• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Lifespan of OTA Television

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
Last week, Variety had an article about the death "this year" of linear TV. That means "real time" television such as ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Univision and Telemundo's effective scheduled program format.

Of course, they mean that the tipping point has been reached, and new shows will be fewer and many will go directly to streams. They won't close, but rapid changes will happen.

The belief is that the high cost of things like "Law & Order" and "Chicago Med" and "Ghosts" can't be sustained by free live TV webs. The answers are in paid services with and without ads, such as Peacock.

I'm asking users of video here to comment on the last time you watched any of those network shows live. And if you did watch them un-live, how did you see them... such as a recorder from the cable company, or a streaming service that offers them. And if streaming, do you have an ad-free subscription or one with ads.

I have a TiVo and still have cable as it is the easiest way for my traditional mind to watch local news and the cable news channels with minimal button pushing. But if I had a more restricted budget, I'd cut the cord and stream everything.

I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+ and Paramount Plus plus cable.

My biggest complaint is that I can never remember which of the services has the specific shows I like to watch. I ended up with a list on the notepad on my phone to find them. But I am an old fart, and tradition and habits die slowly.
 
TheBigA said:
Under "General Radio Topics?" I think we're already discussing this in the TV section

Click to expand...
My bad. Moved to TV.

This was a different focus, as Ad Age discussed the change of programming to exclusively subscription channels and the reduction in network prime time hours and the move of even local play by play to streamed subscription services. The implication is that TV stations would no longer do the play by play, while the teams would create their own services, often ad supported as part of their "360" sports sponsorships.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+ and Paramount Plus plus cable.

My biggest complaint is that I can never remember which of the services has the specific shows I like to watch. I ended up with a list on the notepad on my phone to find them. But I am an old fart, and tradition and habits die slowlly
Click to expand...
I watch Fox Broadcasting shows live via antenna, just because I only have Netflix, Paramount Plus and just got Prime, all the ad free subscriptions. I think if I streamed Fox shows online or with Hulu, there would still be ads, especially since Hulu announced a few weeks ago they’ll have some ads even for ad free subscribers. Amazon Prime also has some shows with ads even if you have the ad free subscription, but they have a note on each show that says so.

I use a website called Justwatch to look up what shows and movies are streaming where.
 
radiofan2023 said:
I use a website called Justwatch to look up what shows and movies are streaming where.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I added Justwatch to my bookmarks. I was not aware of it and it is pretty cool (does that word date me?).
 
I make every attempt to avoid these long form drama shows. I watched a couple episodes of Yellowstone because I heard so much about it. These shows just move too slow for me.

Years ago when AT&T first bought Warner Media, I read a quote from one of their people who couldn't understand why they invested so much in TBS and TNT programming, when all the money was in streaming. He could see the writing on the wall back then.

In my world, there's been a revival in local sports p-b-p on local tv. That may be their last gasp. I was meeting with a jingle house rep, and he tells me local TV news budgets have been cut drastically, and TV stations don't have money for new theme music. At one time, they'd go back every year or two for fresh music. Not anymore.
 
TheBigA said:
I make every attempt to avoid these long form drama shows. I watched a couple episodes of Yellowstone because I heard so much about it. These shows just move too slow for me.
Click to expand...
Different strokes for different...

I really like the Taylor Sheridan shows, as they have above average / superior writing, very good leads and well developed characters and plots.

A lot of the conventional network shows, such as 9-1-1 and the Chicago trio are overly simplistic, the characters are sort of cookie cutter, and there is a required dose of ethnic balance that is not natural. So I agree with you "in principle".
TheBigA said:
In my world, there's been a revival in local sports p-b-p on local tv. That may be their last gasp. I was meeting with a jingle house rep, and he tells me local TV news budgets have been cut drastically, and TV stations don't have money for new theme music. At one time, they'd go back every year or two for fresh music. Not anymore.
Click to expand...
This is a last gasp as you say. My two local TV operators who control the 6 major networks (and even the one wannabe) all have identity screens that show all the streaming services they are available on. And that is despite the fact that both get over half their income from cable must carry fees.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Thanks. I added Justwatch to my bookmarks. I was not aware of it and it is pretty cool (does that word date me?).
Click to expand...
There are a few sites that I like for tracking shows. The best one I have found is called Reelgood - they are very comprehensive and you can make lists of what streaming services you have so it keeps track of what is actually available to you. It also has a neat list to weed out what is new, leaving and coming soon to your services.

