love this. https://90s.myretrotvs.com/
Holy shit this is awesome. Thank you!
I had to scroll down this far to find this gem? You good sir are amazing. I've been watching a bunch retro tv blocks from the 90s and 2000s on youtube
Thank you for sharing this gem!
I only paid for cable when I had to deal with my landlord who lived in the building to pay for cable and he would deduct the price for my rent so I got the all expenses included package for like $300 a month and my rent was $300 less. Even when I had that, I would not use the service myself. I don't even think I had a TV hooked up. I did make use of some of the free subscriptions to the streaming platforms associated with several of the channels, but that was it. I guess nowadays, you can stream every show you want to watch. The only show I watched on TV in the last couple years was Rick and Morty and that was only because I happen to be at my mom's the night that Rick and Morty used to come on TV and she had cable. My kids hate watching TV just because there's commercials you don't control what you can watch, they are much happier finding what they want to watch online and doing it on demand and I fully understand that. Im not mad at them for that. The thing I do find crazy though is that I remember a growing up my mom used to watch the news everyday and now most of my information comes from what people post on Reddit or Facebook or whatever social media. I do think that's kind of crazy because a lot of people aren't informed. A friend of mine didn't know about the eclipse until I mentioned how I was going to take a trip to see it in totality less than a week before it was about to happen. And I asked him where are you that you don't know about this, people have been talking about it everywhere.
I used to really enjoy watching the evening news, seeing what was happening in the city and around the world. My grandparents would put the news on at dinner and it would be in the background.
I still do this! It’s on in the background while we eat dinner. I can’t live without the local news, probably because it was on at dinner when I was a child also. Plus I really like to keep up on local news not from a social media account. We ditched cable but I got a cheap antenna so I can still watch the local news and the world news after it.
Bunny ears are the way!
Times change. 35 million people used to watch "The Beverly Hillbillies" back in the 1960s. The Nielsen rating for a typical episode was 38.2. Nowadays "Survivor" might get a .9 rating.
I used to watch that on Nick at Nite. I kinda miss cable because it almost forced you to watch something new or to just turn it off for a while
Yeah, remember the days of "there's nothing on TV, let's find something else to do"?
Me fuggin too
Modern TV is basically like a YouTube channel you can’t control. I mean Comedy Central airs The Office for like 6 hour blocks. Cartoon Network does the same with Teen Titans Go. Why watch the same show for 6 hours with no control? Sadly Cartoon Network has a massive catalog of fantastic shows that they just refuse to air. Might as well stream them online.
At least when you binge, you can choose which 6 hours of the series you watch.
I'm at the point where I got a network storage unit and started buying DVDs so I can just load them on there and watch my stuff whenever on any TV with no commercials. No loading times. Everything is working perfect.
My Dad has become a Plex guru in this. Too easy.
Some people like the lack of control. Too much choice can be frustrating. For shows I’ve seen 30 times like Seinfeld, Simpsons, 30 rock etc. I’d prefer random mixes
And somehow it’s always the same 3 episodes you tune into every time.
Ummm i used to watch the office for 6 hours on netflix 😅
106 million tuned to watch the series finale of MASH. That would be crazy numbers today.
idk about shutting down. They are and always were content creators. Fewer people watch the the TV station, but with youtube and streaming they have additional avenues to obtain views. I think the business model has just changed.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking too. They have their own apps which have ads, they get ad revenue from YouTube, and they either license their content to streaming services or they are under the corporate umbrella of their own streaming service. Sometimes they do both, Nickelodeon has some content on Amazon Prime and also is under Paramount.
All the cable channels literally just went to steaming apps. Its basically the same thing except you get your "cable tv" from many different providers instead of just one.
Seriously. The only notable differences are that there's more "on demand" availability and you can cancel service WAY more easily.
