How Long Can Cable and Satellite TV Survive In the Age of Streaming?

Before streaming, television networks mainly made money from ad revenue and their share of cable/satellite subscription fees. Then Netflix switched from a DVD delivery service to a DVD delivery service and a streaming service. This delighted the networks, which had yet another revenue source for their content. 

Then people started cutting the cord, canceling expensive cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of streaming options like Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, Fubo TV, YouTube TV, and Sling. Within a few years, millions of households abandoned linear TV. Many who held onto their subscriptions divided their attention between streaming and live TV, reducing time spent watching the networks. As streaming has become more popular, there is a rising number of cord-nevers. These are young people who grew up with streaming and have never subscribed to a pay-TV service, and likely never will. 

As households moved away from paid TV services, ad spending also declined. In TV Ad Spend to Drop 3 Percent to $70.3 Billion in 2019: Report, Ad Age reported the first-ever decline in advertising spending on television.

"TV ad spending is expected to drop nearly 3 percent this year to $70.3 billion, falling below 30 percent of total U.S. ad spend for the first time."

According to the Variety article, R.I.P. Cable TV: Why Hollywood Is Slowly Killing Its Biggest Moneymaker, pay-TV households peaked in 2010 at 105 million. That number has now fallen to approximately 82.9 million and is expected to be 72.7 million by 2023.

"According to Variety’s tally of the most-watched networks in 2019, Nick at Nite was down 24% among total viewers; AMC, down 22%; FX, down 21%; USA, down 19%; TBS, down 16%; and TNT, down 14%."

How long before cable and satellite become obsolete? The estimated loss of TV subscribers from 2010 to 2023 will be approximately 32 million based on estimates by Variety. In a 2019 study, Roku determined that a "generation of viewers, about 60 million TV households, could be cordless and exclusively use streaming to access video on their TV" by 2024. These declines will likely accelerate. Streaming services offering ever-increasing amounts of content gives households even less reason to fork over $100+ a month for cable or satellite. The Roku study also found that "cord cutters surveyed are reporting higher satisfaction than those who have traditional Pay TV services." 

Based on these declines, some predict cable TV could be dead in a decade. Others think it may never completely go away. The New York Times claims "Cable TV Is the New Landline." Despite the proliferation of cell phones, many homes still have landline phones. Will live TV be more like the landline phone, which is still hanging on, or the phone booth, which has largely gone the way of the dodo? It is possible that live TV programming will continue to be offered. Paramount Plus offers live CBS TV as part of its Premium package. A service like LocalBTV may get the opportunity to offer CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. However, the fate of satellite and cable television is harder to predict.

Many people miss the days when there were just a few streaming services offering most of the content they wanted to watch. Nowadays, complaints about too many streaming options greet the announcement of each new streaming service. But with pay-TV in steep decline, the major media conglomerates have to choose between creating their own services or depending on a few streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video for what is now a sizable portion of their income. Most are choosing to launch their own offerings. Disney Plus, Paramount+, HBO Max, Discovery Plus, ESPN+, and Peacock are rising up to take the place of declining cable channels. 

That's frustrating for consumers who feel they have to juggle multiple subscriptions to get access to the shows they want to watch. Still, for many households, this is a big improvement. For decades, consumers have been paying for lots of channels they don't watch to get access to the few they do watch. Now, consumers can subscribe to just those services offering what they want to see and dropping them when they are done. It's more effort but it's a lot cheaper.

Video Streaming Could Shatter The Cable TV Industry For Good | Forbes