I also like TV Time which does a good job of tracking TV show episodes and movies that you like to watch or would like to watch. I also use Justwatch. All of these are available on the web or they have their own app.
 
Watch most broadcast/cable shows recorded on my cable system’s DVR. Occasionally watch broadcast shows “on demand” or on advertising supported streaming.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I'm asking users of video here to comment on the last time you watched any of those network shows live. And if you did watch them un-live, how did you see them... such as a recorder from the cable company, or a streaming service that offers them. And if streaming, do you have an ad-free subscription or one with ads.
Click to expand...
1. Not recently. Definitely not this calendar year, and probably not last calendar year either.
2. No, never watched any network programming time shifted.
3. No streaming subscriptions here.

I have very little interest in fiction. Doesn't really matter if it is dramas on TV, literature in paperback, or stage plays. As a result, my TV viewing is primarily competition shows (including sports, and reality shows) and news.
 
Keeping this to prime time shows on the “traditional” OTA networks, I can say my work schedule during most of my career kind of determined how and when I would watch those shows.

For the majority of my career in broadcasting, I would either work an evening shift that got me home close to midnight, or an early shift where I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to work.

Therefore, during prime time, I was either at work, or asleep. So when we first got a VCR in the early 1980s I would record the various prime time shows and we’d watch them at our convenience. Sometimes we wouldn’t get around to watching them for weeks, or even months. When DVRs became available we did the same thing. Ditto for the cloud DVR today.

(As an aside, for a few years I had two VCRs recording shows in the evening. We would have dozens of tapes with post-it notes listing what shows were recorded and the record dates to keep them all in order. The DVR made that much simpler, though I had to pay close attention to storage capacity.)

Because of all that, I simply became used to recording and watching shows on my own schedule. Now that I am retired, I do the same thing. I am not tied to a linear broadcast schedule, which is what also makes streaming so appealing. We watch what we want when we want.

I can’t remember the last time I watched any show at home “live” other than sports or news. Been many years, if not decades.

I will also add that I am rather burned out on the OTA networks show offerings. So many of the streaming shows are more interesting in terms of quality and writing, and I find shows from other countries enjoyable to watch, as they are often so different from U.S. productions, and I enjoy the varied locations.

We ditched cable a couple of years ago due to skyrocketing cost, as well as having too many channels we never watched. We have several streaming subscriptions, along with YouTube TV for the linear channels.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
We ditched cable a couple of years ago due to skyrocketing cost, as well as having too many channels we never watched. We have several streaming subscriptions, along with YouTube TV for the linear channels.
Click to expand...
My objection to cable, and the reason we are planning to end our subscription, is the huge percentage of the monthly fee that goes for non-optional sports packages like ESPN channels. In my case, it is well over $200 a year for channels I never watch (I only follow Latin American soccer, not part of ESPN).

I have contacted my cable provider saying that I can't go on paying for so many channels I do not watch but get no response other than "these are contractual requirements".

I had kept cable mostly for local news... both operators here are better at that than the local newspaper... but now they are both available as streams so there is no reason for cable any longer. If I could pick a menu of channels and reduce the cost by perhaps 40% to 50%, I would keep cable. But they are killing themselves by not offering options based on channel sets or tiers where to get one channel you want, you seem to get 20 you will never use.
 
I don't own a smart tv nor subscribe to streaming TV. I'm too cheap to pay for it. My fiancé does the streaming stuff and she owns the smart TV's. Ill stick to my good ole DirecTV since I bundle my internet and cellular telephone service or OTA via some rabbit ears that I hooked up to her televisions. I record Law and Order SVU, Family Guy and 60 Minutes on my DVR so I can fast forward thru the spots. I love sports but I don't watch ESPN everyday. I watch more HGTV/Food Network/Cooking Channel programs than anything. I got my fiancé hooked on cooking shows and she has me hooked on the Nat Geo/A&E/Reelz law enforcement shows.
 
DavidEduardo said:
My objection to cable, and the reason we are planning to end our subscription, is the huge percentage of the monthly fee that goes for non-optional sports packages like ESPN channels. In my case, it is well over $200 a year for channels I never watch (I only follow Latin American soccer, not part of ESPN).