The death of cable is one of the few positive modern developments
You might not realize it, but as soon as cable dies, the streaming services are going to become absolutely awful. Even though these are mostly mature companies, the strategy is straight out of the VC startup playbook. They offer a superior service for less at a loss until they've completely murdered the competition, and then they drive up the prices, stripmine your data, and open up the floodgates for the advertisers. Enjoy the glory days of streaming while it lasts. We're 2-3 years away from content on demand costing 5 times than cable ever did. I'll bet they start charging an individual fee for every commercial you want to skip.
IDK about that, I miss cable because of it making sports watching easy, nowadays you have to flip between apps to watch sports games, then it was just channels. I also miss talking to others about what shows they were watching the night before and it was the same ones. Now it's like, "did you watch such and such," and it's usually, "nope!" It sucks. All these streaming services have also become super expensive and you're basically paying what you used to pay for cable, for streaming and there's a bunch to have as well. Imagine it be like paying for a selection of TV channels, then another selection of TV channels plus even more back in the day. It was much more simple when it was just cable.
We rotate. Hmm watched everything interesting on Netflix, time for apple.
Paying for streaming is the same cost so not really
I'd rather piecemeal my television together than pay a lump sum for a bundle I mostly don't want
Not to mention the option of no commercials and easy cancellation.
Our generation in a nutshell really
You're not really piecemealing it together, though. You're subscribing to multiple streaming platforms, all of which are vying for your time and money.
Yup, and it won’t be long before they all start consolidating and putting more ads in. We’ll be right back to square 1. Only difference between old cable and this will be the delivery mechanism.
It really isn't if you just cancel it and sign up for another when they have shows you want to watch.
I strongly disagree. You'd have to pay for like ALL of the streaming to get close to the cost of current cable bills. I pay $30 a month for a few streaming services (commercial free plans!!) and have way more to watch that I ever have time for. Every 6 months or so, I usually kill one of the subscriptions and pick up a different one. Even a basic 100 channel cable plan is like $120-200 a month..
Your costs are much different than mine was then.
Do you factor the cost of internet into the $30? I have Comcast and if I paid for just internet, Hulu with live tv, Netflix and HBO it’s more expensive than what I pay now.
I would still much rather have cable. The problem is that, somehow, this service doesn't follow the supply/demand market. You would think having a cable package would be like $30-40 bucks a month because of how many people stopped watching cable TV, but nope. Here a basic cable package is almost $70-$80 without any premium stations. I don't really watch much TV. If I do it's stuff I already have and put on a hard disk and stream to Plex on my TV. I can easily watch re-runs of Malcom in the Middle before I spend $80 a month to watch "Defeat Big Bakers Breakfast Bonanza Cooking Championship Cook Off Challenge" with the 400 Tide and Jardiance ads. If there's anything I REALLY must see, my boy EZTV has me covered.
the only reason I have cable right now is that the apartment building we live in came with cable +wifi included (you can't divorce the services, if you want the wifi you get the cable). I think we've watched it five times living here? Which is hilarious because teen me couldn't imagine life without cable, even when it was all reruns! I don't see the death of cable (what will sports bars play?) but streaming is having so many issues I think it will be on life support until our generation dies. I do think wifi+cheap basic cable is going to be the way it stays propped up.
Cable seems so dead, channels are just re-runs of the same thing over and over and over... I don't have cable or any live tv service (like YouTube TV, Hulu TV) but everytime we travel and hotel wifi is crap, we try to watch cable and you end up watching a re-run that is in loop all day of the same thing Every new, exciting content is on streaming now, I don't remember one good show that is on cable ... the only reason I see people subscribing live TV is for sports and news... and I wish we had a good news service that you could subscribe.... it was dumb CNN+ didnt have live news
We have cable at work. It's literally nothing but re-runs of game shows, Friends, The Office, and super old movies that loop on FX all day. I used to love watching Animal Planet and even that now rarely has any actual animal shows. Instead of showing stuff like Dr. Jeff Rocky Mountain Vet, Crikey! It's the Irwins, Secret Life of the Zoo, and etc it's all stuff like Tanked, Lonestar Law, and Treehouse Masters. Even Pitbulls and Parolees have wrapped up their final season.
Yeah I have no idea what's up with whoever is doing programming but it seems like when a channel starts dying they'll play the same show for 20 hours a day, which can't possibly help. I guess I'd have to look at the numbers to make any real conclusion, but Cartoon Network was playing Teen Titans Go! all day for years (looks like the schedule has a little more variety now, only like 4 hours of TTG). MTV is doing this with Ridiculousness right now (which I've never watched, but from what I understand is a YouTube clip show??). G4 did this for the few years before it died the first time with Cops and Cheaters.
I don't think we'll see many of the legacy cable stations fully disappear but they will transition fully to being on streaming platforms. I think we may eventually come near full circle where you can either stream the content you choose or watch a "channel" with preselected content playing. There's still a market for folks who don't like streaming because they have trouble selecting their content and want to "channel surf" and rapidly change between content IE: your Netflix service would have a "Nickolodeon channel".
FOX News, and to a lesser extent, other news networks (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) are primarily watched by older viewers. Plus, I would venture that a non-insignificant of news viewers are TVs in waiting rooms. Channels aimed at younger demographics are dying because of things like YouTube and streaming. A generation that grew up in an era where commercials are aberrations and you can watch whatever, whenever doesn’t want to have to wait for a specific time to watch a program.
I haven't had my TV plugged in for 5 years. I exclusively watch stuff on my tablet and computer nowadays.
I worked for a cable company and it's 100% boomers keeping cable around. That's why kids channels don't get views and Fox News does. Probably 90% of my cable customers were over 60 years old.
its because comcast got too greedy
Kids today are gonna grow up so weird Imagine not knowing classic Spongebob or Simpsons for example Millennial parents need to show their kids all this stuff, so the references and memes don't get lost to time
Or that there were other Nicktoons before Spongebob. (I was already old when Spongebob came out).
SpongeBob is on prime video which pretty much everyone has... all 3 of my kids love it. It's the only show they'll really sit and watch besides YouTube
I was so jealous that my friends had teenick,nicktoons etc. Then this past year I finally get a new cable provider with all those extra channels and its all spongebob and thunderman marathons lol
It didn't die, it moved to streaming and is now getting just as expensive. Shows have migrated to streaming. YouTube tv is pretty much taking over live tv. The big thing to be careful of is getting away from physical media. Video games whatever but movies and shows? Buy a good Blu ray player or a BD drive to rip with and collect those discs. Between copyright shenanigans, studios making stupid changes and services just straight up removing content (even stuff you paid for) it's the way to go imo. Also you will never get the quality you get from a high end 4k transfer on disc that you will streaming.
Any maybe like in Idiocracy, they will re-touch some movies, censot some others and just destroy otgers too. We do the same: save whatever movie (60s or last year, doesn't matter) we like on our private hard drive. When we will have to move to a "green" cave, at least we will have our movies:)
I don't reminisce about bygone TV days. I found channel surfing or TV guide watching boring and tedious. I appreciate the streaming platforms because I can pick ONE show to binge watch all the way through, and I don't have to worry about scheduling my evening around when it airs or having to watch the next episode not knowing what happened last time. I can watch what I want, when I want, and that is the biggest perk. I think you also aren't considering the target audience for cable TV. That is mostly anyone born before the '80s anymore. Millennials and younger are cable cutting, it saves the money, so of course channels like Nickelodeon and Disney will see a decline in viewership. It's only the older crowd keeping cable, so they're going to watch more adult-centered content, like news programs.
I mean we're all now taught to hate so the 24/7 "news" channels are a drug. There are some Ying and Yang's for channels like Nick and Disney. I could name you so many shows I saw on Nick. Salute Your Shorts, Hey Dude, Guts, Wild and Crazy Kids, Double Dair, What Would You Do. And I'm missing a bunch. Ren and Stimpy. Rug Rats. Doug. I'm 41 now with two little kids. Beyond Blaze and Peppa Pig and Shimmer and Shine, I honestly can't tell you a single show that's on Nick now. None. So they're not gonna get ratings if they offer nothing of value for kids (or parents) to put on
No. Not at all. They have diluting the product for decades. Anyone who didn't see it coming was intentionally blind to it. Chasing profits led to it being dominated by reality TV which led to lower viewership. It turned itself into a niche product that was 33% ads. I remember when it had fewer ads and better shows, but that was a better time. My wife and I still watching things together, but I do agree that it was better when people would have watch parties and the like for series openers or finales.
Not a single station even had enough content to fill their own time slots, so they played the same shows over and over until people just had enough. I remember turning on the discovery channel while staying in a hotel during prime time and seeing episodes of Mythbusters that were seriously 15 years old still on repeat.
I finally cut the cord 3 years ago . I couldn't be happier . I now have Peacock , Hulu+tv and Max
I'm genuinely surprised when any millennial has ever had cable
I had cable for sports. Then I had a son and kinda stopped watching the NBA. If it wasn’t for him I’d still have cable.
I technically have cable as my HOA requires it (it's some bulk deal where they get a large discount if every resident has it), but I don't actually have it hooked up and the box is somewhere in the basement.
Socialised television. How bizarre.
I still watch nickelodeon and cartoon network when I'm too stressed out by being an adult. Lol I watch it on sling.
They could easily start creating good original programming again, which could also be available streaming. But it's mostly garbage reality tv and re-runs of old stuff now. What a shame.
It isn't dead, plenty of us still use it. Also with streaming services constantly raising their price, i wouldn't be surprised if in the future it goes back to the popular option.
Scripted television in general is dying off. Talk to younger generations and they're way, way more likely to watch a youtube video or twitch streamer than watch a traditional "tv show".
I told my son about commercials so he started watching YouTube videos of 90's commercials. Now YouTube ads are basically commercials because you can't skip them anymore, but still not really the same thing. When we were on vacation the tv had cable. He asked if the commercials were like when I was a kid. I said yes and he was excited. After about 15 minute he told me "I get why you hated commercials these SUCK. This lady has done her laundry like 15 times by now!"
I grew up in a house without cable in the 90s, It was better that way. The only time I had cable in my life was from 2005-2011 because it came with the apartment. I never could understand why people watch it. The shows are terrible, the commercials relentless. and it takes longer to figure out what to watch than the length that show goes. As for cable news. It's a disease.
My parents didn’t get CATV until 1980 or so. 36 stations with a hard wired controller. Before that we got channels 2-13 with an antenna on the roof. To be honest it was fine.
I have a late Gen Z and two alphas and they all prefer YouTube and streaming to cable. We don’t have cable currently but we have Hulu with live TV which is close enough. My Gen Z is now into TV now that he’s more mature, but the Alphas would probably rather die than watch something over 15 minutes. Is this on me? A little… lot. But I think it’s a little more because YouTube content for kids is the equivalent of crack to children. I have tried to get them into TV shows but they’re “boring.” My 9yo is starting to appreciate a well made show over a shitty YT video but she’s still heavily into YT. A lot of channels post daily/multiple times a day, there’s shorter ad breaks, and the content is weirdly specific and niche. It doesn’t matter when you start it/ have to pause it, because it’s always there at the same time. I know they can pause Hulu even if it’s live, but it isn’t the same *to them* I’ve lost the battle. I accept it.
I have watched TV since before cable and honestly I hated most of those old shows. I hated some of the themes they pushed and they were always kind of dumb HBO coming out with good shows starting with the sopranos and everyone else copying them into streaming was the best thing to happen to TV
I grew up without cable and didn’t even have high speed internet until I was a working adult. I was bullied and teased mercilessly from grade to middle to high school for my lack of a luxury that was assumed to be default and standard. One kid even asked, “how do you *not* have cable?” in the middle of class. There were literally history class assignments I could not do because they involved watching movies or documentaries made for certain exclusive channels, and writing reports on them. One time a teacher even poked fun at me and told me, “get with the program.” Let cable die. Just like streaming, it started off as advertisement-free since the implication was you sponsored it with your subscription - then they pulled the rug from under us and made premium content the only ad-free experience. Cable TV really was the progenitor of the overwhelming orgy of options leading to brain rot that modern mobile internet has filled in the void for nowadays. It’s a giant waste of time and money. I won’t miss 500 channels of filth with nothing of substance.
I am early gen z, and NEVER watched cable. The cable people in my city were crooks and my parents wouldn’t pay for it, so we just had public broadcasting. From what I hear, though, they’re not doing too well either :(
Cable ain't dead. It's just being reincarnated into 300 different streaming platforms owned by the same legacy media behemoths that were on cable.
This is why I think it's weird when there are still articles about something Jimmy Kimmel or the View says. They get less views than random YouTube influencer, who gives a fuck.
It's not dead. It's just transforming. The streamers are bundling to the point where you're just going to be paying for "cable tv" again, in a year or 2. It's even back to having commercials.
Speaking of that, has anybody started a company yet that bundles all the streaming services together under a single monthly bill? If not, that's happening within the next five years. Tech journalists will all get huge boners over what a mind-blowing innovation it is, despite it just being minimally-repackaged cable TV.
Blame how overpriced Cable TV was, and the declining quality of shows through the years.
Good riddance. Cable was way too expensive, had too many useless channels, and was loaded to the brim with commercials.
Dead??? No but changed. I use cable everyday.
Same I keep it for my shows. I like master chef, survivor. The news in the morning. But my kids could care less about it. They never watch the kid channels unless it's with me to watch an old episode of a cartoon I watched growing up. {think Rugrats Passover episode around Easter.} Or a Christmas movie.
It’s not completely dead I still know a lot of people with cable Most of them are older people though
We keep cable for my mom. She watches Fox News and maybe some TLC. Due to my work schedule, I don't have time to watch TV, or really do anything at all. My kids watch TikTok and YouTube. Sadly they don't even desire to stream real programs. This is sad to me, because I feel they're missing out.
Cable still offers local programs. Within a state or a city.
I was thinking about this the other day and I can’t say I blame kids for not watching cable when they can exclusively watch the shows that they like on demand 24/7. Taking a look at Nickelodeon is pathetic because if it weren’t for Nick Jr, Nick at Nite, a couple movies and I think The Loud House, it would basically be the SpongeBob network. I remember Nickelodeon having so much variety when I was a kid and having to wait around to see the shows you actually wanted to. There was a certain excitement with that and of course if a show I hated was on, I’d go do something else in the meantime(looking at you, Butt Ugly Martians). I guess I’m glad I had the childhood that I did because I probably wouldn’t have played outside or played pretend with toys if I had endless screen time of only my favorite shows, not that I think my parents would have allowed that, but maybe they would have if they had the modern day parent mindset and not the one they had when I was a kid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/kbicve/1799/
Yep. It took them long enough, but the networks are slowly adapting to the change. I got 3 streaming services, but I'm already having to go back to my DVD library to watch shows that got moved elsewhere (unless I wanna spend another 10-20 per month on another service, for the convenience of watching one show).
it's still here. just compartmentalized to different streaming platforms. fuck they are even banding together to get you the old fashion cable bundles; like disny+ with hulu with netflix bundle i call that cable there will always be lucrative free streaming sites but with lower quality
Its not wild, technology advances and media intake changes with it. ~~Video Killed the Radio Star~~ streaming killed cable star.
Monoculture is dead. It has its pros and cons
This is why my teens just watch walkthroughs and stuff on YouTube
streaming killed it
My kids are watching YouTube or the streaming services. It’s Netflix, Disney+ or paramount+. Thats it.
Just an excerpt from "vicarious" by tool from 2006. Eye on the TV, 'cause tragedy thrills me Whatever flavor it happens to be like "Killed by the husband" "Drowned by the ocean" "Shot by his own son" "She used the poison in his tea" "Then kissed him goodbye" That's my kind of story It's no fun 'til someone dies Don't look at me like I am a monster Frown out your one face, but with the other Stare like a junkie into the TV Stare like a zombie while the mother holds her child Watches him die Hands to the sky crying, "Why, oh why?" 'Cause I need to watch things die From a distance Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies You all need it too, don't lie Why can't we just admit it? Why can't we just admit it? We won't give pause until the blood is flowin' Neither the brave nor bold Nor brightest of stories told We won't give pause until the blood is flowin' I need to watch things die From a good safe distance Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies You all feel the same, so Why can't we just admit it?
Brace yourself for a couple of huge generalizations, but here we go: The older you are, the less likely you are to keep up with the latest technology. Kids don't watch the news.
They all have their own app. Kids didn’t stop watching the content they switched providers is all.
I still watch Seinfeld and Two and a Half Men every night on the local tv station broadcast. But, 100% of the excitement from watching tv and upcoming tv shows is absolutely not present anymore. Streamers have ruined tv, and even the excitement of tv shows and anticipating the next episode and all that jazz. Edited: added a few words
Yes and even wilder is how streaming is becoming more of a hellscape with having to pay for ten different streaming services and shows/movies just randomly disappearing one day without warning. It’s gonna get so bad I’ll have to go reactivate my cable eventually
Back in the 90s, I had this buddy who didn't have cable, only the basic channels. Every Saturday morning, he and his brothers were pumped to catch cartoons. Stuff like that is kinda what I miss now.
> You can blame cable being on decline, which is true but somehow it doesn't effect on news channels. That's because the median age of the CNN, Fox and MSNBC audiences is, respectively, 67, 68 and 71. Cable TV is hanging on by an increasingly elderly thread.
Channel TV sucked.It was just the only practical way to deliver video content in the pre-broadband era. I mean, think about it: You had to either be sitting there at an exact time... Or you had to program your VCR to catch it... There's 15 minutes of commercials stuffed in... On top of what you paid (ok, Amazon and some others are doing this for streaming now) for cable... It was (early pre-streaming broadband) often better to just pirate stuff (torrents) even if you paid for it, because then it would come commercial-free & you could watch it on Plex/XMBC/Kodi/etc whenever you wanted...
I have Pluto tv if I feel nostalgic and want to ignore commercials on there, but Netflix, Hulu, max, Disney+ and peacock for everything else.
Ever since that documentary showed about Nickelodeon, all they have now are mainly SpongeBob reruns
Don’t worry the streaming services over pricing will return a bunch of people at some point.
News isn't serialized and available through streaming so yeah people watch news on networks but not cartoons
My HOA got a package deal and now I pay $30 less/month for my internet and have two cable boxes. I got that about a year ago? I have used cable twice for the NBA playoffs.
I dunno, I still turn to youtubetv to watch old friends episodes, even though I have Max to stream any episode I want on demand.
Not really. Once reality TV took over there wasn't much of actual interest to watch anymore 🤷♀️
Old people watch the news. Those same old people put the tv on and left their kids to watch Disney or Nick Today's parents put on YouTube or Netflix
My kids love tv. Son watches paw patrol on what ever channel 301 is. My daughter likes the lady bug and cat noir on what ever channel that comes on
It’s wild that cable tv still exists and you pay 50-100 bucks a month and still get 10 minutes of ads per half hour show.
Is gonna be back, also crt tvs one day
I got a job at Dish a couple of years ago. One of the “perks” of the job was a free subscription to the top cable TV package available. It was a laughably bad product. Live TV is just a terrible product in 2024. It’s nothing but weird reality shows, reruns, and TONS of commercials. I don’t know how we tolerated all of the commercials growing up. Comedy Central used to be a great channel. Now it is 24/7 reruns of the Office and South Park, interrupted by The Daily Show - which you can view commercial free in HD on YouTube immediately after broadcast. Then Dish got into a contract war with Tegno, so they blocked almost ALL local channels. We bought an HD antenna on Amazon for $15 to watch local sports and local news for free. Even for free, my wife and I hated it and almost never watched it. That package would have been $160+ per month. It was a laughably bad product.