I have contacted my cable provider saying that I can't go on paying for so many channels I do not watch but get no response other than "these are contractual requirements".

I had kept cable mostly for local news... both operators here are better at that than the local newspaper... but now they are both available as streams so there is no reason for cable any longer. If I could pick a menu of channels and reduce the cost by perhaps 40% to 50%, I would keep cable. But they are killing themselves by not offering options based on channel sets or tiers where to get one channel you want, you seem to get 20 you will never use.
Click to expand...
There are so many other options now. We dropped Cox for everything (finally) in San Diego and have T-Mobile 5G now - it works just fine! We had Sling for over a year but switched to YouTube TV. We still don't watch very much of that, mostly streaming and even the free FAST services are very good with their offerings. I feel like we could even drop YTTV but I do like it for some of the live programs and On Demand. The local San Diego stations all mostly stream their news live on a variety of services so we'd be covered there. I think only one of the Palm Springs stations stream their news where you are.

There is a site called www.suppose.tv which helped me find a good deal. You put in your market and all of the channels that you want to get and it will give you several packages and prices. It's an aggregator so it's not run by any cable or satellite or streaming company. It gives you several choices - cable, satellite, streaming Live TV, and may even combine services to give you what you want at the best price.
 
powers said:
. I think only one of the Palm Springs stations stream their news where you are.
Click to expand...
There are only two significant operators in Palm Springs: Entravision and News-Press Gazette. Entravision has NBC and Univision, News-Press has all the rest. Both have very good local news.
 
I dropped Sling TV, as I only had it for my son for SyFy, and he is no longer interested in that channel. As long as we had it, I didn't mind watching CNN, but it's nothing I'd pay for. I have several of the streaming services for my son, but as for myself, I just watch free TV, either OTA or on Roku, and very little of that.

I have enough movies on VHS and DVD to last me a lifetime.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I'm asking users of video here to comment on the last time you watched any of those network shows live. And if you did watch them un-live, how did you see them... such as a recorder from the cable company, or a streaming service that offers them. And if streaming, do you have an ad-free subscription or one with ads.
Click to expand...

We use streaming for most of our scripted series and movie watching. We pay for the commercial-free tier of Netflix and ad tiers of Amazon, Hulu, Peacock and a couple others. Most of the shows we watch are original series, not streamed versions of network TV series.

Regarding network TV, we watch almost no scripted shows anymore. However, I frequently watch local news on the local network channels, sometimes live, otherwise the most recent recording. I also watch the cable news channels, always live or delayed just enough to be able to skip through some commercial breaks. I've cut down on those a lot recently though, since the national news is so damn negative all the time now.

I DVR most late-night talk shows and I'll sometimes skim through them later for an interesting interview or musical guest.

We watch SNL, sometimes live, otherwise later on the DVR.

I watch sports occasionally, always live, but not enough to subscribe to premium sports services.

The main takeaway is that our main use of network and cable TV is live news, live sports, live SNL, live awards shows, and recordings of a few other things. but no scripted series.

The only additional thing I use cable for -- and I'm surely in a very small minority here -- is MTVu which sometimes gets used like a radio station for passive music consumption. I frequently discover emerging pop music on that channel that I wouldn't actively seek out on Youtube or Spotify, or hear on the radio. Interestingly, it's commercial-free except for some cross-promos for other Paramount-owned cable channels. And they're been running the same imaging for at least the past 7 years. The music is kept up-to-date though.
 
I think the diginets are breathing some new life into broadcast TV. Some OTA TV channels have as many as eight subchannels. I find the programming to either be a repackaging of a limited number of old shows, home shopping, religion, or infomercials. Bleh! As more people switch to streaming, even this will have a limited lifespan. Sort of like translators being the salvation of AM. Not going to happen.

When I bought a new Samsung smart TV, it came with hundreds of free channels called Samsung TV Plus. That ended the watching of OTA TV and cable for me. I as well have Max (my favorite), Netflix (both at a special monthly rate with Verizon), Amazon Prime Video (free with membership), Paramount + (free with Walmart membership).

Honestly, it's more TV than I'll ever have the time to watch, but I love having all these choices.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom